Julia’s stopping in today to share some VERY important information about creating the best website for your wedding… Oh, I wish I had known all of this before creating my own wedding website (though, I must say, I used www.weddingwindow.com and loved it).
Here’s Julia…
While we (well, I mostly) were busy making plans for the wedding and researching and choosing vendors, we started to get asked about our wedding day. All the time. People were asking where and when and who was in the wedding party. Some even asked when the save-the-date was going to be sent. So, as the first step, I knew I wanted to set up a wedding website. Most of my friends had sites that had details for their weddings. I really appreciated knowing details in advance – the date, location and times, especially for destination weddings where there were most pre and post wedding activities, it was nice to have a reference so we didn’t miss anything.
I embarked upon a research trip across the internet trying to find resources that would help me find the best wedding website designer. I knew I didn’t want to have my fiancé build one from scratch – he was already busy with a ton of home improvement projects before I moved in with him. I knew I wanted the website to look as customized as possible as well as easy to build. I didn’t find many resources online that had lists of wedding website builders so I could compare all of the different sites at once.
Instead, I stumbled upon a short 1/3 page review of 3 sites in Modern Bride magazine. From there, I decided to use WedQuarters.com…
I am happy with our site, but I have found several more sites after-the-fact that I think may have been better. I’d like to share those here, so you can do your own research and have all of the options before you make your decision.
Sites to check out: weddingwindow.com, weddingtracker.com, wedquarters.com, ewedding.com, weddingocean.com, weddingorg.com, wedpagedesigns.com, wedshare.com, nearlyweds.com, weddings.myevent.com, mymemorypage.com, elegantweddingwebsites.com, ourweddingplus.com, wedsimple.com, momentville.com
Bridal sites that offer website builders [you just can’t customize the URL (like www.meandbob.com)]: brides.com, weddingchannel.com, theknot.com, projectwedding.com/ourwedding/browse, weddingwire.com
Sites that offer information/reviews about wedding websites: weddingzen.wordpress.com, weddingwebsites.com
After the site was set up, it was onto our save-the-date. I browsed tons of ideas online – mostly photos of the knot “picks” and then a bunch of DIY ideas from blogs. I loved so many of the pretty printed invitation-like Save-The-Dates. I also loved the creative and crafty DIY ideas. But, I wanted it to be as simple as possible and I decided I didn’t want to use a regular picture of us. So, I asked my fiancé to design something since he’s a designer in his full-time job. He came up with something very artistic and modern (see photo below). I incorporated a very abstract black & white/washed out photo of us walking with our dog. It was very “us.”
I stumbled upon a website called www.printsmadeeasy.com. Not only would they print the postcards, but they would also print the names and addresses AND print indicia for postage. Talk about a one stop shop. We uploaded our design, uploaded our list in excel and pressed “order now.” A few days later, our guests started to receive the Save-The-Dates and visited our website. The wheels have started to roll…
