Do I Really Need a Personal Wedding
Website?
Many engaged couples
are asking themselves, "Do I really need a personal
wedding website?," as a very popular trend snowballs
through the wedding industry. Before I got engaged I certainly
wouldn’t have considered getting a personal website
to post personal information and pictures about myself,
so the idea seemed bizarre to me too. Then, about a month
after my fiancée proposed, I visited a friend’s
wedding website and realized it was more of a necessity
as a means to distribute information, than about vanity
at all.
As it turned out, our
wedding website was one of the best parts about our wedding.
The site allowed us to build a lot of momentum towards the
big day. People felt a part of the planning and our families
and friends who hadn’t met John or myself got to learn
more about us, which made a big difference on our wedding
day.
We both have big families
and had many people coming from out of town. The webpage
design allowed us to put all of the travel information (air,
car, hotel) in one spot that everyone had access to. There
was also tons of information about our city available on
our site, which was great for people who had never been
to St. Louis before.
We made sure to include
a little card in our invitation that informed everyone that
all information regarding the wedding such as details and
maps of events would be posted on our own personalized wedding
web site! This saved us many phone calls with questions
about where and when each event was taking place. Our guests
loved the RSVP feature, 75% of our guests replied on line!
People really seemed to prefer responding by email instead
of snail mail.
Once they were on the
site, the online wedding registry also made it very convenient
for our guests to give us gifts that we actually wanted.
Due to my chronic shyness,
I thought you had to be an exhibitionist to consider getting
a custom wedding website. The truth is, it gave many people
who didn’t know us, a great way to learn about each
of us through our story, biographies and pictures. People
seemed to really like the Poll and Quiz which we updated
a few times before and after the wedding. We were able to
stretch out our incredible wedding for a long time as people
went to the site to see our pictures and send wonderful
comments through the guest book for weeks after the wedding.
As you can see the wedding
web page was a huge success with our guests who came to
the wedding, but it was equally gratifying for our friends
and family around the world who couldn’t make it.
Witness my 94 year old grandmother who was actually able
to take part in my wedding even though she couldn’t
leave her house. So, in answer to the question posed in
the title of this article, this former skeptic highly recommends
that all engaged couples try a wedding website today!
For
more articles like this one, click here to visit our Wedding
Web Sites section.
