Plan Zinnia

Reinventing how wedding vendors grow their business through direct booking.

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Plan Zinnia is proud to be an 1871 startup. 1871 is Chicago's premier start up accelerator. See more about 1871

Role: Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer

Stage: Launched MVP

Team: 2 founders

Timeline: 2025–Present

Current Status: Live platform, first vendors onboarded

The Opportunity

Planning a Wedding

Couples navigate multiple websites, emails, and spreadsheets to compare vendors and coordinate bookings.

The Vendor Challenge

Vendors depend on costly lead-generation platforms and disconnected tools to manage their business.

Our Hypothesis

Build a platform that connects discovery, communication, booking, and business management in one seamless experience.

TL;DR

Build a platform that connects discovery, communication, booking, and business management in one seamless experience.

Our Vision

Create the first platform where couples can seamlessly discover, book, and collaborate with wedding vendors while giving vendors everything they need to run their business.

Target Users

We’re building for both sides of the wedding journey—with one shared goal:

A seamless experience from discovery to booking and beyond.

For Couples

Discover trusted vendors
Find the right professionals through curated profiles and transparent information.

Book with confidence
Communicate, compare, and book vendors without juggling multiple platforms.

Stay organized
Keep conversations, contracts, timelines, and payments in one place.

For Vendors

Get booked
Connect with couples through direct bookings instead of relying on expensive lead marketplaces.

Manage clients
Simplify communication, scheduling, contracts, invoices, and payments from a single workspace.

Grow their business
Spend less time on administration and more time delivering exceptional experiences.

Our Ecosystem

Plan Zinnia connects couples and vendors in one seamless platform —supporting every step from discovery to booking and beyond.

The platform connecting

couples and vendors

through one shared experience.

Defining the MVP

Like most startups, we had far more ideas than time and resources. Rather than building every feature we envisioned, we focused on validating the core booking experience first—prioritizing the smallest product that could deliver value to both couples and vendors.

We Prioritized

Marketplace Discovery
Vendor Profiles
Favorites
Messaging
Booking
Payments
Vendor Dashboard

We did not Prioritize

AI Wedding Planning
Smart Recommendations
Business Insights
Marketing Tools
Integrations

Building a startup meant wearing many hats.

Product Strategy

Defined the product vision, prioritized the roadmap, and balanced customer needs with business goals to shape the MVP.

Technical Exploration

Collaborated on technical architecture, evaluated implementation approaches, and used AI-assisted development to rapidly build and validate ideas.

Workflow Design

Designed end-to-end experiences that connected discovery, booking, communication, payments, and planning into one seamless journey.

Content Strategy

Crafted product messaging, onboarding experiences, marketing content, and in-product copy to create a consistent brand voice.

Go-to-Market

Helped define launch strategy, recruit founding vendors, gather customer feedback, and refine the product through early adoption.

Business Operations

Supported day-to-day startup operations, adapting across product, customer success, partnerships, and execution as the business evolved.

AI-assisted development

AI didn't replace product thinking, it amplifies it. We integrated AI throughout our workflow to move from idea to implementation and customer validation faster.

From idea to product; faster.

AI helped us compress traditional start up timelines, and accomplish the work of a larger team, without compromising quality or UX.

My experience

While my background is in product strategy and UX—not software engineering—AI-assisted development enabled me to contribute directly to implementation, helping build and ship a functional product end to end.

The outcome

Al allowed us to compress traditional startup timelines by accelerating research, product definition, design, development, and content creation-enabling a small team to build a marketplace platform that connects couples and vendors from discovery to booking and beyond.

Core Platform Integrations

Building Plan Zinnia required more than designing user experiences—it meant orchestrating a modern platform that connected payments, messaging, mapping, authentication, AI, and customer support into one seamless product. While my expertise is in product strategy and UX, AI-assisted development enabled me to contribute directly to implementation and collaborate across the entire technology stack.

Supabase

database, auth, edge functions

Stripe Connect

payment processing, subscriptions, vendor payouts, promo codes, tax calculation

Google Maps

Enabled location search, vendor discovery, geocoding, and directions.

Stream Chat

Powers real-time communication between couples and vendors.

Intercom

Supports customer service and in-product support experiences.

Resend

Delivers transactional emails throughout the booking journey.

Recaptcha

Protects authentication and signup flows from abuse.

Open AI

Accelerated internal workflows while powering AI-assisted content moderation

Validated Through Customer Research

Before launching our MVP, we conducted approximately ten moderated usability sessions with both couples and wedding vendors. We observed participants completing key tasks, identified friction throughout the booking journey, and iterated on the experience based on their feedback.

Through ~10 moderated usability sessions, we watched participants complete key tasks, asked questions, and incorporated their feedback to refine our product.

~10 vendor & couples

Participants

Goal

Validate the marketplace and booking experience

Methods

Moderated usability sessions (60 min) via Google Meet

Outcome

Iterated on workflows, navigation, and product priorities

Screenshot of a Vendor user test.

What we learned

Couples told us

Booking felt fragmented across too many platforms.

Transparency around pricing and availability was essential.

They wanted one place to manage conversations, favorites, and decisions

Vendors told us

Booking felt fragmented across too many platforms.

Transparency around pricing and availability was essential.

They wanted one place to manage conversations, favorites, and decisions

Hair & Makeup Participant

I love that I can see everything in one place-my messages, dates, and payments. This would save me hours each day.

Research didn’t end after discovery—it continued throughout development. Every major workflow was validated with customers before becoming part of the MVP.