French wedding planner software: timelines, suppliers, and deposits

The industry's tools are American, billed per event or month, and none understands the French arrhes deposit. Managing a wedding can live in a tool that stays with you. What can be replaced, what never will be, and at what price.

French wedding planner software appears in no public price schedule: industry tools are American, from $49.99 to $229.99 monthly at Aisle Planner depending on simultaneous open events, and $29–$109 monthly at HoneyBook, which also takes card-payment fees starting at 2.7% plus 10 cents (pricing consulted September 2, 2026).

How many of you there are, and why nobody knows

Wedding planning has no activity code of its own. Organisers use 82.30Z, also covering trade show and conference organisers. Adding twenty-five regional queries, then departmental ones for Île-de-France where the counter hits the tool's cap, the state business directory gives 29,125 active entities under that code on September 2, 2026, including 5,708 in Paris. It is a minimum and includes neighbours who organise no weddings. A strict wedding-planner count exists nowhere.

What American platforms handle, and what clients dislike

Aisle Planner charges by simultaneous events with unlimited users: for three people handling ten weddings, that is gentler than per-head pricing. HoneyBook keeps quotes, contracts, and payments in one flow. Public complaints concern price and reliability. On Trustpilot, where HoneyBook scores 4.0 from 706 reviews, a user writes August 19, 2026 'used to pay $35 month now it's $129'; another that day says they pay for many unused features. At Planning Pod, rated 3.2, a March 11, 2026 review describes one client's messages appearing in another's workspace, random disconnections, and support summed up in two words: 'Radio silence.'

Five things your own tool must manage

Follow a wedding from first meeting to the morning after, and you have the specification. First, one event record holds the couple, venue, date, target budget, chosen suppliers, signed documents, and exchanges together. Then, supplier by supplier, come the quote, contract, payment schedule, and written classification of every payment as arrhes or acompte, with deadline alerts. The guest list holds replies, allergies, and diets, informs seating, and stays on your machine. The minute-by-minute wedding-day timeline exports supplier-specific route sheets and works offline when the venue lacks reception. Finally, a French-format quote, contract, and invoice generator prepares the SACEM declaration file.

What a homemade tool will not replace

Four components remain outside. Marketplaces bringing enquiries, Mariages.net and others, sell audience that a homemade tool cannot create. Payments and ticketing, whenever tickets or online payments are involved, go through an approved provider: Weezevent charges 2.5% per online ticket with a €0.99 tax-inclusive minimum, and €1.20 per cashless transaction. Actual venue availability lives in the venue's calendar, at best synchronised to yours. SACEM permission must be requested from SACEM before the event, even if free. Your tool prepares the file and reminds you of deadlines; it signs nothing for you.

The word deciding who refunds what

Article L214-1 of the French Consumer Code sets the default: unless otherwise stipulated, advance payments under consumer sales or service contracts are arrhes. Either party can withdraw, the customer forfeiting them and the professional repaying twice the amount. A payment is an acompte only when the contract says so. Two further rules affect the tool. Guest lists combine allergies and diets, hence health data: CNIL requires processing records and a legal basis for each. If an event includes live entertainment, an entertainment-business declaration receipt becomes mandatory from seven annual performances; below that, occasional activity requires no declaration (service-public.gouv.fr). Add invoicing: an emailed PDF is not an electronic invoice, receipt has been mandatory since September 1, 2026, and issuance comes September 1, 2027 for small businesses, with your tool connecting to an approved platform rather than becoming one. Have your adviser review contract templates before embedding them in software.

The document you reject matters more than the one you approve

The useful moment comes when you say no. An AI team proposes a French specification before any code; the first draft says 'acompte' everywhere because everyone uses that word. You reject it and return the exact rule: payments default to arrhes unless the contract says otherwise, so creating a payment deadline must force the choice and clearly display its consequences. The corrected document returns with the rule explicit, and subsequent code cannot ignore it. Enabling that refusal is what human approval is for. The AI budget depends on the assistant, its plan and the work requested. Our measured AI spending covers specific tests and does not set this tool's price. Also budget for your approval time, any hosting, external services and maintenance. To compare this route with a service, start with the scope and budget of development, without assuming the deliveries are identical. Maestro organises the work and is distributed by invitation, without a bill during beta.

Where to start

Open your last three supplier contracts and check each payment for the word arrhes or acompte. Then time retrieving the dietary requirement of a guest at last year's wedding. Those two half-hour checks describe the missing tool. Keep marketplaces and ticketing where they are and build what lies between. Photographers made the same division between rented galleries and contracts they retain.