Among the must-haves for soon-to-be newlyweds in today's digital age is a wedding website. IF you're planning your wedding yourself, you'll need to launch your own wedding website. Oh, right, while you're hiring caterers, photographers, DJ's, bands, and videographers, registering for gifts, booking hotels for your out of town guests, and shopping for your wedding dress. No biggie though, right? Right. Fortunately, there are a number of services out there for free or nearly free that purport to help you do this with as little hassle as possible. Weddingwindow.com, weddingchannel.com, and wedsite.com are just some of the many options available that have reduced making your own website to as close to "plug and play" as you can realistically get. Many, if not most, of the wedding website construction websites out there allow you to choose from or mix and match pre-assembled "themes" and add your own pictures in limited areas. Come to the table armed with your own vision, because you want your wedding website to track with the overall theme for your wedding. It hardly makes sens to have a robot-karaoke wedding website when your wedding theme is shabby-chic with accents of fairy dust, after all.
The wedding website should be the hub where all information for your guests is available. You'll want to make sure that in addition to the basic information about your wedding - date, location, time, etc. that you have links to all of the retailers where you've registered. If you've taken a cash in lieu of gifts approach, give your guests a reason why. Guests want to know that they're giving you something, not that they're just throwing money at you. If you're asking folks to help foot the bill for an extravagant honeymoon, you can set up a do-it-yourself honeymoon registry by contacting the honeymoon location that you've booked and inquiring as to whether they will accept third party payment for items that you've booked. Then you can create your own honeymoon wish list and allow guests to contact the venue directly to arrange payment if they so choose. If you're not comfortable doing that or find it too much hassle or tacky, a number of online resources have now created the Honeymoon Registry online, where you can actually register for your honeymoon and attendant fun events as if they were wedding gifts. Some such sites are honeymoonwishes.com and http://www.buy-our-honeymoon.com just a couple of options. Don't want a honeymoon but sure could use help with a down payment on a house or retirement funds? Check out ourwishingwell.com, which allows you to create your own personal registry of intangible contribute-to-my-life-fund type gifts for your guests to throw in towards.
If you are having a theme or costume wedding, or are set on a particular dress code, you'll also want to make sure this information is clearly stated on the wedding website (and on your save-the-dates and invitations)! In today's increasingly casual atmosphere, you need to make it clear that you expect your guests to show up in black tie if that is the case. If you don't, don't be upset if your frat boy second cousin shows up in jeans and a backwards baseball cap.
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