Hot Tips for Your “Must See”
Wedding Website
Bring every detail of
your wedding to the entire world through the magic of the
World Wide Web!
Many services are now
available to help you set up your web page. The tough question
for you is: what do you put on your wedding Web page once
you’ve got it set up? We visited tons of wedding sites
on the Internet to bring you the best ideas out there. Follow
these suggestions and your guests, friends and family, and
even complete strangers will be impressed and want to offer
their congratulations.
Customize
Your Site
Make your website a unique expression of you as a couple
in the same way your wedding expresses your individual personality.
Name
your site
Come up with a creative, romantic or personal phrase that
sets the tone of your wedding and your site. It’s
best if title also reflects the theme of your wedding.
Possibilities include:
Simply interweave your first names. Create a seal for you
as a couple or coat of arms for your new family together.
Design a graphic made up of fancy initials of your first
or last names. Quote part of a poem or saying on love, for
example: “This day I marry my friend,” “Love
story,” “A site about us,” “Wedding
wonderland,” “Welcome to a new Beginning,”
“Will you marry me?”
Coordinate
Have a unified vision of your site as a whole tied into
your title or theme. Design your site with your wedding
colors.
Countdown
to the big day
Many couples have a counter tracking the months, days, minutes
(and even seconds) before the wedding. This cute device
adds immediacy to your site. It also helps keep you focused
on the goal ahead.
Humor or inspire visitors.
Lighten up the mood with a page of jokes about weddings,
marriage, in-laws, or men and women in general. Include
poems, love quotes, and thought-of-the-day sections.
Make
it Interactive
Of course, your site is about you. However the purpose of
putting your wedding on the web is to get other people involved.
You want them celebrating with you! To do this, offer your
guests and visitors a way they can express their thoughts
about your big day.
Quiz your guests about
your life, relationship, or wedding trivia (like where certain
traditions come from). Then, post the answers every week.
Include a guest book.
This is where visitors to your site can post a message to
you.
Keep
in Touch
Email Address -- It’s usually a good idea
to include your email address(es), so that visitors to your
site can contact you personally.
Guest book --
You never know who will sign in! People you haven’t
heard from in years sometimes stumble on your site.
Discussion Group
-- Wedding party members can discuss details about fittings,
get directions to events and communicate with the busy bride
and groom about wedding business. Also friends can post
their favorite memories of the couple, funny stories, and
well wishes.
Update
One of the rules of web design that can help you make your
wedding page a popular spot is to UPDATE IT REGULARLY. People
will keep coming back if there’s something new there.
Your content needs to be kept alive, current and accurate.
Also, forms, scripts, and links can malfunction and should
be checked regularly to ensure they are in good working
order.
Pre-wedding: keep
a wedding journal of big events, problems, decisions, or
just your thoughts along the way.
Post-wedding:
provide a wedding walk-through for guest who couldn't attend
but sent gifts. Put your pictures up as soon as you get
them back. You can even include honeymoon snapshots, since
everyone but you two missed that! Also give your new address
and contact information.
For
more articles like this one, click here to visit our Wedding
Web Sites section.
