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Mrs. Cola, Mountain View, CA Age and Occupation: 27, Product Communications and Promotions Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Managing Partner and Senior Designer Engagement Date: March 5, 2009 Wedding Date: June 2010 Venue: The Mountain Terrace, Woodside, CA About Me: I’m a Washington State native, enjoying life in Silicon Valley California with my fiancé, our three kitties and one leopard gecko. I like reading wedding blogs, Photoshopping wedding design mock ups, making lists, and planning, planning, planning! I’m a bit of an anomaly, on one side I’m a very girlie girl, I collect shoes, I lay out my outfits 4-6 weeks in advance, and I’d never leave the house without my hair curled and makeup on. But on the other side, I’m a total tomboy, I love to go camping and hiking, play drinking games (hey, I’m Irish!) and most of my closest friends are guys. My fiancé and I are planning a DIY-focused wedding with a balance between easygoing (what he wants) and chic and stylish (what I want), and are tying it all together with elements in lavender, sage, butter cream and chocolate.
About Mrs. Cola

Right from the get-go, I knew I really wanted us to have an extensive and super informative wedding website, especially with about half our guest list being from out of town.

Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info! :  wedding wedding website Suitcase

{ Source }

Trying to be cost conscious as usual, I looked into all the free options, like on theknot.com and the Wedding Channel, but they were so basic. Then I started looking at wedorama.com and some other sites with fees, but that would give a little more flexibility. However, none of these jumped out at me, they limited the number of pages I could have and seemed to have pretty cheesy templates. Where were the wedding website services that would just let me do what I wanted?

But alas, I found the solution:

GoDaddy.com. Yeah, dumb name, but for only $121.35 a year I got my own URL, 999 pages with SSL, e-mail, polls, photo albums, any type of form I want, and best of all, tons of space for pictures. Plus, it comes with some really easy to use software, Website Tonight, and allowed me to customize the look and feel of our site and not be tied to a template. So without further ado, here is a shot of our welcome page:

Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info! :  wedding wedding website Website  (I just love how the color scheme matches our wedding colors, and the custom header goes with our STD magnets!)

The next order of business, once I walked through the easy steps to set up the site and made our custom template, was to gather and put up info for our guests. Sure, I would include the standard wedding day details and hotel room block info, but I really wanted to do something special for our out of town guests. A lot of them may decide to spend more time in the Bay Area than just for our wedding, considering they’re traveling all the way across the country. So I pulled together the following info pages.

A shot of our side navigation bar, with all the top level page links: Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info! :  wedding wedding website Navbar

Flight Info (under the transportation link). Click on the images for a bigger picture:

Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info! :  wedding wedding website Flight

(I always love it when I’m told upfront how long the flight is and I also thought it would be useful to give tips on how to find the best deals on flights.)

Getting around the Bay Area:

Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info! :  wedding wedding website Getting022

Next up was info on area attractions, both in San Francisco and near to the hotel:

Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info! :  wedding wedding website Sfattr

Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info! :  wedding wedding website Smattr

(I put a link to the attraction’s website and a Google Maps link under each attraction picture, making it super easy for guests to find more info and plan their trip.)

I even put together a sample driving tour of SF, all mapped out as well:

Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info! :  wedding wedding website Driving

Will you be, or have you already, put a lot of time and effort into your wedding website?

(all screenshots in this post were taken by me)

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14 Responses to “Our DIY Wedding Website, Part 1: Info, Info, Info!”

1.
Member Icon
Member
KMSull (message)  6,442 posts, Bee Keeper

We’ll have either a pretty extensive website or a practically non-existent one, depending on what city we decide to get married in! Yours looks fantastic, and I’m sure your guests are going to appreciate it so much.

 
2.
Irishker03
Member
Irishker03 (message)  571 posts, Busy bee

wow. What a complete website! Your guests will surely be thankful!

 
3.
jduck84
Member
jduck84 (message)  1,529 posts, Bumble bee

That looks great and user-friendly! I like how informative it is without being overwhelming, it seems.

 
4.
MexiPieLove
Member
MexiPieLove (message)  54 posts, Worker bee

This is great! We also have a large number of out of town guests for our Mexico City wedding, so I want to provide them with as much info as possible. I love your take on the Flight Info and Getting Around - I think we’ll be doing that too, now!

One question: I see on your list of pages you have “submit your itinerary” - what’s that about? Will this help you in your planning or is this a “sharing” type of feature for all guests?

Thanks for such a helpful post! (I am working on our website this week, in case you can’t tell, ha)

 
5.
ebs1123
Member
ebs1123 (message)  357 posts, Helper bee

Looks great! Ours is similar, with a page just for restaurants and fun things to do in town - it’s geared towards our friends who’ve never been to Nebraska!

I, too, felt limited by the wedding websites out there, so built mine with iWeb and used godaddy for the domain. If you have any access to server space (at school, for example), it’s a much cheaper option. Having our own website cost us only $7!

 
6.
Mrs. Mouse
Bee
Mrs. Mouse (message)  5,821 posts, Bee Keeper

Wow, looks like you worked really hard on this! Your guests will really appreciate it!

 
7.
Miss Cardigan
Bee
Miss Cardigan (message)  8,645 posts, Bumble Beekeeper

Your guests are going to love this! I wish I had the energy for something like this…I’m kind of lazy when it comes to my website! :-)

 
8.
tea
Member
tea (message)  7,278 posts, Busy Beekeeper

very nice! if you’re suggesting people take a trip across the bridges, be sure to let them know about the toll so they’re not caught unaware! it’d make me think twice about driving across the golden gate just to go to the vista point and then heading back to sf for lunch if it would cost me $5 to get back into the city. maybe you can suggest some lunch spots in sausalito as well?

 
9.
Guest Icon
Guest
Kirsten

Love it! But my favorite that we ended up using is wedsite. They even have free trials for a few days.

Check out our website:

ericandkirsten.wedsite.com

 
10.
Jessie516
Hostess
Jessie516 (message)  5,480 posts, Bee Keeper

Looks great! We didn’t actually end up putting together a wedding website. Just never really got around to it.

 
11.
pvaulter718
Member
pvaulter718 (message)  2,116 posts, Buzzing bee

we used my fiance’s blog to keep everyone up to date about the wedding information. Most people are familiar with the area, so we didn’t need to provide a ton of information.

 
12.
Bee Icon
Bee
Miss Parfait (message)  1,755 posts, Buzzing bee

So comprehensive! I had a lot of fun making our wedding website, too. : )

 
13.
Miss Poodle
Bee
Miss Poodle (message)  3,386 posts, Sugar bee

Im so glad we dont have to give a lot of information because most of our guest are pretty familiar with our venue, because WOW that seems like a lot of work :)

 
14.
Guest Icon
Guest
Jack

Great post, will bookmark to my facebook, hope all of my friends will see this…is it sunny in your place,lol…kiding,,,:)

 

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Mrs. Cola
Mrs. Cola

Mrs. Cola, Mountain View, CA Age and Occupation: 27, Product Communications and Promotions Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Managing Partner and Senior Designer Engagement Date: March 5, 2009 Wedding Date: June 2010 Venue: The Mountain Terrace, Woodside, CA About Me: I’m a Washington State native, enjoying life in Silicon Valley California with my fiancé, our three kitties and one leopard gecko. I like reading wedding blogs, Photoshopping wedding design mock ups, making lists, and planning, planning, planning! I’m a bit of an anomaly, on one side I’m a very girlie girl, I collect shoes, I lay out my outfits 4-6 weeks in advance, and I’d never leave the house without my hair curled and makeup on. But on the other side, I’m a total tomboy, I love to go camping and hiking, play drinking games (hey, I’m Irish!) and most of my closest friends are guys. My fiancé and I are planning a DIY-focused wedding with a balance between easygoing (what he wants) and chic and stylish (what I want), and are tying it all together with elements in lavender, sage, butter cream and chocolate.

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