One of the most rapidly growing wedding trends is the wedding website.
If you’ve poked around Blueprint over the last several months, you may have noticed the launch of our wedding website builder. Although the idea is simple—a singular place where all your wedding details live—the reality is you’re building a unique website that represents your love story. It takes a little bit of savvy, nuance, and skill to build a wedding website that encapsulates every necessary detail, while staying easy to use for your guests.
Before diving head-first into building your website (or if you’ve already started and need a little guidance), read on for our tips and best practices, broken down by page, for your wedding website.
But first, let’s answer some general questions.
When should I start building my wedding website?
Simply put: it’s never too early to start creating your website. Sure, there’s a good chance that you don’t have a lot of the details ironed out right away. However, a lot of folks find it helpful, and even mind-easing, to jot things down on their wedding website as they manifest. Plus, you don’t have to publish your website until you’re confident it’s finished (and you can always make real-time edits and updates if you do).
Keep in mind that it’s common practice to include your wedding website on your Save the Dates and wedding invitations. If that’s something you’re interested in doing, make sure you at least have your homepage set up—and made public!—before sending them out.
Some things to have handy when beginning your website are:
- High quality photos of you and your partner (engagement photos, etc.)
- An idea of your wedding theme, style, or aesthetic
- Your wedding hashtag
- A short, but sweet paragraph about your unique love story to share
- The date—or even the season and year—your wedding is to take place
You’ll need to gather more info (venue, schedule, travel details, etc.) as you go along, but these initial items will at least help you get your website homepage up and running for guests to browse.
Wedding Website Best Practices
Homepage
Your wedding website homepage is the first glimpse guests receive when anticipating your wedding. Choose a template that showcases your theme as well as your personality as a couple (and easily update it if your mood or theme changes) you can start filling in the fields and adding photos.
First and foremost, come up with a short and sweet paragraph or two about your love story. Folks like to write about how they met, their journey, things in common, or anything special about your relationship that you care to share with the world. For example:
“If you told us ten years ago that we’d be getting married, we would have guffawed out loud. Carlos was the PhD student who only had eyes for his dissertation, and Stephen was the bartender who happened to be working the only night Carlos decided to go out.
It started with an order of the worst drink ever, the lemon drop (legend has it Carlos had no idea what to order), a puzzled, yet inquisitive look on Stephen’s face, and the rest is history.
Thank you to everyone who has supported our love since the beginning. We’re honored to have you with us when we exchange ‘I Dos.’”
Your wedding date, once it’s been decided, should also be prominently displayed on your homepage. Take it a step further, however, and toss in a handy countdown to encourage anticipation for the big day. On Blueprint, you can find the countdown feature in the same field you use to write your story.
In this day and age, social media rules all. The #WeddingHashtag is one of the more modern social media trends within weddings, so much so that wedding website builders, including Blueprint, give you a special field to include yours. Should you choose to create a wedding hashtag, your guests can post to social media using the hashtag, thus making wedding photos searchable on any platform. That’s right: it opens the door to memories captures not just by photographers. Even the hashtag-averse can agree with that!
Schedule Page
Something you’ve probably discovered by now is that the wedding itself is often just one of several celebratory events. There’s the engagement party, the bridal shower, stag nights, the rehearsal dinner… the list goes on. Don’t worry, they’re not all required. Pick and choose however many you’ll want to host, and just remember that you’ll need to include them on your wedding website.
Once you’ve chosen the events you’ll be hosting, comes the time to organize them. Your Schedule Page will be the central location where guests can grab information on location, expected weather, times, attire, whether it’s a kids-free event, and themes.
Sometimes cocktail hours, ceremonies, and receptions take place in different locations—and that’s okay! Make sure to take advantage of our handy map integration so guests know exactly where to go for each event, and when to be there.
Travel Page
The newest addition to our wedding website builder: the travel page!
There’s a good chance that some guests will be traveling from out of town and will make a whole trip out of attending your wedding. Might as well make the most out of a trip if you can, right?
The travel page is a place where you can post information about hotel blocks and discounts, nearby accommodations (Airbnbs or VRBOs in the area), or whether you’ll be providing transportation via shuttle to and from hotels and venues.
Apart from the usual information, however, you can also get a little creative. Give your traveling guests recommendations on experiences and activities in the area. Restaurants, hiking, shopping, sports games… get creative! Better yet, if you know of any great deals on experiences (think Enjoy Wishlist or even Groupon), list those too.
RSVP Page
Wedding invitations don’t come cheap, and paper invitations are a tradition that’s still going as strong as ever. But there’s one element of the wedding invitation that is starting to take a back seat: the RSVP card.
Because it’s totally within etiquette to direct guests to your wedding website or include your wedding website URL (more on this later) on the invitation, it’s a great opportunity to encourage guests to RSVP online. You get to save money on paper and stamps, while doing a little something nice for the environment.
When creating your RSVP, you are able to customize the fields depending on the information you want to gather. You can ask guests for their contact information, plus ones, meal preferences, allergies or food sensitivities, and even create a custom field for fun questions. Maybe your guests have song requests or want to just leave a special note for the couple.
We know tracking RSVPs can be a pain in the neck, especially when you’re doing it by hand. That’s why we worked hard to make our RSVP feature as simple as can be. Plus, you won’t have to deal with RSVPs getting lost in the mail. Hooray!
Registry Page
What if we told you you could have your registry integrated within your wedding website? As in, your guests can visit your wedding website, click on your registry page, and shop right there in the same place. Can you imagine?
Imagine no more! When creating a Blueprint wedding website, you have the option to integrate your shoppable Blueprint wedding registry. We all know it’s uncouth to mention your registry on your wedding invitations, but wedding websites are fair game. You no longer need to direct guests who visit your website to yet another registry website when you conveniently have it all in one place. Plus, it matches the theme of your website! We definitely call that a win-win.
Sharing your wedding website
Your wedding website works just like any other. You have your own, personalized link that you can share with guests or list on your wedding invitations. When using Blueprint, you’re not pigeon-holed into using a random URL—in fact, you’re welcome to customize it and make it a bit more personal.
We recommend having your names, your wedding date, or even your wedding hashtag within the URL. Guests often will punch your name into Google when looking for information, especially while traveling. You can make your wedding website more searchable on Google by using your full names within the URL and account registration, making it easier for guests to find.
Final thoughts
The dynamic of weddings is constantly changing, but one thing is for certain: wedding websites aren’t going anywhere. They’re the new normal, and they’re getting easier and easier to build. With a little know-how and guidance, you can create the wedding website of your dream in minutes.
Make sure you bookmark this post as we update it with more new features as we roll them out!
More posts you’ll love:
- Building Your Wedding Guest List 7 Seating Chart
- The Dos and Don’ts of Wedding Invitations
- The Ultimate Guide to Wedding Events