But first, the two of you must plan a wedding. What tools can help with the process? In this post, I focus on tools which can ease the wedding planning process.

We became engaged on New Years Day + 1, 2012, and picked a date just under four months. We also lived on opposite sides of the state. This made it important for us to have efficient tools to aid us in the process.

These tools cluster into two primary categories: Communication and Sharing. Many of these tools are high tech, many are 20th century tech, and a few are older.

Communication

• Phone
• Skype
• Gmail
• Fastmail.fm
• Facebook

Sharing

• Google Docs – collaborative documents
• Day One app – keep a journal
• Dropbox – file sharing
• Evernote – note sharing
• Remember the Milk – task sharing
• Google Voice
• WordPress – website software
• Amazon.com wedding registry
• Bed, Bath, & Beyond – wedding registry
• Magnetstreet.com – wedding invites

Phone & Skype

Call your fiance and call often! She wants to hear your voice, you want to hear your fiance’s voice, and you have a large number of things to discuss about the wedding, the honeymoon, and life ever after. Even if you live in the same town, you should be prepared to talk and text often.

When you’re apart due to distance or travel, seeing your fiance’s face via webcam can be a wonderful thing. Facial expressions and other non-verbal communication are greatly aided in this manner. This is particularly true when discussing important topics while getting to know each other better and while wedding planning.

Use Skype, Facetime, or a similar tool for communicating by webcam.

Email & Mail

Use your words to communicate. And occasionally, send each other gifts in the mail.

When you send your invites, you’ll be sending them through traditional mail. Learn the location of your nearest post office, and buy many stamps. For the invite design and printing, we used Magnetstreet.com. I used Pages to create the insert which contained additional information about locations, registries, and the wedding website.

I setup an RSVP email address through a domain configured with Fastmail.fm. If you need one-off email addresses, or simply don’t want to rely on a provider like Google Apps, I’d check out Fastmail (it’s owned by Opera).

I used Facebook to contact many friends to request a mailing addresses to send the wedding invite.

Document Sharing

Using Google Docs saved us an immense amount of time. For shared document collaboration, this was an easy decision.

We used it to keep track of the following:

• Invite List (Spreadsheet)
• Ceremony Schedule (Doc)
• Reception Schedule (Doc)
• Honeymoon Details (Doc)
• and other docs…

I make use of Evernote for additional notes. I’ve also journaled along the way using the Day One app for Mac in order to have memories and notes of this time.

File Sharing

We used Dropbox to share documents and photos. We also used it to share photos of us with our parents.

Task Sharing

We used Remember the Milk for sharing tasks with each other. Remember the Milk allows you to make and keep track of to-do lists, and you can share tasks with contacts as well.

It works well, but I would like to see improvements made. There is room for a startup to create a task sharing application in the vein of Paul Graham’s frighteningly ambitious idea to replace email.

RSVPs

For RSVPs, we used Google Voice. I setup a message which asked callers to give us their RSVP information. Anytime somebody RSVPed in this manner, I got an email and a copy of the message on my phone in the Google Voice app (for Android).

Twilio provides tools to make phone applications. If you want to get your code on to provide a richer wedding hotline experience, dig into the API and set something up.

Wedding Website

I went with a self-hosted WordPress installation, and bought the Dandelion theme at Themeforest.

Hosting via Linode (VPS), DNS via Zerigo, domains via Name.com.

Wedding Registries

We picked two registries: Amazon.com wedding registry, and Bed Bath & Beyond. I vastly prefer the experience of the Amazon registry because they have a better variety of products and the site is easier to search for products. However, it’s nice to have a store to visit to browse items. Having a registry with a physical retail store gives your wedding guests more options. Even in 2012, not everybody shops online.

Not everyone will buy gifts listed on your registry. People like to surprise you and your bride-to-be, or pick gifts with a personal touch. This can include kitchen items they’ve found invaluably helpful, pretty things they want to share, and antiques being passed down from previous generations.

You Have a lot To Do

You have many things to do as you prepare for your wedding. I hope this list of tools helps you in your preparations.

Disclaimer: I build websites and web applications for Amazon.com.

In this post I will provide you links to the essential sources of information about XHP, show some XHP sample code, and discuss the installation process for XHP on Ubuntu with Apache and PHP5.

The Essential Information
Download XHP at GitHub
How XHP Works
Building XHP
Configuring XHP

Example XHP Sample Code (View Code in Action):

<?php
require_once('/home/cal/facebook-xhp-290b185/php-lib/init.php');
$name  = 'Calvin Freitas';
$title = "{$name} loves XHP!";
$url   = 'http://calvinf.com/';

$permalink = 'http://wp.me/pcoLC-4e';

#create a <head> element
$head =
  <head>
   <title>{$title}</title>
  </head>;

#create a div
$div =
  <div id="header">
    <h1>{$title}</h1>
  </div>;

$body =
  <body>
    {$div}
    <div>
      <p>My name is {$name} and you should go visit <a href={$url}>my website</a> now.</p>
      <p>Read my <a href={$permalink}>guide to installing XHP on Ubuntu</a>. It includes the source code for this page. Comments and corrections are welcome.</p>
    </div>
  </body>;

echo
<html>
  {$head}
  {$body}
</html>;
?>

A few syntax notes
XHP forces you to properly nest tags — make sure you close them properly or it won’t compile and it will throw errors. Because XHP auto-escapes, when you’re creating a link (such as in an a element), you don’t need to put quotes around it.

<a href={$permalink}>guide to installing XHP on Ubuntu</a>

Installing XHP on Ubuntu
Server: Ubuntu 9.10 running on a slice at the Rackspace Cloud.
Web server: Apache 2
Apache installation guide (Slicehost article, but generally applicable)

Below I will go into more detail about the installation process.

There are packages for all the prerequisites in Ubuntu (installation will be similar on Debian, though package names my vary).

sudo apt-get install php5 php5-common php5-cli php5-dev libapache2-mod-php5
sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc flex bison re2c

The package manager will include other prerequisite packages.

After you’ve installed these packages, download the latest tagged release of XHP from GitHub to your server.

Then, you’ll need to make it. Unzip/untar the file, go to that directory, and run the following commands. (Use sudo as necessary.)
phpize
./configure
make
make install


Note regarding make test: the tests failed for me because it wasn’t finding my currently installed PHP5 modules. I ran make install and it worked anyway. There should be a way to include the modules path in the compilation, but at this time I have not found it.

After installing the module, you must configure Apache to include the XHP module in the php.ini file. On my system, the file is located in /etc/php5/apache2. Find the line with extension_dir — mine is the following:
extension_dir = "/usr/lib/php5/20060613/"

In /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d, create a file called xhp.ini.
xhp.ini
#load xhp
extension=xhp.so

Now, at this point everything should work, but some users are reporting issues with XHP on Ubuntu systems, but there is a solution – you may need to include files from the php-lib folder (in the source code folder where you ran make). See the “require_once” function used in the sample code above.

<meta content="IE=EmulateIE7" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" />

This code tells IE8 to render the page in IE7 compatibility mode. That way you can just worry about making your site work in IE6 and IE7 and not trying to support three concurrent generations of the web browser.

Microsoft has more information about Compatibility View for IE8 on the IEBlog.

You can also tell IE8 to apply compatibility mode by setting the header in your web server. In Apache, you can do this by including the following line in your site config file (or apply it just to a specific directory or page if needed). Make sure you have the Headers module installed.

Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=EmulateIE7"

More information is available in the Internet Explorer Compatibility Center.

(Thanks to @kevmoo (Kevin Moore) for initially answering my question about this topic.)

First, you need to install the Airport Express. This can be a difficult process depending on your level of experience with wireless networking; if you’re having trouble, visit the Apple Support page for the AirPort. To use the device, begin by running the installation software that comes with the device (or download it from Apple) on your computer. You will also need to connect the Airport Express to your stereo; for this, you can either use a 1/8″ to RCA connector or 1/8″ to Optical/Toslink connector and hook it to your stereo receiver or other audio input.

Once you’ve setup your wireless network and connected the Airport to your stereo, you can begin broadcasting music from your computer to your stereo using iTunes. In iTunes, check Edit->Preferences->Advanced to make sure “Look for remote speakers connected with AirTunes” is selected. In the bottom right-hand corner of the iTunes screen, a dropdown list will show the speakers iTunes is able to connect to. It will allow you to select “Computer” to play audio through your computer speakers, and the list will also include the names of any identified Airport Express connections. In my case, it shows as “Casa Express” so it’s ready to play. Once I select “Casa Express,” iTunes connects and begins playing audio through the speakers connected to the Airport.

This works well for playing music from iTunes; however, I also want to be able to play other file types besides MP3, AAC, and Apple’s DRMed files; specifically, I want to be able to play FLAC files.

Thanks to another attendee at SaturdayHouse, I discovered Airfoil. Here’s the description:

With Airfoil for Windows [or Mac] you can take audio from any application and send to your AirPort Express units, as well as Apple TVs, and even other PCs and Macs running Airfoil Speakers! Transmit audio from Winamp, RealPlayer, and other media players. Send audio from Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, and other music stores. Even web-based applications like Pandora, Last.fm, can now be transmitted wirelessly.

The good news about Airfoil is you can install a fully working demo version (Windows, Mac) in order to try it out before you buy it. I downloaded it, installed both the Airfoil for Windows and Airfoil Speakers applications.

At this point, I discovered my used AirPort Express had an outdated firmware version that I needed to update. No problem — I downloaded and ran the AirPort Express 6.3 firmware updater (Windows, Mac). (Note: The Windows version didn’t work on Vista for me, but I had no trouble running the update from a Windows XP installation connected to the same wireless network.)

Now that I had Airfoil installed, I ran both the Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers applications. I then booted up Winamp (features include FLAC support) to try the wireless broadcast using a FLAC-rip of Motion City Soundtrack‘s album “Evin If It Kills Me.”

In Airfoil, I selected Winamp from the application list at the bottom of the screen. Then I clicked the volume icon next to the name for my Airport Express (Casa Express) and adjusted the volume. Airfoil informed me it needed to restart Winamp so I let it. Once Winamp loaded back up, I pressed play again and then my stereo (which was already turned on and set to the channel the Airport Express is hooked to) began to play the Motion City Soundtrack album.

In the demo version, it starts to make noise on the sound after 10 minutes. With the product fully working, I decided to give them my $25 so I can enjoy the benefits of the Airport Express with any application on my computer and not just iTunes.