Weddingbee Blog

Early on I decided that I wanted to make a wedding website for two main reasons: 1. I knew that I wanted to share a lot of information with our guests. Most of this could be found easily on the web (and primarily on the web). 2. This information could be provided to them quickly. Much earlier than when we would eventually send out our invitations.

Image from eWedding.com

I started looking at the free websites provided by the big wedding sites, primarily TheKnot.com and Brides.com. But I just was not happy with their free designs, because, well, they looked cheap. I wanted a website that people could go to that didn’t look any different than any other website. I especially didn’t want it to look cheaper than any other website they would go to.

Next I looked at the website companies that catered to weddings. Eventually I decided to go with a provider that supplied a easy to use template for me to customize and load in my info. At first it was a hard decision. The decision to fork over some cash even though I technically could do the work myself. But I decide to go with the template instead of making a site from scratch because it would be just so much easier.

These were the items that were important to me: a custom domain name, option to place a password on the site to restrict viewers, ability to add music, option to post images, and it had to have a nice, pretty theme (something classy).

I decided on eWedding.com. I loaded all my material using their free trial at first, not realizing that the free trial was actually their most lavish package. So when I eventually decided to go with them, I purchased their lowest priced package and — poof — a lot of my content disappeared. I became disappointed. But it all worked out. I had to tweak some pages, but in the end I had all the features I really wanted for the cheaper price, with just a little extra work. At $4.00 a month it isn’t free, but it isn’t going to stop me in my tracks.

I figured that the website would be used by the more tech savvy guests and not even all of them would go to it. So it wouldn’t be used by more than half the guests. But if it would help to get everyone on board with the mini-destination wedding, it would be worth it. And some of the younger guests could help the older people using it or just sharing info that they might see on it. In my mind if it helps just one guests in their travels (emotionally, picking a hotel, deciding to come!) then it is worth it! Sometimes you don’t need fancy, but you need something that meets your standards. Then you could make it a bit more you, and have fun with it!

Did you create a wedding website? What company did you go through? Are you happy with what you got?