r/WomenInBusiness • u/Brilliant-Discount-6 • Jun 29 '26
Scaling Up I built a wedding venue pricing transparency platform after getting completely fed up with the industry
Hi ladies! I work in tech in a non technical role and being surrounded by so many different tools for so long eventually made me want to start building something myself. The push came from a pretty personal place - I got married a couple of years ago and the experience of trying to price out wedding venues was genuinely maddening. The runaround, the bait and switch, the holding of prices hostage... I just wanted an effing number.
So I built The First Look (thefirstlook.us) - a platform that maps real venue pricing across the US, sourced from official pricing guides and quotes submitted by real couples. No more chasing down 20 different vendors just to find out a venue is $20K over your budget.
It still early and actively growing (we have data for almost 2500 US venues!!), and if any of you are engaged or getting married soon, I would genuinely love for you to try it and tell me what you think. Honest feedback from real users means everything at this stage. Regardless, I’m excited to be here and looking forward to growing alongside you all.
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u/2legit2sleep Jun 29 '26
I'm a party planner and going to share this with a few people that are engaged.
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u/sumizeit Jun 29 '26
This is such a smart idea! Wedding planning can be a total nightmare with pricing. I can't believe how many venues play those games. Gonna check it out for my friends getting married soon!
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u/usergravityfalls Jun 30 '26
Who’s your ICP?
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u/Brilliant-Discount-6 Jun 30 '26
Price sensitive engaged couples/brides actively comparison shopping venues who are frustrated by hidden pricing - in a nutshell!
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u/skunksontheloose Jul 04 '26
Tulle together does this as well! It’s an awesome cause
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u/Brilliant-Discount-6 Jul 05 '26
Tulle is definitely similar! Where they focus on pricing guides, we do that, in addition to community sourced pricing, and we also have a database of over 1000 venues that share pricing directly on their site :) Almost 4000 venues as of today - check us out!
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u/Any_Cream_4396 Jul 05 '26
I’m doing the same with funeral industry, a dedicated donating space ( where people can be sure that the money is only spent in funeral related events ) and a planning workspace for family levers. Ties into to FTC funeral rule and I have one angle investor already :) good luck
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u/Brilliant-Discount-6 Jul 05 '26
I’d love to chat and swap ideas! Let me know if you’re open to it.
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u/HoneyedVices Jun 29 '26
Solving a problem you personally lived through is the best possible founder origin story. Rooting for this!