Wedding Website (The Invitation 2.0)

Ever since Al Gore invented the Internet, the web has become the number one source for porn and weird cat videos. However, occasionally people do use it for information gathering and sharing, like Wedding Websites.

There are so many tools out there to help you create wedding websites; you can get free templates and domain space from places like TheKnot or Weddings.com or you can redesign a tumblr or a blog, you can also choose to pay and have a professional do one for you.  

I don’t care which one you do, but do have one!
Even if it is just a fancy looking Evite.  

The reason being is that in this e-day and age, paper is so passé and gets put away for ‘safe keeping’ (see invitation post).  If there is an online location where an hour before the ceremony we can go and reprint the address/directions to the wedding and double check the time, to realize the ceremony starts in 20 minutes, would help us guests out a lot.  

That being said, I have spent a fair amount of time perusing wedding websites and they always leave SO MUCH to be desired. I get it couples, the wedding website is an afterthought for you, but I challenge that concept and propose that it should be a first thought, right up there with invitations and wedding colors.

Information that I consistently encounter on wedding sites:

  • The ‘couple pic’ where you both are staring lovingly into each other’s eyes in some bucolic setting.
  • The “How We Met” story, where you put your undergrad English major skills to the test and creatively edit the more salacious parts of your courtship (i.e. ‘met during last call at a local bar and slept together’ gets translated to ‘after a chance encounter at a wine tasting they knew it was love at first sight’). 
  • Occasionally, if you have the energy you include the names of everyone in the wedding party with short bios of your friendship
  • ….
  •  NOTHING MORE!?!?!

As a guest we need your wedding web site to be “ The Invitation 2.0. ” 
This is where you put all of the other useful information that is just tacky to include in the actual invitation (i.e. dress code, or no kids allowed)

Here is what guests are looking for

  1. All names, addresses and directions for every location involved.
    This means the hotel, the church, the reception site along with the rehearsal dinner and post wedding brunch if you choose to do those.
    It is always a fiasco right after the ceremony, trying to find out how to get from the wedding site to the reception and no one EVER has paper to write anything down. More than once I have had to follow Cousin Mark and his crew, who do not believe in stopping at yellow lights and have very liberal understandings of speed limits, to the reception site.

  2. Some non-shady lodging suggestions, for out-of-towners. While ‘Mandy’s House of Elegance’ may be the best little B&B in your tri-county area, to me it sounds like strip club. Thus, A little guidance as to where to book a room would be helpful.

  3. Specify which airport the guests should fly into. Washington DC has three different airports that claim to be DC airports (BWI,DCA, DIA).  Depending on which one you fly into will land you in three different states (MD,DC,VA).  A little direction could save your guest a 3 figure airport->hotel taxi fare, when they end up in VA and wedding is in MD.

  4.  Links to your registries AND the shipping address you want for your gifts. The good/bad of online registries is that they store your mailing address.   This is fantastic because then I don’t have to remember it! And you can have your gifts shipped to any location you choose. For example, you may be having all of your gifts shipped to your parents’ house because the neighbors in your condo have sticky fingers and you don’t want stuff to go missing while on your honeymoon.  However if you have an insane registry (see registry post) then my gift will not becoming from your registry site and I will need to enter in the shipping address and if the only address I have is the return address for my RSVP (which is your condo) then your neighbor may be getting a kick ass picnic basket from me.

  5. If the following apply please include comments about them in on your site
  • Information about Dress code variation (see D-code post)
  • Location information; if it is outdoors, on grass, sand or some other a-typical location.
  • Adult only, no kids (i.e. your reception is in a bar and no under 21s allowed).
  • If there is a Cash Bar
    Any guest will say open bars are much appreciated, however if you do have a cash bar inform the guests.  We will not be offended by having to pay for drinks but the thing is most of us just don’t carry cash (we are a plastic generation).  Thus letting us know that we will need to make a quick trip to the ATM, so we can get our drink on, would be great.  

If you are having a traditional cultural ceremony it would be nice to include a link or some information on this ceremony for your culturally-illiterate American friends.  I was three hours into my first traditional East Asian wedding and I was quickly approaching a ‘ hangry’ state (so hungry you are angry) before the guest next to let me know it was okay for me to get up, leave, eat a snack and come back.

Tags: wedding website Guests