Creating an engaging website that summarizes the big day gives guests all the information they need to say up-to-date on the plans and keeps all your details organized in one spot. But how do you make one? Thankfully, we have some simple steps you can follow to make life a little easier when creating your wedding website.
Whether you want to make sure there’s a virtual RSVP guest list, a one-stop-shop for the registry, or a place where you can link travel help resources and accomodations, a wedding website makes it all possible.
Simple Steps For Creating A Wedding Website
- Select your website creation platform. There are a lot of options out there for couples wanting to create an attractive wedding website. Most are free to use, but some of the more advanced and charge a monthly or annual fee in order to use their platform.
- Weebly: Our favorite free platform is provided by Weebly. Used by over 30 million people to create all types of websites, it is by far the easiest and most intuitive solution on the market. With beautiful themes to choose from you will have an amazing looking site in no time. All designs are mobile-optimized, which makes it easy for guests to access information on the go.
- For those wanting more features and customized options, we love Wedding Paper Divas Websites or eWedding Websites for Weddings. Both solutions offer everything you need to make your wedding website a success including features like Events and RSVP’s which are very wedding specific.
- Write your story. Once you’ve selected a platform, sit down and write the story of how you met, what you thought about each other, top things you learned over time and details about the proposal. It’s your love story, so to speak!
- Introduce your wedding party. Give your ladies and gents some recognition! Devote a page of your website to introducing your bridesmaids and groomsmen. Include a flattering photo of each and provide a sentence or two detailing your friendship. Guests will feel like they are in the loop and your friends will appreciate the shout out.
- Provide ALL the details about the wedding day. Your wedding website is a great way to provide all of the nitty-gritty day-of details that would normally require an insert in your invitation suite. Include information regarding the dress code, directions from the ceremony location to the reception site, and anything else your guests will need to know including accommodation information, things to do and great places to eat nearby.
- Create a gorgeous photo gallery. You paid good money for those engagement photos and you have tons of instagram photos of the two of you. Here’s your chance to show them off with a cool gallery. Include photos from your engagement shoot as well as snapshots taken over the course of your relationship.
TIPS FOR SETTING UP A WEDDING WEBSITE
- Easy to Remember Domain
Get a domain with both your names. This makes it more memorable for your family and a bit more special for you, too. Try combinations like bobandsarahgetmarried.com. - Venue Information
You’ll want your guests to have as much information as possible so they can easily find the venues and arrive on time. This page can have the following: A location and direction map, phone number for a contact at the venue, ceremony times and other important times/dates, any additional special instructions or information. - Hotel Information
List multiple hotels in the area to offer your guests plenty of options at different price ranges. Be sure to include any special things guests can do during their downtime too. - Registry Information
You can link directly to your registry on your website, but make sure you let people know where you are registered. You can even add items that are not part of an official registry. - Proposal Story & History
Everyone loves a great love story. Use the website to tell the story of how you met and how the proposal happened. Add pictures, stories, quotes and other fun stuff to paint the picture for your friends and family. - Photo Albums
Photo albums on wedding sites can be compiled into different categories. Here are ideas for how to organize your photos into different albums: As A Couple, Engagement Pictures and other Special Occasion Pictures. - RSVP Form
Let your guests RSVP straight from the website. An easy way to do this and keep it all organized is to make a form using Google Docs or whatever is natively supported by the website builder. - Wedding Date
Be sure to include this on the homepage and many additional pages, perhaps at the bottom of each page (the footer) or incorporated at the top in the header.
5 WIDGETS FOR YOUR WEDDING WEBSITE
- Flights
Make life easy for your guests by allowing them to search for flights to and from your destination directly from your wedding website. Many of the popular travel search engines, like Expedia and Orbitz, and Hotwire, offer their own widgets. - Maps
Directions (by car, foot, or public transportation) will help your guests get from one place to another with Google Driving Directions. Adding maps of your favorite restaurant near the wedding venue? How about hotels with special rates or a museum where your guests can spend the morning before your celebration? Add those locations to an interactive map and turn your guests into locals. - Forum for Discussions
Add a discussion forum to allow your guests to chat about things like hotel room sharing, carpooling or anything else that requires collaboration. - Song Requests
There’s no doubt that different guests can have different tastes in music. Let your guests’ voices be heard with this song request widget. - Weather App
Help your guests know what to pack (or whether to leave the swimsuit at home) with a weather widget.
REAL LIFE WEDDING WEBSITE INSPIRATION & IDEAS
Getting inspiration for your wedding website isn’t too hard. A quick look at Pinterest allows you to find some unique and creative wedding website ideas with a few clicks. That’s exactly what we did in our search for wedding website ideas. Below are some wedding website examples that made the top of the list of our favorite wedding websites.
The wedding sites are from all of the top platforms mentioned above so there is lots of choice from the main wedding website builders. Hopefully, they inspire your own wedding website designs.
Some of the platforms have specialty wedding website templates where you simply change the text and images. Others have wedding website themes that are totally customizable. When looking at the ideas on how to design your wedding website keep in mind that you may or may not make many changes depending on the platform.
MORE ABOUT WEEBLY WEDDING WEBSITES
With over 50 million websites, Weebly is the big dog in this space. While not a dedicated wedding website builder, it is so flexible and easy to use that it is impossible to ignore. In fact, it is one of the best website builders out there no matter the type of site you are trying to build.
We found Weebly’s themes to be beautiful and very flexible. All the templates were responsive and we were blown away with the ease of use. Most templates already had some built-in sections that can be dedicated to all the major “musts” that your wedding site would need including the wedding party, details and hotels, and the registry. You can even find ways to built-in a “schedule of events” to keep all of your guests on their toes and in the know.
For wedding websites that need things like RSVPs and some of the more wedding-specific custom tools we’ve mentioned, you would need to look at Weebly’s App Center for that added functionality. Most importantly, Weebly is totally free. You can upgrade to paid plans (we did), but if budget is a factor it is hard to ignore. Our winner.
Keep in mind that a wedding website is the best way to keep everyone updated on all the details that go into a destination wedding as well. And you can do this with the help of Weebly as well.
