Now that engagement season has passed the real wedding planning process begins. You are ready to choose a venue, find a dress and start thinking about the music. At Team Wedding we can’t help you choose the exact dress you want, but we can offer some great ideas on how to take your wedding to the next level with your own wedding website.
Think of your wedding website as the key place to share any travel and accommodation information, the wedding website can be a valuable resource for guests scattered far and wide. Putting information online can also reduce the amount of detail needed in your invitations, saving on printing and postage. There are both free and paid options for building a wedding website, and most require no coding experience at all. We always recommend Weebly since that has proven over the years to have the best balance between ease of use, beautiful themes and great overall functionality. There are lots of other tools out there, but nothing comes close to Weebly. Weebly is also 100% free. Yep, you read that correctly.
Personal wedding websites are becoming a necessity for every wedding for many reasons. Sharing pictures and stories with friends and family is a primary reason for a couple to have their own wedding website. Moreover, including important information will eliminate questions that accompanied weddings in the pre-internet era. The stress reducing effect is as beneficial for the guests as it is for the couple. The guests can be as uncomfortable as the couple about having to disturb them by calling or emailing with questions.
Take for example, the gift registry. It is considered inappropriate to tell guests where one is registered in the wedding invitation. This results in many phone calls by guests attempting to discover where the couple’s registry is located. If the guest is not close to the immediate family, they will not know whom to call to find out what stores the couple has selected to receive their gifts. This results in yet another unwanted bowl or serving piece that the couple will have to return the day after the wedding, which is time consuming if not stressful.
To avoid this situation couples can include their wedding website address in the invitation, which is completely acceptable according to all wedding etiquette experts. When guests visit the website to see their story, pictures, details, and other important information, they can easily find a direct link to their online registries. This makes it easy for their guests to give them the gifts they want to receive without breeching the proper etiquette of directly asking for gifts in the invitation.
Another example of making life easier on the couple and their guests is having the details and maps posted directly on the wedding website where guests can access them 24/7 worldwide. Without a website, the happy couple can count on endless phone calls about where and when each event is, not to mention, “What’s the best way to get there”.
Without a personal wedding website the couple should be prepared to include many extra notes in the invitation that tell out of town guests where hotel arrangements have been made, as well as things to do and see. Even if this is included in the invitation, guests may forget them when they travel, which means the bride can look forward to many phone calls on the weekend of the wedding.
Sending out invitations can be the easy part. Chasing guests for the response to whether they are attending can be a test in one’s patience. For whatever reason some guests seem to take there time returning the RSVP card that usually accompanies the invitation. Perhaps they slipped it in a drawer, meaning to get to it later or they simply lost the undersized envelope accidentally. Whatever the reason, not many weddings go by without a need to call some guests directly to see whether they intend to attend or not. Having a wedding website can reduce this pursuit. When guests visit the website to see all kinds of information and pictures they can RSVP at the click of a button.
The benefits of a personal wedding website are plentiful and thanks to the advancements in technology, one can create a website without any knowledge of programming whatsoever. There are several companies that make it as easy as filling in forms with your information. Your data is then fed into a beautiful design template of your choice. Prices have come down drastically and most companies offer a free trial, so you can try before you buy. Create a website to make life easier for you and your guests and as a bonus you will have a blast doing it.
See our section on Top Wedding Websites
