Photo by Ava Me Photography via Tayla & James’s Lower Hunter Valley Country Wedding

Planning a wedding can be full of mixed emotions: it can be a tonne of fun and super stressful all at the same time. Not only that, but then the day comes and it’s over in the blink of an eye! A great way to build anticipation in the months leading up to your big day and house your memories of the day afterwards, is to create a website for your wedding.

Your website can act as the hub for your friends and family to get information on location, dress code and registry for your wedding, as well a place for you to share pictures and tidbits for your guests to reflect on after the event.

Another perk of having a wedding website is that you’re not at risk of a misprint. Printed handouts and information with an incorrect detail can be a costly mistake, or even worse, your guests might end up at the wrong location! With a website, you can always go in and adjust incorrect details even once it’s live and point people to your website for the latest information.

To help you set up an informative, easy to navigate and beautiful looking website for your wedding, we’ve put together some simple tips to follow.

Decide your purpose

Your wedding website can be as functional and practical as you want it to be. Before you get started crafting your site, decide exactly what you want to use it for, and plan accordingly. Keep in mind that your website doesn’t have to serve one purpose only. Your site can:

  • Act as a digital invitation
  • Collect RSVPs from guests
  • House maps to clearly show your guests where the events are taking place
  • Provide information on hotels and accommodation close to the venue, for guests who are travelling from out-of-town for your special day
  • Display a timeline of the big day, and events in the lead-up
  • Share registry information
  • Share the seating chart
  • Act as a digital photo album to display your special memories after the event

…any or all of the above!

Once you’ve decided what you’re using the website for, choose a domain name

Up until now, your life has probably been simpler: no late-night venue hunting, no deliberating over friend lists to finalise your guest list and no heated discussions over bachelor and bachelorette party ideas. One thing that can be simple, however, is the domain name for your website. It can be as easy as combining your names together or thinking of something unique to you and your partner as a couple that most of your guests would know. You could even choose to use your nicknames, or tie in the date of your big day. Get creative! Whatever you decide, try and make it as unique to yourselves and your special date as possible, because your domain name can even double as your social media handle.

Photo by Alan Hughes via Cristin & Dean’s Waterside Sunshine Coast Wedding

Next, select a design and layout

Once you have registered your domain name, you can begin to create your website. By using a simple tool (I like the GoDaddy Website Builder Smart-learning tool, you input the name of your site and information about your wedding and the tool will then suggest relevant features, images and site add-ons). You are able to then customise, add your own images and make adjustments as you go along. Some of your website visitors may not be familiar with using the internet, so it might be a good idea to choose a layout that is easy for everyone to navigate.

Get creative and personalise your layout

Once you’ve decided on a colour palette for your wedding, you can easily customise your website to make it match! Once you’ve updated your site’s colour scheme, decide on fonts, symbols and shapes you like to make it even more personal. Keep in mind that your website pages should align, so don’t bombard the visitors’ eye with conflicting colours, or too many shapes and things to look at. Try to keep your site uniform where possible. Remember that when you’re building your site, nothing goes public to the world until you hit the ‘publish’ button, so feel free to play around with formatting, layout, fonts and colours until you’re happy with a combination. Check to be sure that your website layout looks great on mobile devices too, as many of your guests may be checking on their smartphone for the latest information about your special day.

A wedding website can help to minimise the time and stress spent communicating all things ‘wedding’ with your guests, particularly if you have guests residing in different states or even countries. It can also help to act as a permanent reminder of your special day for you, your partner and your guests for years down the track if you so choose. Given that you can create a website in under an hour, what are you waiting for? Get started on a website for your special day today.

.

Ms Polka Says: I LOVE a wedding website! As a researcher, I love to get as much information to prepare for a wedding as I can (I especially love how many things you can include without cramming them onto an invitation!)

Thanks to Tara Commerford, GoDaddy’s ANZ Managing Director for submitting this post. About GoDaddy: GoDaddy powers the world’s largest cloud platform dedicated to small, independent ventures. With 18M customers worldwide and 77M domain names under management, GoDaddy is the place people come to name their idea, build a professional website, attract customers and manage their work.