I can’t believe it’s just over five months until the wedding! At this point in time my bridesmaids have been warned that my Bridezilla game is going to be strong and they should be prepared to restrain me at any moment. B. and I were sort of coasting for a while because we got the big details for our wedding done early on - date, venue, photographer, etc., but we realize now is the time to deal with the *ugh* nitty-gritty.
During the Christmas break we had some time to put together our wedding website! I will only share some screenshots with you so I don’t get flooded with fake RSVPs, but I’m sure it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess what the URL is.
Technical Jargon
There are tons of websites where you can put together some easy-peasy wedding websites, like mywedding or The Knot, but we decided to complicate things a little bit and build our own site using Wordpress. I hosted it on the same site that hosts my business website and my blog. The custom domain name cost us $15 USD.
I was originally thinking of splurging on a wedding theme, as many of them include all the “typical” wedding website elements - RSVP form, relationship story timeline, wedding countdown, etc. A nice one can cost up to $50 USD. B. thought we should just get a free theme, so after some searching, I finally settled on this one.
Homepage
We are foregoing RSVP cards in our invitations and just having everyone RSVP online, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible. When you hit the homepage, you see our smiling faces, confirming that it is indeed, our wedding that you are attending. Then, you scroll down and see a Google Map to our wedding venue…
How to do it - in Google Maps, search for your wedding venue. Once it’s centred in a way that you like it, click on the tiny gear symbol near the bottom right corner (didn’t know that was there, did you?) Click on “Share or embed map” in the little menu that pops up. If you are building a website that allows HTML code, you can just copy-and-paste the code into your website, or you can share the link so people can click on it and see it in Google Maps. If you have more than one venue (i.e. ceremony and reception), I will tell you how to make a map that shows both later in this post.
What’s awesome about Google Forms is that it keeps all of the responses on a spreadsheet, so no risk of cards getting lost in the mail or having to sort through 100+ emails!
Our Story
Out of Town Guests
There’s an “Accommodations” section with info about a hotel room block, plus links to other hotels nearby. Also a (likely futile) call for in-town guests who are willing to let one or two people crash for a couple of nights.
We also made a “Fun Things to do in Calgary” map, which is really mostly places we like to eat. You can make your own in My Maps. If you have more than one wedding venue, this is how you can create a map that shows all of the locations.
Blog
Currently just a link to this blog, but closer to the date we’re hoping to include things like a weather update, unforeseen disasters, and possibly a wedding hashtag.
We are still a few months away from sending our wedding invitations (and thus sharing our wedding website with the masses) so we have time to keep building this page. Let us know in the comments if you think we’re missing anything!
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