What Is a Wedding Website?
A wedding website is a special webpage created just for your wedding day. It’s a one-stop shop used to help you communicate crucial wedding details with your friends and family (only those who are wedding guest, of course!), such as venue details, the weekend itinerary, the dress code, where you’re registered, travel and accommodation information, as well as photos. For some couples, it’s also how guests RSVP to the wedding. Think of it as an online help desk for your wedding day.
The good news is that you don’t need a fancy website builder to create a wedding website of your dreams (or just one that matches your wedding stationery). Use Zola to build a free wedding website that easily keeps all of your information, recommendations and ideas, photo albums, wedding hashtag, RSVP form, and more in one place.
Here’s how to do it—plus, what to include on a wedding website.
The goals of wedding websites are to:
- Communicate with wedding guests and share important details that aren’t included in the invitation suite.
- Provide more background info about you and your partner.
- Share travel recommendations with your guests.
- Collect RSVPs from invited guests. (Optional)
- Reiterate any information included on the invitation.
The 5 Ws of Wedding Websites
WHO Should See Your Wedding Website?
Typically, most couples make their wedding website public (so a guest who has misplaced their invitation can find it easily with a quick Google search), but if you choose to opt for a private website, your website should be shared with all of your wedding guests.
WHAT Should You Include on Wedding Website?
What you include on your wedding website is ultimately up to you and how personalized you want your site to be, but it’s best practice to include the following:
- The location, date, and time of each wedding event (rehearsal dinner, wedding ceremony, wedding reception, farewell brunch)
- The suggested attire for each event
- Recommendations for nearby hotels, restaurants, and sightseeing
- Where you are registered
- Personal stories about you as a couple (how you met, your engagement story)
- RSVP information
- Photos
- Travel and transportation information (shuttle schedules, directions to the venue, reserved hotel blocks, parking)
- Any other need-to-know details (such as handicap accessibility)
- FAQs from guests
WHEN Should You Make/Share a Wedding Website?
You should begin creating your wedding website as soon as you set your wedding date and have booked your wedding venue. Publish it and make it live the same time you send save the dates (roughly 6-8 months before the wedding day) so guests can read more about the event and begin making travel plans.
WHERE Should You Share Your Wedding Website?
You should share your wedding website with your guests via your save the dates (or even your invitations) so they can easily go online to learn more details (and RSVP if you’ve opted to collect replies online).
But, what about sharing on social media? We recommend that you do not post your wedding website on your social media accounts. It creates confusion about who is actually invited and can lead to some uncomfortable conversations with uninvited individuals as a result.
WHY Should You Make a Wedding Website?
Save the dates and invitations are limited in terms of space and what’s acceptable to include on them, which puts a cap on what you can communicate to guests through snail mail. Having a wedding website is great because it gives guests a place to go if they have questions, rather than bombarding you with texts, calls, and emails. And they make life easier for your guests, too, while making travel plans or in case they lose the wedding invitation.
How to Make a Wedding Website
Instructions for how to make a wedding website will be different for everyone, depending on which platform you choose for your wedding website (or whether you decide to build one from the ground up on your own). Regardless of which method you choose, creating a wedding website is done by following these steps:
- Choose a site or platform. Might we suggest the Zola wedding website tool?
- Pick a design or template or theme (or create your own).
- Select a domain (like www.zola.com/wedding/meghanandharry or www.marklewed.com)
- Add your event details.
- Personalize it.
- Include a link to your registry, or if using Zola, have your registry automatically integrate to your website pages.
- Set up your online wedding RSVP form (if using).
- Proofread everything and test the links.
- Publish it!
- Share the website link with guests (via your save the dates and/or invitations).
Where to Make a Wedding Website
Clearly, we’re a bit biased, but the short answer is to make your wedding website on Zola. Thankfully, there’s a lot of evidence to back up our claim:
- They’re totally free!
- 100+ designs and templates
- Can be made private (via password protection) or public
- Match your website to your Zola Save the Dates and Invitations
- Integrates seamlessly with Zola’s Registry, Guest List Manager, and a full suite of tools
- Collect RSVPs online
- Customize and change your template at any time
- Option to purchase a custom domain for a small fee
- Designs that look great across all devices
- Google maps integration