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Case Study • 2025
Life events planning platform with vendor marketplace, guest and budget management, collaborative timelines, and escrow booking powered by Laravel + React.
Client
Gatherwell Inc.
Industry
Events & Lifestyle
Timeline
Jan 2025 - Sep 2025
Team
5 people
Gatherwell is a startup revolutionizing how people plan life events—weddings, milestone birthdays, anniversaries, corporate celebrations. The platform connects event planners with 5,000+ verified vendors (venues, caterers, photographers, DJs), provides collaborative planning tools for families and teams, manages guest lists with RSVP tracking, and handles vendor booking with escrow payment protection. The goal was creating an all-in-one solution replacing spreadsheets, email chains, and multiple disconnected tools.
Event planning is fragmented—couples use 8-10 different tools (spreadsheets, Pinterest, email, payment apps) to plan a single wedding. Finding reliable vendors is time-consuming with no centralized reviews. Budget tracking across deposits, payments, and tips becomes chaotic. Guest management with dietary restrictions, seating, and RSVPs overwhelms planners. Multiple stakeholders (bride, groom, parents, wedding planner) need real-time collaboration. The market needed a unified platform that handles everything from vendor discovery to day-of coordination.
We built a comprehensive event management platform with Laravel backend and React frontend. The vendor marketplace features 5,000+ professionals with verified reviews, real-time availability calendars, and instant booking. Budget tracking automatically syncs deposits and payments with visual spending analytics. Guest management handles RSVPs, dietary restrictions, seating charts with drag-and-drop, and automated email campaigns. Real-time collaboration lets all stakeholders see updates instantly via WebSockets. Escrow payment system protects both planners and vendors with milestone-based releases.
From discovery to launch
The platform has revolutionized event planning with 12,000+ events planned, 5,200 active vendors, and $42M in vendor bookings processed. Event planners save an average of 40 hours per event by consolidating tools, and vendor discovery time dropped from 25 hours to 2 hours using the marketplace. Guest management satisfaction is 94% with automated RSVP tracking. The escrow system has prevented $380k in payment disputes.
We built a real-time collaborative platform with Laravel 11 for robust backend and escrow payment handling, React 18 for responsive dashboard, and Laravel Reverb for WebSocket collaboration.
"Gatherwell transformed our wedding planning from overwhelming chaos into an enjoyable journey. We found our dream venue in 2 hours, managed 220 guests effortlessly, and stayed under budget. The real-time collaboration meant my fiancé and I were always on the same page. I can't imagine planning without it!"
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