Event planning
Wedding & Event Planning CRM
A legacy ColdFusion CRM was failing, random client emails, outages, and rising hosting/maintenance costs. After two unsuccessful dev attempts, we rebuilt the operation around a modern stack and clear roles, turning a liability into a reliable, day-to-day system.
Problem
- Legacy ColdFusion app (≈20 yrs old) sending random emails and frequently breaking.
- High hosting/maintenance costs for a brittle codebase, hard to change, harder to trust.
- Two prior developers failed to deliver a replacement, leaving the team stuck.
- Workflow split across emails, spreadsheets, and PDFs; no single source of truth.
- Team of ~5 (2 sales, a coordinator, manager, owner) needed role-appropriate access and guardrails.
Solution
- Rebuilt as a Django application using role-based permissions for clean access control.
- Office tools: create/manage contracts, bookings, packages/products, internal notes, and staff tasking.
- Automated contract workflow: eSign, PDF generation/S3 archival, and status changes on sign/payment.
- Notifications: email alerts for signed contracts, new tasks, and client messages.
- Client portal (separate React app) for photographer choices, document list, messaging, and FAQs.
- Event-staff mini-portal to see personal booking schedules and tasks.
- Payments: custom schedules, ledger of payments/balances/due dates; reporting for sales, tax, and AR.
- Operational backbone: changelog plus reporting on sales, appointments, close rates, payments due.
Results
- Stability restored: random outbound emails eliminated; predictable behavior in production.
- Lower ongoing costs: modern stack is maintainable and easier to host.
- Faster contract turnaround with eSign and automated status updates.
- Clear visibility for staff with role-based portals and notifications.
- Consolidated comms: contracts, docs, messages, and tasks in one place.
- System is live and runs day-to-day operations.
Tech: Django (RBAC & admin)•React (client portal)•TypeScript where applicable•Tailwind UI layer•Python automations (PDF, email)