Modern weddings are demanding enough. There's the custom 3D-printed figurines on the cake to consider, the Pinterest board to fill up, and the Instagram stream to enable. And now, if you really want to be in with the iPhone 5 set you've got to have a mobile app too. Newly funded startup Appy Couple claims that it makes the process of building an app for the happiest day of your life "as easy as falling in love" – Appy Couple's words, not ours. Still in beta, the New York City-based startup just raised $1.2 million in seed money from ff Venture Capital.
Co-founder Sharmeen Mitha-Sehgal decided to create Appy Couple after her Facebook stream began to clog with wedding updates and logistics. "I thought that those updates should be reserved for the people involved in that event," she says. "So I built an app platform for dummies, for people to build a place to keep their wedding guests informed outside of Facebook or Twitter."
After giving the service a quick test-drive, it seems that falling in love might actually be harder than building an iOS or Android app with Appy Couple – all you have to do is choose a theme and fill out a few forms on the startup's website. You can include details about how you met your other half, the locations of the wedding, showers, and bachelor party, registry information, and profiles of everyone in the wedding party. Then you invite your guests to download the app so they can get updates on the wedding, add their photos of the festivities, and even toast the couple within the app.
Mitha-Sehgal says that creating the app had to be easy enough for anyone to use it, but the finished product also had to be gorgeous enough to make a stressed-out bride happy. With that mind, she and her team created hundreds of beautifully designed themes for the app, ranging from simple and elegant to urban and elaborate. You can choose from a specific color palette or from seven style categories, including vintage or urban. There's even a handful of themes for same-sex couples.
Since launching in April 2012, Appy Couple has signed up well over 7,000 couples, but Mitha-Sehgal is keeping the exact total under wraps.
Appy Couple plans to launch an official version of the app by the end of this year, perfect timing to for next year's autumn weddings. Mitha-Sehgal says the startup plans to make money by charging anywhere from $50 to $100 for premium designs, as well as taking a cut from services like hotel, car rental or DJ services.
Now if she can come up with similarly easy app to handle the thank you notes.
