مبروكMabrouk
Most wedding planners start at the venue. Ours starts hours earlier, at two family homes, with the parade on its way and a house full of relatives who all have opinions. I wrote it for that day. The English copy is for you. The Arabic one is for your mother.
Why other planners don't fit
The parts that stress families out the most aren't in any checklist I could find. The people who write those checklists have just never been to one of our weddings.
A bride in Sydney, Montreal or Dubai planning all this usually has two sources. Her mother, who remembers how it was done in 1994 and disagrees with her. And the internet, which has never heard of any of it. A bride in Beirut has the same mother, plus a hundred opinions on WhatsApp. I couldn't find it written down anywhere in one place, in English, in order. So I wrote it.
What you get
Your day in order: both family homes, the parade, the ceremony and the reception. Every step has a column for who's in charge of it, and you fill in your own times. This is the copy you work from.
The same runsheet, written properly in Arabic and set right-to-left as its own document. Give it to your mother, your aunts, the parade leader and whoever's driving the lead car. Nobody has to squint past a language they don't read.
Ten linked sheets. Put in your own numbers and your own rite, and the rest updates by itself. Nothing is locked. If you can't change a planner, it's just a poster.
A parade in Sydney doesn't cost what it costs in Detroit or Beirut, and any price I printed would be out of date in a month. So the price fields are yours. Same with the rite. Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Melkite, Armenian Apostolic, Katb el-Kitab and civil weddings each come with their own paperwork and their own months you can't book. Pick yours and the checklist changes to match.
Who this is for
You live in Lebanon or abroad, and you want a proper Lebanese wedding. You've been to twenty of them. You've never had to run one, and neither has anyone who'll admit it.
Half the family is flying in. Flights need booking early, and some guests will need an invitation letter before an embassy gives them a visa appointment.
The English edition doesn't assume you grew up with any of this. Every Arabic and Armenian word is explained the first time it shows up, so you're not flipping to the back to look things up.
The price
I'll send you a secure Whish payment link for $38, usually within a few hours (I'm in Beirut). Pay with your normal Visa or Mastercard from any country, and the files follow by email.
Payment received. Paddle has emailed your receipt, and I'll send the files to that same address, usually within a few hours (I'm in Beirut).
Nothing by tomorrow? Check your spam folder, then message me on WhatsApp.
Pay by card runs through Paddle, a UK payment company that acts as the seller of record. Any card, any country. Paddle adds whatever sales tax your country charges and emails you a receipt.
Pay with Whish is a card payment through Whish Money, which is licensed by Banque du Liban. It takes cards from anywhere: Australia, Canada, the US, Europe, the Gulf or Lebanon. You're charged in US dollars, so your bank might add its usual foreign-currency fee.
Either way, I send the files to you myself. There's a person on this end.
Before you ask
Anything that opens a PDF, plus Excel, Numbers or a free Google account for the workbook. There's nothing to install and no account to make.
Yes. She gets her own copy: a full Arabic runsheet, set right-to-left the way an Arabic programme should be. If an aunt reading it on her phone can't follow it, I've done my job badly.
It's built for Lebanese weddings, wherever they happen. You choose your rite and the paperwork section changes with it: Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Melkite, Armenian, Syriac and the other recognised Christian rites, Sunni and Shia Katb el-Kitab, Druze, and civil marriage. That includes the Cyprus route, registering a marriage from abroad back in Lebanon, and interfaith or inter-rite couples, which is usually where planners give up.
No, on purpose. Prices in Sydney, Detroit and Beirut are nothing alike, and any number I printed would be stale within a month. You put in your own quotes and the budget does the maths. The order things happen in doesn't go stale, and that's the part you're paying for.
I'm Lebanese, I live in Lebanon, and I've been going to these weddings my whole life. I also build software for a living. The people who know how these weddings run usually aren't the ones making planning tools, so I made one.