Bride-to-Be Blogger Danielle: Spreading the News (Our Wedsite)

With literally every single guest traveling to our wedding from out-of-town, Tim and I knew we needed a wedding web site (a.k.a. wedsite) to share details and information. We had seen quite a few sites of our friends and family who have gotten married over the last ten years, and some certainly looked more professional than others, but all of them were useful.

To be honest, I did not do too much research on a number of sites. I looked at wedsites offered by GetMarried.com, but there, you have to choose an address before you even get to preview designs. I was not willing to commit to that.

In the end, we went with a Wedding Channel web site. I knew theirs were tried and true, it was free, there was a design that we liked (and matched our beach wedding theme without being too cheesy). Most importantly, Wedding Channel also offers functionality to link your registry to a charity of your choice. Meaning, if someone clicks through your wedsite to access your registry and makes a purchase, a donation will be made to that charity. The American Cancer Society is a cause near and dear to us, and we were thrilled to have this option.

I will say that I found options to customize the site were limited. Even though there were plenty of design options to choose from, you really have to follow the page layouts they provide. You can move pages up and down to the order you prefer, but you can’t move sections around on the page. I would have liked to have a little more functionality like this. It also would have been great if I were allowed to select various elements and “build” a site design, rather than choosing a template.

I also had trouble making some updates to the site — it didn’t always like to save. This was a little bit frustrating, especially when I was trying to swap out some photos after previewing them. While design is important to me, I’m practical and busy; I would have been happier had the updates been easier.

One couple we know had a very neat music function on their site, but I have a feeling it was a custom site. I would have loved to find that functionality, but I did not have the time or patience to do too much research to find a music option. In a perfect world, my wedsite would have music, too.

Still, I am happy with the site. We were able to include all the information we needed and get it done before our save-the-dates were sent out. We included a little bit on how we met and got engaged, a page on our wedding party, registry information and some engagement photos. The rest of the site is dedicated to details: the wedding location, a note about attire, travel, lodging and transportation. We still have to add some local information for tourists, but I think it’s a very useful tool, especially for our large guest list full of out-of-towners.

Why did you decide to or not to create a wedsite? Where did you find the best functionality and designs? Did you have any good or bad experiences that could help our readers?

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