The wedding day is one of the most important days in one’s life. As some traditions have changed a lot in the past decade, more and more people build websites dedicated to their wedding. This way, they can include a lot of additional information for their guests that they no longer have to include in the official invitations they send. In this article, we will show you nine things you should definitely have on your wedding website. If you want to build a site for a friend’s wedding or you design websites, you may still find the information below useful.
RSVP form
This is probably one of the most important things you should have on the website. You should know how many people will attend the wedding, so adding an RSVP form is a must. The advantage of using an online form is that you can gather a lot of additional information from your guests well in advance, which will help you to plan the event better. For instance, along with a simple Yes/No option to find out who will attend, you can ask the people who will come if they will bring their kids or if they have some dietary preference (vegan, halal, etc.). Such information can give you a better idea how to plan your special day.
If you build the site with our Website Builder, you can use the Form builder module. You can add various options with a few clicks, inserting radio buttons or free-form text boxes, depending on the question you ask and the answers you expect. For WordPress, you will find lots of form plugins that you can use, such as WPForms.
The wedding location
Your guests should know where the wedding will take place. Whether it will be in some city or in a country-club, the location may be an important factor when they decide whether they will be able to attend. Some couples prefer more exotic weddings that may be outdoors or on a cruise ship, for instance, so some people may not be able to attend or may not find the place suitable for children. Make sure that you mention the exact location – city or area, street address, name of the place, etc. For easy navigation, you can add GPS coordinates and a map so that guests that use their own transport can find the location with ease.
Our Website Builder includes a map module that you can add to any of the website pages. You can add any address of your choice and its GPS coordinates. For WordPress, you can either use a plugin, or add a Custom HTML block and add a map from Google Maps. You will need an API code for that and you can generate one in your Google account. Although the service is paid, you use $200 of free credits each month until the wedding day as Google credits all accounts to make sure that people can use its Maps service for non-commercial purposes. To do that, follow the steps:
- Log in with your Google account at Google Cloud Platform Console
- Go to API Project -> New Project.
- On the left, select APIs and Services -> Credentials -> Create credentials -> API Key
Schedule
If you plan a short party before the ceremony or a cocktail after it, or if you plan something special for the family and guest photos, you should add a detailed schedule on the site. This way, your guests will know where exactly to go and what they are supposed to do. People with children, for example, may prefer not to attend a cocktail and may go directly to the wedding dinner. A detailed schedule will allow them to plan accordingly.
If you plan any event the day before or after the wedding, you can use the Event calendar module of our website builder. If you plan everything to take place in a single day, however, you can add the events as standard text. The latter is valid for WordPress as well, although you can find various timetable/schedule plugins in the platform repository.
Transportation and Lodging
Let people know how they can get to the wedding location and where they can stay. Such information will be very useful to guests from another city/country as they will not have to waste time researching how they can reach the location or what hotel they can sleep at.
For the transport, mention any possible means of getting to the wedding. This includes information about:
- The nearest airport and the transport options from it to the wedding location
- The nearest bus/train terminal for people from other cities
- The nearest public city transport station for people from the area
- Contact information for one or a few local taxi companies
- Other options that may be available in the area, such as Uber, rent a car, or some other option you may have arranged
- A detailed address, a map and GPS coordinates so that anybody using their own vehicle can find the location easily.
If you invite guests that do not live nearby, you should list different accommodation options as well. Let people know if they can book a room or an apartment, how much it will cost, whether you have some discount agreement with the property for your guests and how they can get from the property to the wedding location on your special day. As guests may have different requirements, you can list the following:
- Rooms / apartments in the same hotel if this is where the wedding will be
- Rooms / apartments in nearby hotels
- Other options, including houses, in nearby towns for larger families, kids, pets, etc.
- Alternatives like Airbnb – here you can recommend hosts in your area if you know them personally
Local recommendations
Most people will probably arrive a day early or may stay for a couple of days after the wedding, especially if there isn’t a suitable flight right before/after the wedding. In this case, they may want to visit places of interest around town or in the area. You can recommend your favorite places or a friend’s business in this section of your site. Your guests will be flattered that you have found time to think about their wellbeing even on your special day.
The Features option of our Website Builder will come in handy in this case as it will allow you to add a list of different places / things to do. You can choose between different layouts – text, icons or images, depending on the places/events you want to add.
Your story
People know that you are getting married, but do they know how you two met? This is the place where you can share your story. Tell them how you got together, share some of your great moments. Your close friends and relatives probably know all these details, but your extended family or friends that you haven’t seen for a while may not be aware of your love story. This way, you will not have to tell the same story over and over again on your wedding day.
A photo gallery
Having a gallery is recommended for most types of websites and it is very suitable for a wedding site. Add a few pictures of yourselves – individually and as a couple. You can hire a photographer, but you can also take a few pictures yourself or ask a friend to help you. You can also add some pictures from trips you have been on, or some other event you have attended together. The photo gallery can be on the same page as your story, or on a separate page. Your extended family may not know your loved one, the best man or the bridesmaids, so having a gallery on the site will be very useful to them.
To add a gallery in our Website builder, go to Content -> Apps -> Photo gallery. You can use existing photos or upload new ones.
In WordPress, you will find a Gallery block in the default block editor, while other editors like Elementor usually come with a widget with the same name.
Q & A
People usually have a lot of questions and a small Q & A section will help them find the information they need and will save you the time you will have to spend to answer the same questions over and over again. Here are a few examples of what this section can include:
- What is the RSVP deadline?
- Do you have to buy a wedding gift?
- What will the weather be like?
- What is the dress code?
- What time should guests arrive?
There are lots of small details people will like to know, so having such a section will be really helpful to your guests.
You can add a Q & A module to any page in our Website Builder if you go to Content -> Apps -> Questions & Answers. There, you can easily add as many questions as you would like.
For WordPress, you have different options. You can add questions and answers as standard text, or you can use some plugin from the WordPress repository and you can use more advanced functions like shortcodes, categories and advanced color/font management.
Preferred contact method/person.
No matter how much information you have on the site, people will still have questions. Let them know if they should contact you, a friend or some other person who will manage everything for your wedding day - if you hire a wedding planner/agency, for example. Depending on who will manage guests‘ queries, you can also mention a preferred method of communication (phone, email, site contact form, etc.) and the most suitable time for guests to contact that person.
You can use the Contact page in our Website Builder to add everything your guests will need in terms of contact information. By default, the page will feature the person’s name, phone number and email address, as well as a contact form, so you won’t have to add any content block manually.
If you use WordPress and you need a contact form, you can use Contact Form 7 or a similar plugin if the theme you use doesn’t come with such a form by default.
Wrap up
Everything should be perfect for your wedding day and the wedding website is not an exception. We have listed some of the most common things that you must have on the site and we have shown you how to add them easily if you use our Website Builder or WordPress. If you are not tech-savvy, you can still build a beautiful wedding website using any of the two platforms. Our Website Builder comes with a couple of wedding templates and for WordPress we recommend the Astra theme that includes a demo wedding website, which you can customize. Although WordPress is free and open-source, most of the plugins required to build a functional website have a price. In contrast, our Website Builder includes all the functionality you need inside one package, included for free with all our shared hosting plans.
