Wedding Blog
So Mr. Joey and I went back and forth about a wedding website for a long time. While we liked having a central place for travel suggestions and wedding information, he was not too excited to have his information in a searchable place.
Mr. Joey has some devoted but nosey students. It’s the reason he doesn’t have a Facebook or MySpace account, and the reason he’ll never tell them my last name (it’s pretty unique). He’s OK with a blog where his name wouldn’t be in searchable text, but he’s not OK with a website designed to give out info about us and our relationship that his students could find.
Yes, it seems a little crazy, until you have 3 students show up at your apartment one Sunday afternoon. Yes, it really happened. He teaches at a small private school, so keeping info from the kids can be hard. We’ve even had a few kids threaten to crash the wedding. Luckily, it’s in the summer when no kid wants to be at school (the ceremony is at the school chapel) and few other teachers who are invited have sworn themselves to secrecy.
So what to do about sharing info? Local guests are easy. They don’t need travel info, and essentially everything they need to know is on the invitations. Out-of-town guests need travel info and suggestions for visiting the city. What to do?
Well, I came up with an idea I stole from the back of Blueprint Magazine (R.I.P.).
I love the layout, and the play on the “Want Ads” section of the newspaper. To make it more inclusive, we emailed friends and family asking them for suggestions on what to do, see, and eat here in Seattle. About half replied with great suggestions.
It took about 6 hours over several days, but I put together our version of the Blueprint spread. There were suggestions I couldn’t fit in, but on the whole, I love the way it turned out. I sent the spread to our contributors and everyone loved it.
Are you doing a wedding website, or have you come up with an alternative?
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Share this post: What? No Wedding Website?
That’s so creative! I actually started a blog intending to post wedding-related information — parking, directions, etc. — and little snippets of information about both of us, so all our guests can hopefully get to know us better!
That’s very cool! But most wedding websites allow you to have a password. We gave everyone the address and password in our save the dates.
LOVE it, Miss Joey. So sad about Blueprint magazine 
I loved that one. Same with Domino. sigh 
Haha I love the “portland - it’s not really oregon”!
Now you’ve got me craving banh mi and shanghai garden!
We did do a website because it’s a destination wedding for our guests and there was lots of info to give everyone, but I really love your cute idea!
Love this!! Very cool! And yeah, I’m sad about Blueprint too!!
We have a wedding website. I’m a teacher too so the web address is linked to my fiance’s last name so even if my students tried to find it they wouldn’t know what name to look for.
ONce you loss your privacy it is gone forever. Scary thing about the interenets.
We did a wedding website as well since all but like 4 of our guests were from out of town. But oh my goodness your idea is amazing! I’ve never seen anything like that before! 6 hours of work paid off great!
lose (sorry)
That looks amazing!! What did you use to make it? I think it’d be super cute to include in OOT guest bags. Most of our friends are in KY for the wedding, but our families are coming in from VA so this would be a great resource and much more personal than just a regular map of Louisville!
If he really doesn’t want the students to know details, you might want to reconsider even the info that you have made available here. If you google seattle teacher wedding 2009, all of this comes up. Without any details snooping children would use what they know.
I love your idea! We also wanted to maintain some privacy, since my FI is in a very public profession, but in the end we just did a passworded website. We were also very careful about the information we actually put on the website — it’s more about hotels, transportation, etc. than it is about us. Sure, someone could hack our site and get the info about our wedding, but fortunately the site we’re using doesn’t seem to publish to the web. I’ve googled both of our names with “wedding” and “married,” and nothing comes up…so we’re just hoping for the best, and will take down the site immediately after the wedding. Your idea is a really great alternative, though!
I ditto 2009cndbride, though, that you might want to remove any details about your FI’s school, ceremony location, etc. Maybe also be a little less specific about his job title in your bio?
That is so awesome! I am already thinking of how to incorporate it into my invites! I LOVE it! Thanks for such a fun idea!
That looks so great!! I love how you incorporated your colors.
Miss Joey, did you email that to your guests or send it via regular mail?
I’m wary against a website, I’m hoping to keep wedding info. private and even with passwords, I don’t like the idea of it being saved somewhere in the universe. I’m trying to think creatively on how to get our guests the info (since more than most are OOT)
@Miss Perfume: @Gerbera: As yo ucan tell, I don’t know enough about weddings!
@Miss Quiche: I know! All my favs are going away.
@Steph921: I used InDesign to make this.
@2009cndbride: He’s actually ok with it now. The kids have finally realized they have lives too!
@Claire: I sent these out regular mail with the invites for Out-of-towners. We’re not doing OOT Bags.
Not only can you password protect the site, but you can keep it from showing up in searches too.
That’s a great idea! But it can get time consuming if you want to do this every couple of months as you have new announcements.
I totally understand Mr. Joey desire to not have all this private information available on the world wide web.
Blogger.com can allow you to create a blog that is private - so only people that have been specifically invited to read it, can. Every private blog reader will have their own password so it’s private! We use a private blog fat work or internal communications. And the best part is, it’s free!!
Just so’s you know, you can use the robot exclusion protocol to keep the vast majority of search engines away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt
Our personal site has been up for three years, and if I google myself, it doesn’t show up. I just tried cuil, too, and we’re not there either.
There’s a good explanation of robots.txt on archive.org.
I just googled his name with the school’s name and nothing comes up. Hoorah!
@doctorgirl: Thanks!
this is a really cute alternative. We really are not doing anything. We are in a small town and most OOT guests are family that have been here before.
Wow I didn’t know you could keep the search engines at bay! This would have come in handy before my mom googled me and found my wedding website!! (Long story!)
If you’re still interested in trying to make a web site, mywedding.com has some great templates and they give you the option of password protecting your site! Then you could just include the password when you send the link to guests. : )
Totally understand about the privacy thing. I used weddingwindow.com and it has an option to chose so your site doesn’t pop up in search engines.
@TechGirl: Can you make just one password for a blogger site, like for the wedding websites? I’d rather send out the password in the save-the-dates than send out emails to everyone telling them they have to create their own password.
You can have a password protected website. So with your invitations, inclose the password so only your guests can have access to the information on your wedding website. I believe http://www.mywedding.com has a password feature, plus their wedding websites are free and they have nice templates. Good luck!
This is so cute and creative!
We have wedding window for our site and it’s password protected and non-searchable. This of course has lead to people emailing me for the details but I put the info on the STD and there’s nothing else I can do about that.
That is AWESOME! What a great idea
We did a wedding website b/c it was just easiest for us to get all the info out.
@Mrs. Woody-to-be: You don’t even have to do that. Since Blogger is a Google site, they want users to log in with their Google account logins. But it’s not a must - they can sign is as a guest and then they don’t even need to enter a password! The blog will be protected so only people that were invited to read it, can read it. You can hide the blog from search engines and Blogger’s blog listings as well. If you’re unsure, I suggest you set up a dummy blog just so you can get the hang of it and play around with the settings. I hope this helps.
Wow, that turned out awesome!! Great job! I love the idea
would you have considered a password protected website? We used that when we put up the RSVP option so strangers couldn’t RSVP.
I think I would have considered a password protected site but I’m not sure about Mr. Joey.
That’s so cute! We’re planning on a wedding website, but we don’t have any nutty teenagers to worry about!
I love your solution, though.
Wow that is a great alternative! I love it!
We went with the wedding website. We put a lot into and I’m so proud
I’m so glad you posted this! I don’t have a wedding website completed. I wanted to, but in the middle of it, I asked myself, do I really want our information just out in the open? For everyone to see?! There was this one time where one of my mom’s friends found out from her daughter about our engagement through facebook. She then told ALL of my mom’s friends. They’re the real gossipy kind! I wanted to keep it private and my own mother did not know about it yet! So yeah, I was not about to have our story, wedding date, when and where and all that for one them to find!
I think yours is such a great idea! You can totally control who will see this information! It made me think of doing either a full-blown newspaper or a newsletter.
Great idea! We went with a wedding website…it was quick and easy. But this is so much fun for your guests!
@TechGirl: Ah, OK, I see. If I’m understanding it correctly, it seems that I would have to set which email addresses are invited to see it, and which aren’t… which would require me to know the email addresses of all my guests. Yes/no? Haha. I was thinking of setting up my wedding website on Blogger like a few Bees have shown in the past, but I don’t like the idea of that information being out so just anyone can see it. I’ll definitely have to play around. Thanks!!
@Mrs. Woody-to-be: Yeah, you would have to know everyone’s email address, that’s the only drawback. In your case I think creating a website with mywedding.com and making is password protected would work. They have LOTS of cool templates you can choose from and setting up the site is easy. AND you can have a blog on the site as well!
We wanted a site that wouldn’t have our last names anywhere, so we got one through eweddings.com. You can check a box when signing up to make your site unsearchable through their main site, and you can password protect it. Their basic version is free, but you have to pay if you need more pages than that.
First, I know I’m late on this but just saw it and your magazine is AWESOME. If I had been prepared enough, that would be a great alternative. In my case, I went with the wedding website so that I could add to it here and there (although it’s 99% done by the time we sent the invitations). It’s pretty private because our last names are not listed and our first names are very common. I didn’t enable the guest book but do have a link for them to send me an email if they don’t have my email address. I took off the password but if I were more concerned about privacy I would have put it up.
I am now considering doing something like what you did for our out of town guests who have confirmed they will be coming!
very cute! i’ve love love loved reading other people’s wedding websites in the past and will probably do one password’ed to keep snoopers out. hehe. i love just the personal touches and getting to learn more about the bridal party’s relationship, the couple, etc…
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Mrs. Joey, Seattle
Age and Occupation: 28, Project Administrator for Public Health NGO
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, High School History Teacher
Engagement Date: June 24, 2008
Wedding Date: August 2009
Venue: Eastside Catholic Chapel and Lake Union Cafe
About Me: I'm a Seattle girl through and through except for the fact that I don't drink coffee. I love my job most of the time because I get to travel and work with brilliant people who are trying to prevent Malaria. I love DIY projects of all sorts, cooking, and watching sports. I'd wear anything at Anthropologie and could spend all day on Etsy. I love to travel but shouldn't because I always get myself into unbelievable situations!
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