Creating A Wedding Website

Many brides and grooms have wedding websites–in this day and age, it’s a great way to get guests excited about your wedding, as well as get out vital information to your wedding party, families, and friends that you wouldn’t otherwise want to include in an invitation suite.  Plus, it’s much more exciting than just sending out a regular ol’ email!

There are many companies through which you can set up a wedding website.  Some are free, some are free for awhile and some are pay sites.  Some of the free sites are:

• http://www.momentville.com
• http://www.ewedding.com
• http://www.sharedweddings.com
• http://www.weddingannouncer.com
• http://www.bridalfever.com
• http://www.theweddingvendor.com
• http://www.mywedding.com

And some of the pay sites are:

• http://www.wedshare.com
• http://www.weddingtracker.com
• http://www.weddingwindow.com
• http://www.wedorama.com
• http://www.mywedding.com
• http://www.weddingwire.com
• http://www.wedquarters.com
• http://www.ourweddingday.com
• http://www.wedsimple.com/

(Many thanks to weddingbee.com for this list of links)

When Mr. Groomy and I got engaged, one of the first things we I did was create our wedding website.  We decided to go with ewedding.com on the basis of recommendation from a friend (Hi, RhodeyGirl!).  I loved their templates, and we could get fairly customizable on the page contents.  Since our engagement is so long, I decided right away to pay for our own domain, which will last us until after the wedding.  Once the logistics were set, I got to creating!

I made our site password protected, because I wanted our friends and family to be able to access it but I didn’t want to give the rest of the internet free reign.  When you type in our domain (for example’s sake, we’ll say http://littlemisswpandgroomy.com), guests see this:

In case you can’t tell, it’s a screen where our guests are prompted for our password.  Once the password is entered, they are redirected to a little introduction page (complete with music and moving graphics of our names that says “The Wedding Celebration of Little Miss WP and Mr. Groomy”).  After that, they see this:

My apologies for the blur…I am trying to keep Mr. Groomy fairly anonymous for now.

We did an intro page welcoming our friends and family to the site.  It also points out things to check out on the site, like our “request a song” feature, schedule of events, and things to do and see in the area.  Then, we did individual pages for each of those things, as well as a contact us page, a guest book page, and an about us page, which we did as a question and answer, with our names, loves (each other, of course!), likes, dislikes, and interesting facts.

Regardless of whether you decide to pay for a site and your own domain or create a free website, there are a couple of things to remember:

• Take into account your privacy.  It’s one thing to semi-anonymously blog your wedding, but be careful with your website, where you will most likely be including personal details about yourself, your families, and your wedding party.
• Make the site informative for your guests, but especially focus on those out-of-towners who might not have visited your city before.  Include not only information about your wedding events, but also things to do and see in the area.
• Include your accommodation information if you are doing room blocks, and if you aren’t, include info on area hotels so that guests can find their own accommodations.
• Have fun with it!  Update often and make the site interactive…encourage guests to sign the guestbook, request songs for your reception, or leave bits of advice for you.  The possibilities are endless!

I’ll be showing you more of our wedding website as we get closer to our nuptials.  Do you have a wedding website?  What are your tips and tricks?