Wedding platform Joy raises $60M to plan other occasions

Joy has raised $60 million to expand its wedding platform and all-in-one registry to more occasions, CEO Vishal Joshi tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: There will be an estimated 2.47 million weddings this year, a 24% increase from the year prior, according to research firm The Wedding Report.

• Average spending will be around $24,300 this year, per the report, which says much of the increase was spurred by pandemic cancellations.

Driving the news: The San Francisco-based company’s Series B round was led by General Catalyst.

• The new funding will help the company, which has now raised $106.5 million, double its headcount and invest in adding more features to its product.
• Additional investors include Fernbrook Capital Management LLC, former TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot (who joined the board), Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman, payroll and workplace management platform Gusto co-founder Tomer London, and DoorDash exec Gokul Rajaram.

Of note: General Catalyst’s Niko Bonatsos and Joel Cutler, as well as Brown-Philpot, will join its board.

How it works: Couples can schedule reminders for guests, add gifts to their registry from any retailer, and receive cash without fees on Joy’s platform.

• From sending invitations or thank you cards to building the website to communicating with the wedding party, Joy has tried to elevate each component of the wedding experience through technology and design, Joshi says.
• The company is very responsive to feedback, which makes some of its features tailored to one’s needs and unique in the marketplace, he adds.

What’s next: The company is hoping to centralize planning around different live events, including baby showers, birthdays and bar mitzvahs on its platform.

• The company will focus on partnering with big brands so that they can sell on Joy directly, Joshi says, as opposed to sending people to other places like Amazon or Walmart to buy gifts.
• Joy will also work on building features that augment the experience of going to an event, such as making travel more seamless for guests, he says.

The bottom line: The goal is to make Joy “a one-stop shop where neither the host nor the guest has to go anywhere else for anything,” Joshi says.

• With Joy, “we would like people to be able to celebrate their entire event properly in one location,” he says.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to note that not all the additional investors joined the company's board following the round.