2010-11-03 06:00:00 by SMARTBRIDE
Bride-to-Be: Choosing A Wedding Website
In a world where things do not exist if they aren’t on the Internet, it’s becoming important to build an online wedding presence.
A wedding website is a simple, effective way to get important wedding information to your guests. It can also be used to easily collect RSVP's and music requests, and to discretely let your friends and family know where you're registered.
When it comes to building a wedding website, there are a lot of options available. These run the gamut from the most basic of blogs to integrated wedding planning tools.
DIY Wedding Sites:
For more tech-savvy couples, the option exists to build your own wedding website from scratch, or from a basic template (see below).
The advantage to this approach is that you can customize every aspect of your website, including the design. The disadvantage is that it's a lot of work and potentially very frustrating.
I would recommend a DIY site only to those who want the most simple of websites, or those who have a great deal of web designing expertise.
Popular DIY Sites:
Free Wedding Sites:
There are a lot of suppliers that offer free wedding website templates that you can simply populate with your own content.
Popular Free Wedding Sites:
A word of caution. These free sites have a lot of hideous templates and some limited functionality, but if you take the time to go through all the options, you'll probably find one that will work for you.
RC and I took this route and ended up going with WeddingWire because it was free, we liked the templates and the RSVP functionality, and it included a guest list tracker.
Paid Wedding Sites:
In my opinion, there are only two reasons to pay for a wedding website: 1. the cleaner domain name, and 2. the (sometimes) nicer templates.
If these don’t matter to you, then the free sites should be more than adequate. If you choose to pay for your site, you’ll be paying anywhere from $80 - $225 per year.
Popular Paid Wedding Sites:
- WeddingJoJo (my personal favorite because of the great templates)
- WedQuarters
- WeddingTracker
- NearlyWeds
Alana
About our Guest Blogging Bride-to-Be Alana:
After her first date with RC, Alana knew it was the beginning of something amazing. RC proposed two years after that day and the couple will be married on August 20, 2011. They want their day to be unique and completely "us", so they'll be throwing a lot of wedding traditions out the window and replacing them with fun, personal touches. Check back each week to follow Alana as she and RC plan their party of love.
More From Bride-to-Be Alana:
