When it comes to providing advice and guidance to our couples, we often suggest creating a custom wedding website. It is the easiest way to streamline all of your guest communications and important wedding information and updates in one place for your guests to see. Rather than texting, calling, and emailing all 175 invited guests that your ceremony time has changed by two hours, it’s easy to communicate to everyone all at once. Wedding planning is a time consuming task, trust me I know, so anything that is a time saver is an absolute WIN in my book! Read on for our top 3 tips for creating your wedding website:
1. Use a Wedding Website Builder
Unless you are a professional website developer or content writer, it’s not expected that wedding couples are going to know all of the ins and outs of building a website. Thankfully, there are many free wedding website builders out there to choose from that have creative templates to customize, automatic RSVP tracking, and more! Looking for a free website builder? Try out these!
2. Stick to the Basics
Keeping your wedding website functional is really what it's all about so my advice is to stick to the basics! It should be easy to navigate so that it is accessible for everyone, even the less tech-savvy guests. Here is a starting roadmap for creating your own website:
Home Page: This is an excellent location for your wedding date and a brief introduction to your event and love story.
The Details: It’s important to include a simple wedding day schedule of events so that your guests know what to expect ahead of time. The details page is also a good spot to include information regarding your location and venue.
Accommodation & Travel: Weddings either take place in your own city and your guests will travel to you, or it will be held at another location and guests will travel there. Either way, some if not all of your guests will likely be traveling from near and far and need to know where to go, how to get there, parking options, and accommodation options.
RSVP Link & Deadline: If you are already taking the time to create a wedding website, it’s only another few steps to set up your online reply option. Read on for our online RSVP tips!
Once you have made sure to include all the necessary information for your guests, there is room for the extras! Common additions to wedding websites include letting your guests know of a dress code, registry or gift/card wishes, a small gallery with a selection of photos of you and your partner, and anything else you want!
3. Include an online RSVP
It may take a few extra minutes to set up your guest list and online reply at the beginning, but trust me, it will save you a whole lot of time in the long run! We recommend setting your RSVP deadline 6 weeks prior to your wedding date, this gives you enough time to follow up with your guests that haven’t replied before you need to submit your final headcount to your venue and caterers. The other great thing about online RSVP is that you can often add questions for your guests to respond to (song requests, dietary restrictions, etc).
Final thoughts: Make sure to be clear, concise, and include all of the necessary information so that there is no room for guest assumptions. If you want a kid-free wedding, make sure the wording you use is straight to the point. Your website should be created early on in wedding planning, and the link should be provided within 6 months of your wedding date so that your guests have time to review the information, book accommodation, make childcare arrangements if necessary, etc. For some couples who have a lot of their wedding day details ready ahead of time, they will provide the link with the save the dates; otherwise, be sure to provide the link on your wedding invites!
Looking for more free tips, tricks, and wedding content? Follow along the blog and @btv.weddings on Instagram!