WED-SITE
Since I blogged about save the dates I thought I should follow it up with an equally as crucial mode of communication for your guests: Your Wedding Website.
Your website is an online resource that provides more extensive information than you provided on your save the date. Guests who are serious about attending should be able to log on and see frequently updated details about your wedding as they become available. Here are my essentials for wedding website pages:
Welcome Pages: Thank guests for visiting your site, let them know you'll continue to update the site as details become available.
Wedding Overview: This will include the wedding day timeline with locations. Example: Ceremony will start at 5:30pm on the beach. You'll want to include the locations of the ceremony, cocktail hour, reception and after party so guests can plan out thier attire. You'll also want to include your dress code for the big day.
Travel Information: You'll want to really spend some serious time on this page. It's a good idea to make sure the airport name AND resort name are loud and clear. Bold and font size 24 should do ;). I found it easiest to include subtitles on this page - mine looked like this:
1. Booking: 2 Options to book your travel
a. Travel Agent: Now include all necessary information about contacting and booking with your TA.
b. Booking on your own: include tips and websites to assists guests who want to book on thier own.
2. You're booked, Travel Tips: This is where you'll remind guests about obtaining a passport (if necessary) and any tidbits about the airport they're traveling into. For example, in Mexico we explained customs and immigration.
Resort Information: In my situation we only gave guests one option for accommodations...and if you chose an all inclusive resort I would recommend only giving guests one choice. (day passes and travel can get expensive and frankly far more complicated you need during your wedding week) This is the page to excite guests about the resort your chose OR give guest details about local resorts or hotels if they have options.
Wedding Week Calendar of Events: This is where you'll detail all the planned group activities that you have. It might just be the welcome party and/or farewell brunch...but it might also be planned excursions if you chose to do that. You'll want to put as much detail as possible because guests may want to plan their own activities while down there and won't want to miss your parties!
Local Activities: Tell your guests about all the fund things they can do while they're in the destination. This is the time to show them why you chose the locale you chose! Give them links to excursions, tell them what not to miss while they're there. You can get most of this information by sitting in a bookstore with a guidebook for an hour...and don't forget to search the web!
FAQs: I know what you're thinking...why a FAQs..we actually found this to be the best part of our site. We could post common questions that we anticipated our guests having and then answer them. We also allowed our guests to submit questions (anonymous or not) and then we could answer them and post to the site. I loved being able to have that interaction with our guests leading up to the wedding week.
And then the other fun pages:
-About your wedding party
-Photos of you and your fiance
-Our Story - tell guests how you met, what your first date was...or create a quiz to ask your guests those very questions!
-Guestbook
Etiquette Sidenote: I love the idea of letting guests RSVP for excursions or planned events during the week via your website...I'm not so in love the idea of having guests RSVP online for the big day...save that for your response card please :)
There are a lot of options when choosing a website. Although The Knot offers a great free website, if you want something more robust my suggestions are:
Wedding Window - this is the site I used and we did pay a fee to extend our time and an extra fee to create our own url. Here are details on the packages they offer:
EWedding.com - this is a site a friend used and they offer lower prices, but still give you a robust site. Here is information on their packages:
No matter which provider you choose, be sure to spend the time to include all the details...if you think you're putting too much information on your site...you've probably got enough! It's also a good idea to set up the website as soon as the location in nailed down...and then forward the link to your VIPs first. The rest of the guests can be notified of the url on the save the date.
I simply can't publish this post without at least one picture...so enjoy this one from the very talented Chelsea Elizabeth (based in Los Angeles...has passport, will travel) http://chelseaelizabeth.com/
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