Like so many weddings these days, Katharine’s will be a destination affair, with only about 5% of her guests local to the Boston area. To keep her guests informed, she and her groom put together a wedding website chock-full of helpful and hilarious information. Read on for more details and a few sneak peeks!
From Katharine: Last week, I revealed Kyle’s and my pick for a wedding photographer. For those of you who missed the post, any guesses as to who we chose? Take a peek here!
This week, we want to show off one of the very first things we checked off our to-do list. While most couples dive right into photography portfolios, catering menus and dress shopping, my tech-savvy fiancé and I headed straight to the web to create our very own wedding website.
I’d seen and heard of virtually all the wedding websites out there, but my very favorite sites were those hosted by Wedding Window. After stumbling upon our first Wedding Window site, and Kyle + I fell hard and fast for their highly-customizable, fully-loaded sites.
But let’s back up a minute. Why bother with a wedding website in the first place? Besides the fact that it’s fun as all get out to watch a couple’s love story unfold on the world wide web and to see their upcoming wedding take shape, there’s an infinitely more useful and practical side that makes wedding websites a must-have for today’s modern bride.
1. The 4 W’s: With a wedding website, a couple can easily – and interactively – share all the who, whats, whens and wheres of their big day with family and friends. Think of it as a one-stop shop for your guests to plan for your wedding and share in your celebration – from both near and afar. Want to make sure dear Aunt Sally knows when and where the reception is and how she’ll be getting home after a long night of dancing? Have a list of hotels where your out-of-town guests can book rooms near the festivities? Need to let everyone know your wedding is a western-themed event? A wedding website is the way to go, folks.
2. Introductions: It’s a guarantee your family and friends will feel more involved in and get more excited for your big day if they’ve been introduced to all the major players beforehand. A wedding website is a fun and easy way to introduce your fiancé, bridal party and family to your guests. Sure, they likely won’t remember every member of your twenty-person bridal party or memorize the names of each of your fiance’s six siblings, but it’s a good start.
3. Celebrate! For most of you brides-to-be out there, you’ll likely enjoy a 9 – 18 month engagement. A fun and interactive wedding website can help fill the down time between the excitement of your engagement and the anticipation of your big day. One catch? To keep the buzz up and questions down, make sure to update your site regularly. Add new details about your weekend as you plan them, post those tear-worthy engagement pictures of you and your betrothed, start an online countdown.
From Emily: Though it was pretty much over once Wedding Window caught Katharine’s eye, there are several other great options out there for those who haven’t yet made a decision. My sister chose Project Wedding for hers (we love that PW collaborated with stationery greats like Elum, KenzieKate, and Hello!Lucky to ensure beautiful interfaces!). Wedding Wire has also collaborated with design-savvy businesses including Martha Stewart Weddings, Wedding Paper Divas, and the Green Kangaroo. Lastly, we think Wedding JoJo has fabulous, clean, modern options.
Help a girl out: Did you create a wedding website for your big day? Which site did you use, and what did you think?
Previously:
Project Wedding and Wedding Window are SW sponsors. For more info about advertising with us, email Katharine!
What a great looking website! How fun! You guys look so cute together!
I used wedding window as well and I loved them! It was really easy to use and allowed us to convey a lot more information to our guests than there was room for in the invitations. We were able to introduce all of the wedding party and write up how we know them and why we love them as well as tell the story of how we met, how he proposed, what we’re doing now and what we’re doing next. Also, we kept the website live for a while after the wedding and were able to link all the professional photos through there as well so that guests could get a glimpse of them as well.
We used wedsite.com and have been very happy with our "wedsite" (leighandryan.com). :) It allows us to upload a ton of photos and has a unique "photo album-esque" layout. We’ve been able to convey all of the important info and introduce all of the key players who will be so important on our big day! I also love the above suggestion of uploading professional photos after the wedding (we went with SW featured Altmix Photography and couldn’t be more excited). Loving all of the Big Day updates by the way :)
Thanks Katharine! We’re so honored that you chose WeddingWindow.com to host your wedding website. You did a lovely job with it. Best wishes to you both.Amy
I have not thought of the idea to create a wedding website but it totally makes sense. After reading Katharine’s reasoning for creating a wedding website I don’t know how any modern day couple inviting guests who live outside the ceremony destination can organize a wedding without one.
I honed my ActionScript 3 skills and slaved over a custom Flash website. It was a long process but I’m so happy I did it! We’ve gotten great responses and so many questions via the "Send a Message" page and it’s been a good resource for our guests. Fun stuff: http://www.catherineplusandrew.com
We used http://www.mywedding.com! Free and will always be available to look at, doesn’t expire. After the wedding I plan to load the pages onto a cd so we can keep it forever :)
We used Weddingjojo.com and loved it! The customer service was great and they made one of the themes into a custom colorway for our wedding.