When planning a wedding in today’s tech and digital world, it's almost imperative that you have a wedding website, or a wedding blog, or a wedding social media page dedicated to your big day.
While your day-of wedding coordinator does not necessarily get involved with these digital aspects of planning your wedding, I do want to provide some advice, even if you're not a techie type.
Wedding Website
A wedding website accomplishes one goal; providing information to your wedding guests. The more details you post on your website, the less times you'll be asked the same questions over and over again.
Your wedding website does not have to be complicated. You're probably going to be overwhelmed enough with all the wedding planning, so don't allow creating a wedding website to stress you out. If a wedding website just seems a bit over-the-top to you, keep it simple and use the following useful, and free, services to create your wedding website.
● The Knot: Use all the amazing benefits that this website has; from wedding planning and wedding ideas, to wedding forums and wedding support, to their free wedding website offerings. The Knot makes it incredibly easy to get your wedding information up and published on the internet for your guests to see.
● Wedding Wire: WeddingWire is extremely similar to The Knot in that it provides a wealth of information on weddings, offers support and forums, gives reviews and allows you to pick your perfect vendor or venue, and also gives you a free website option.
● eWedding: This is another great resource that, again, gives you a free wedding website. All you really need to do is fill in the blanks and the website is created for you.
So now that you have your free website, what do you need to include on it?
Your wedding website, or social media page, should have the following information:
● Wedding Date, time, location: The simplest and most important element of your wedding website is to just include the details of your wedding. So you want to let people know when it is, where it is, and what time it's at. If you have nothing else on your wedding website, this is truly the most essential element.
● Venue Map: Another great addition to your wedding website is a Google map. Now, some of the free wedding website platforms allow you to integrate a wedding map, but if they do not you can leave this one out. If you are feeling ambitious, or you are into these types of digital strategies, definitely include a Google map on your wedding website that points to the location of your wedding venue.
● Wedding Details: Another benefit to a wedding website is that you can include details about the wedding theme. You can include colors on the website, font and photos that illustrate the overall feel you're after.
● Schedule: Another great addition to your wedding website would be the actual ceremony and reception schedule. So in addition to the time that the wedding starts, you can include specific times of elements within the wedding, as well as the schedule for photos, cocktails, appetizers, dinner, dancing and dessert. And the greatest part is that if this wedding website is optimized for mobile devices, your wedding guests can simply view the mobile website and see what is coming up next.
The whole purpose of a wedding website, from the perspective of this Arizona day-of wedding coordinator, is to offer more insights and information about your wedding so your guests feel informed.
And if this is all too much for you just remember, a Facebook group page can be used as a wedding website too!
Happy Planning! ~Janet