Amongst all the stress of organising your wedding and ensuring that your guests are in the right place at the right time, you might think that a wedding website is just one more extra thing that you don’t need to worry about.
But actually, a wedding website could take some of that stress away from you, and is now considered an absolute wedding essential for many brides and grooms. If you’re not sure whether a wedding website is right for you, or how easy creating one can be, then here’s everything you need to know:
What is a Wedding Website?
A wedding website will give guests a central hub where they can find all of the information they will need for your Big Day. You can include so much more information on a website than you can in your formal invitations: from offering suggestions to the best places to stay, to giving guests an opportunity to make song requests for your DJ.
Wedding websites traditionally share information about the happy couple (this is a great place to put your engagement story) as well as everything detail your guests will need to know to fully enjoy your Special day. Here are three great reasons to have a wedding website:
Reason 1 to Have a Wedding Website – To Set Expectations
A well-constructed wedding website could well save you time and stress in the long run: rather than having to field endless questions and phone calls from guests with concerns about where they should stay, park, or wear, you can simply direct people to your wedding website where all these questions (and more) will be answered. This can also prove handy when fielding more awkward enquiries, such as from the couple that want to bring their brood to your child-free wedding.
You can also set expectations about the tone and style of your day: casual, formal, bohemian or art deco. Your wedding website is the perfect place for this. It is so hard to set all of these expectations in your formal invitations, so let your wedding website, such as Joy wedding websites, do all the hard work for you!
Reason 2 to Have a Wedding Website – To Connect with Your Guests
Not many wedding magazines or wedding planners will acknowledge this, but a good wedding isn’t actually all about the two people choosing to get married: it’s a two-way relationship between the happy couple and their guests, and a well-planned wedding website is a great way to build and nurture this relationship.
Share information about you as a couple (even if this feels a bit cheesy) and even insights into your plans for the big day. Give your guests the opportunity to be a part of the wedding too –from suggesting songs for the wedding or even ideas for the Hen and Stag parties, the most involved your guests can feel, the better the wedding will be for everyone!
Reason 3 to Have a Wedding Website – For Hassle Free RSVPs
Finally, why not let your wedding website take the hassle out of receiving your wedding RSVPs?
Not only can you create your own RSVP form on your website (a great place to inject a little more of your personality) you can also manage all of your RSVPs online – say goodbye to endless slips of paper that can be lost in the post! Virtual RSVPs are easy, clear, and much more straightforward to use.
You will easily be able to see who is attending the Big Day (and who isn’t) and you can even ask for email addresses or contact phone numbers as part of the reply form, meaning if there are any last-minute plan changes, you can let everyone know in just a couple of clicks! With its ease of use, the wedding website could well be the best tool you didn’t know you needed!
When Should We Create Our Wedding Website?
If you’re already deep in the mist of wedding planning then it might not be too late to create a wedding website: a hub to share information and keep times and plans in one place will always be appreciated by your guests.
But if you’re newly engaged then the optimal time to create your wedding website is between nine and six months before the date of your wedding. This will give you plenty of time to create your website and includes all of your relevant wedding information, and also ties in with several other important dates on the wedding planning timeline.
Many couples will choose the convenience of adding a virtual wedding registry link to their wedding website, and around 6 months before the wedding is the optimal time to create this gift list with the store or stores of your choice.
Most brides also send their wedding invitations to all of their guests around six months before the wedding, and your website should be up and running as you put these invites in the post: this will enable your guests to visit the website straight away to garner all the additional information they need about your Big Day and, if you are adding online RSVP functionality, they will also be able to let you know whether they are attending or not as soon as possible.
Finally, as the wedding date approaches (from around the six month to go stage) many couples choose to share regular updates with their guests in the form of blog posts or an online journal, which is added to their wedding website.
This is a fun way to include your guests in the wedding planning process, but one that requires that the website is up and running with plenty of time to go.
What Information Should We Include on Your Wedding Website?
When it comes to the information you should include on your wedding website, the possibilities are near-endless, and some great options have been outlined above.
Much of this depends on how extensive, or compact, you want your wedding website to be. But some basics that every wedding website should include are:
- Time, Date and Location. All of the basic information that you included in your original wedding invitation should be replicated on your wedding website: paper invitations are easy to use, but the internet lasts forever!
- Transportation and Lodging. This is practical information that will be absolutely essential for out-of-town guests, enabling them to find somewhere to stay and get around with ease.
- Registry information. It is bad wedding etiquette to put your registry details on the wedding invitation, as the invitation is a request for someone’s presence, rather than their gifts. The wedding website is the perfect place to share registry information, as it’s easy to find if someone does want to bring a gift along to the party.
- Dress Code Details. Wedding invitations generally include high level dress code requests (for example formal attire, or black tie optional) but if you’d like to share a little more guidance or outfit inspiration then this is best saved for the wedding website.
- Introduce the Wedding Party. Whilst it might not be essential to anyone’s enjoyment of the Big Day, introducing the wedding party is a great way of allowing your guests to know a little bit more about the day’s ‘VIPs’. A photo and brief bio of each member of the wedding party is sure to be appreciated.
- Social Media Rules. Many couples would prefer that their guests don’t share photographs of their wedding day on social media. This makes a lot of sense: if you’ve spent a fortune on a photographer, you don’t want the first public image of you on your wedding day to be a blurry, grainy shot taken by Aunt Jane! To ensure everyone is on the same page, clearly state your social media rules on your wedding website.
- Health and Safety Guidelines. In light of the pandemic, many wedding venues now have their own health and safety guidelines that they expect all guests to follow. To ensure these aren’t a surprise for your guests when they arrive at your wedding, include these on your wedding website.
How Easy is it to Create a Wedding Website?
Creating a website is now much easier than it’s ever been before, with an abundance of wedding website tools available to do all the hard work for you.
All you have to do is input your information and images, choose the colour scheme that best matches the theme and tone of your wedding day, and click send. A good wedding website provider will walk you through each step, making it very difficult to get wrong.
If you already have all the information that you would like to include on your website ready, then it should only take a couple of hours to input it, and end up with a professional website that you’ll be proud to share with all of your wedding guests.