About

I made one of these by hand

It was a spreadsheet, then a printout, then a printout with sticky notes on it, then a text message to my photographer at 11 p.m. the night before with three things I'd forgotten.

The photos came out beautifully. I still don't have one with my grandmother, who was there for three hours and left early, and who died the following spring.

That's not a tragedy — it's just the ordinary way this goes. Nobody forgot on purpose. The shot was on the list, somewhere in the middle, indistinguishable from the ring detail and the cake table. There was no way for anyone holding a camera that day to know it was the one that mattered.

What I built instead

The first version of this was a tab in the same spreadsheet I used to build my seating chart. That seating chart eventually became Seat the Day. This is the other tab, finally built properly.

It's free because the thing it prevents is not a premium problem. Everyone getting married has a grandmother, or a friend who flew in, or a shot they'd be sad to lose. Charging for that felt wrong.

Who I am

Jen Ballast. I design and build both of these myself — front end, back end, the copy on this page. If something is broken or missing, it's my fault and you can tell me directly.