Comparison
A shared spreadsheet is free form and familiar and unbeatable for drafting, while AisleTimeline trades some of that freedom for one live version, vendor filtered views, and a notice sent when a time moves.
A spreadsheet is genuinely good at the build. Columns, rows, drag to fill, and a template you have refined across four seasons: nothing beats it for a first draft at eleven at night. Where it falls down is after export. The PDF you emailed on Tuesday is the version your caterer prints on Saturday, and there is no way to know who is holding an old one. If you run a handful of weddings a year with a small local vendor list, keep the sheet. Past roughly ten weddings a season, version control stops being an annoyance and becomes a risk to the day.
| What you are deciding | AisleTimeline | Google Sheets |
|---|---|---|
| Building the first draft | Structured blocks with a start time, a duration, an owner, and vendor tags on each line. | Total freedom on a blank grid, which is both the strength and the trap. |
| Sending it out | One link per vendor, filtered to the blocks that vendor touches. | Usually the whole document, shared or exported, with everything visible to everyone. |
| When a time moves | Change it once and the vendors whose blocks shifted are notified automatically. | You resend and hope every recipient opens the newer file. |
| Version control | One live version, so there are no attachments to reconcile on the morning of. | Copies multiply the moment a schedule leaves the grid as a PDF or a printout. |
| Reading it on the day | Phone sized view with the vendor call time first and the next block after it. | A wide grid on a phone screen at a loading dock is hard work. |
| Reusing across weddings | Reuse a run of show skeleton and swap venue, vendors, and times for the next date. | Duplicate a tab, which works until you improve the template and the old copies do not. |
| Cost shape | Flat monthly tiers from $35 for a solo planner to $179 for an agency, unlimited weddings. | Part of a general office toolset most planners already have access to for other work. |
| Who it suits | Coordinators past roughly ten weddings a season with vendor lists that keep changing. | Planners running a small local season who want a blank grid and total flexibility. |
The right hand column says what kind of product Google Sheets is and who it is built around, not what it charges or ships this quarter. None of it stands still, so take the current position from them rather than from here. AisleTimeline is published by MLJ, SASU and this page is written by Jimenez Julien.
Nothing beats a grid for the build. You can drag a block, recalculate the getting ready window, and see the whole day at once. Most experienced coordinators have a template with tabs for the master schedule, the photo list, and the vendor contact sheet, and it works because it is theirs.
The break happens at export. Once the schedule becomes a PDF in fourteen inboxes, the document stops being live and starts being fourteen documents. The florist saved hers on Monday. The rental company printed one for the truck. The venue manager forwarded the one she had to her weekend staff. There is no way for you to see which version is on which counter.
A full run of show can be sixty lines. A DJ needs perhaps twelve of them: sound check, cocktail hour, grand entrance, the toast order, cake, the anniversary dance, last call, last song. When you send all sixty, the DJ scans for the ones that matter and mentally drops the rest, which is exactly how a moved toast order gets missed.
Filtering by vendor is not a convenience feature, it is a comprehension fix. When a caterer opens a page that starts with the load in door, their staff meal time, and the doors open check, they read the whole thing. That is the difference between a schedule someone skimmed and a schedule someone is running.
If you coordinate six weddings a year, all at three venues you know, with a vendor list that barely changes, a spreadsheet plus a phone call is a perfectly good system. The cost of a change is one round of texts, and you will remember who you told.
The math flips as the season fills. Somewhere around ten to fifteen weddings, the number of vendor relationships passes what you can hold in your head, changes start arriving during other weddings, and the confirmation call cycle overlaps two dates at once. That is the point where a live version and automatic notices stop being nice and start paying for themselves.
Yes. Paste in the columns you already use for time, duration, block, and owner, then tag each line to the vendors it touches. Most coordinators move their standard template once and reuse it for every wedding after that.
Not really. A vendor taps a link and reads a short page with a call time at the top. There is no login, no app, and nothing to set up. In practice it asks less of a vendor than a fourteen page PDF does.
For a light season with a familiar vendor list, honestly yes. The spreadsheet only becomes expensive when changes arrive faster than you can resend, or when you are coordinating two dates in the same week. That is the threshold worth watching.
Comparison
Aisle Planner is shaped for a planner who wants one client facing platform across the whole engagement, while AisleTimeline is shaped for the coordinator whose real pain is the wedding day schedule and the vendor emails that follow every change to it.
Comparison
HoneyBook is built around the business side of an independent service company, while AisleTimeline is built around the Saturday itself, when a run of show has to reach a florist on a ladder and a DJ standing in a loading dock.
Two columns of criteria only get you so far. Send over the schedule for a date already on your calendar and we will walk it through AisleTimeline on a call, with the vendor views a shuttle driver and a catering captain would actually open at a load in door. Half an hour is usually enough to know whether automatic change notices are worth it for the way you work.