How to Make Your Wedding Website Private

Your wedding website is an important resource for you and your wedding guests to utilize to stay on top of your big day. It will help with everything from hotels, to transportation, and even your gift registries. It’s the place where you’ll post must-know wedding details such as the when and where of the celebration. However, you may not want the world to know the ins and outs of your wedding day before you’re ready to share them, so keeping your wedding site private might be the best option.

Table of Contents:

• Part 1: How to Make Your Website Private
• Part 2: Password Protecting Your Website
• Part 3: Reasons for Keeping Your Website Private
• Part 4: The Downside to Making Your Website Private

The main reason for a wedding website is to give your wedding guests a central location so that they can find information about your wedding. The site can serve as a place to answer any questions, as well as for you and your partner to post important notifications about the event. If privacy is a main concern, Zola is here to help. Read on to learn more about how to make your wedding website private.

Part 1: How to Make Your Website Private

It’s understandable that privacy is a concern, especially if your wedding website can be found online with a search engine. Wedding crashing can still happen, even during a pandemic. The best way to protect your information is to put a password on your website, and send it to only your guests. You can also include your password-protected wedding website information on your wedding invitations, gift registry, and save the dates.

• Log onto the Manage Website page, and at the top of the screen you’ll see a button that says “Make Website Visible.”
• If you click on it, then it will make your site visible to the public; however, since you’re trying to keep it private, make sure that it is set to “Hide Website,” so that it will be set to private and no one can visit the wedding page.

Control Search Visibility

You can control if you want your free wedding website to show up in a Google search or even a Zola search from your account settings under Privacy. Then you can change your private wedding website settings by selecting your desired result.

How Long Does It Take to Go into Effect?

While Zola wishes that we could wave a magic wand, and voila, your settings take effect immediately, unfortunately, it does take some time. It takes about 30 days before you can find your site by Googling your names. It can also take up to 30 days for Google to remove your private wedding website from search, even after adjusting your privacy settings or deleting your account. Zola has no control over the timing, but if it were up to us, we’d put in a rush order!

Part 2: Password Protecting Your Website

Protecting your wedding website with a password is another way to keep your site private. That means that the wedding details that you put on there will only be available to those who enter the password. You can include the password on your save the date, wedding invitation, gift registry, or anywhere you can send your guests the link to your website.

Pro Tip: Use a password that’s accessible to guests, but don’t pick one that’s easy for anyone to guess. Sometimes just using your wedding date plus your last name is a great go-to.

How to Password Protect Your Website

It’s easy to password protect your Zola wedding website. Here are the instructions:

• Under “Account” on the top right-hand side of Zola.com, click on “Privacy Settings.”
• Scroll down to “Website Password.”
• Click “Yes” under “Do you want your wedding website password protected?”
• Enter your password and hit save.
• Send your guests a personal note explaining where they can find the password.
• If you change your mind later, you can go back to your privacy settings to remove the password protection.

Part 3: Reasons for Keeping Your Website Private

There are many reasons for wanting to keep your website private.

You Are Still Working on Your Website

While you are still working on your website to include all the pertinent information for your big day, it will still be visible if a wedding guest searches for it. If you hide your website under the privacy settings, no one will have access to it. But, if you password protect it with a password that only you and your partner know until you are ready to make it public, that will at least slow down the inquiries from guests for the time being.

You Want to Keep Some People Away

Making your website private or password-protected means that you’ll be able to keep unwanted people from accessing your personal details. That means that your exes or the neighborhood gossiper won’t be able to see any wedding ceremony information that you don’t want them to know.

Keep Your Personal Life Under Wraps

It’s understandable that you may not want some of your personal life being widely available on the internet, even in the age of social media. If your wedding website is searchable online, note that some of your private information will be available so that perhaps using a password is applicable. If you or your partner work in a field that you need to keep your information private, then using a password to make your wedding website private is essential.

You Need to Limit the Number of Guests

With the pandemic continuing and new variants of COVID-19 emerging, some wedding venues are operating under capacity and that means that you may have to cut your wedding party guest list. Thus, co-workers, distant cousins, and your old teammates might not make the cut. Keeping your wedding site private or password-protected prevents uninvited guests from seeing your wedding day information.

Part 4: The DownSide to Making Your Website Private

If you make your wedding website private and require your guests to use a password, it could turn into a bit of a headache. Why? Some of them are bound to lose the password, forget it, or simply not understand how to use it. You will end up fielding phone calls (especially from the older guests), texts, and emails asking how to use the password or reminding them what the password is. As you plan your wedding, will you have time to deal with all this or do you have a wedding planner in place? There are many things to ponder when it comes to making your website private.

Creating your free wedding website is one of the fun parts of the wedding planning process, and Zola can help ease the stress by ensuring that you are set up for success. Zola offers a variety of tools to help make it easier for you and your guests.