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If you know anyone that has gotten married in the last several years you know that having a website for your wedding has become standard practice. And in light of recent events, the importance of a wedding website might have increased ten-fold, as it serves as the easiest and fastest way to communicate with your wedding guests when something needs to be shared.
However, like with any website, the content you put on it, is what drives the value for your guests, and not everyone realizes how useful a wedding website can be, or what things you should definitely put on it! A wedding website is not only a place to share logistical information like your wedding time and location, but it also expresses your personality as a couple, serves as a helpful guide for wedding guests, and can be a useful planning tool that helps to alleviate stress, answer questions, and improve the overall guest experience of your big day (or weekend!).
So we teamed up with Joy, a top industry wedding website company, to share our top eight things to include on your wedding website. And if we missed one of YOUR favorites, let us know!
Tip! If your wedding plans have been impacted by the coronavirus (COVID-19), consider adding an announcement banner across the top of your website or sending E-Cards or ‘Change the Dates’ to your guest list to alert them of your changing plans. If you proceed with saying your vows privately and still want your guests to join, you can even live stream your wedding through your Joy wedding website! See Joy’s guide on ‘How to Manage Your Wedding Plans During the Coronavirus Outbreak’ for advice during these uncertain times. Our friends sent us an adorable “CHANGE THE DATE” card to let us know they moved their wedding to next year.
Top Eight Must-Include Things for Your Wedding Website
1. Your Love Story
Sharing how you and your partner met, fell in love, and got engaged, is a heartwarming part of your wedding website, as it makes guests feel like part of your journey. There’s also a chance that some of your guests might not actually know the story! Whether you prefer to share your story in paragraph form, or in quick tidbits with fun facts about you as a couple, wedding websites such as Joy allow you to customize your story to best express your love.
2. Photos and Videos
A picture tells a thousand words, and that definitely applies to your wedding website. Whether you share engagement portraits or casual snapshots taken over the years of your love story, photos serve as a visual timeline of your relationship. Most guests enjoy seeing some throwback pictures of themselves with the happy couple too and some wedding websites even allow you to upload a video in addition to photos. All of these visual memories help to cultivate personality for your wedding – because the wedding is made up mostly of YOU and those you are inviting!
3. Wedding Schedule
(As a wedding coordination team, #TeamCapRo says this one is a MUST MUST MUST) Save yourself the stress of endless questions from guests by detailing all of the events of your wedding, their start times, their locations, and any other pertinent information, within the schedule section of your wedding website. Joy’s wedding websites allow you to make certain events on your wedding schedule private to select groups of people, so if you want to make your wedding ceremony and reception public to all of your guests, but share items such as the rehearsal, getting ready times, and pre-wedding photos with only your wedding party, it’s easy to do so.
4. Online RSVPs
One of the most useful features of a wedding website is online RSVPs. Save yourself time from collecting mailed response cards and manually compiling head counts by having your guests RSVP through your wedding website. If you select a wedding website builder with a sophisticated RSVP feature such as Joy’s, you can have guests RSVP for multiple wedding events, ask follow up questions for each event, such as meal selection or dietary restrictions, and, your guests’ responses will automatically update within your guest list, giving you real time head counts. Get creative with your RSVP questions to help you plan other aspects of your wedding, such as asking who needs a hotel room to inform the size of your room block.
5. Travel Tips
Providing helpful travel tips on your wedding website is another way to save yourself some time and ease some travel-related anxiety for your out of town guests. Share information in your travel tips section such as which airport to fly into, where to stay, and even your favorite restaurants, bars, and activities. This not only helps to make your guests’ lives easier, but also enables them to have a great time in your wedding location of choice.
6. FAQs Section
Go a step further with a detailed Q&A section that addresses commonly asked questions about your big day. Include information such as your wedding’s dress code, parking details, whether children are invited, and any other key information about your big day (like maybe if your guests should avoid heels for a beach wedding, or is parking can be a challenge near the ceremony venue). A good rule of thumb is to add anything you’d want to know if you were attending a wedding to your Q&A section, as you can be sure someone will ask it.
7. Your Wedding Party
Your wedding party plays a major role in your wedding, so why not show them a little love on your website? Share photos and a brief history of your friendship for each of your wedding party members to introduce them to all of your wedding guests.
8. Gift Registries
Many couples choose to have multiple wedding registries, whether they are gift registries, honeymoon or home-buying funds, or donations to a charitable organization. Make it easy for your guests to find your registries by linking them on your wedding website.
All in all, you can’t go wrong with your wedding website (it’s whatever you want to share for your wedding, after all!) so have fun creating it, showcase your style and personality, and remember that the more time you put into creating it, the more time it will save you leading up to your big day!
