How to build the perfect wedding website?
Your wedding day is one of the most special days of your life, and a wedding website can help make it even more memorable and enjoyable. So you might be wondering how do you build the perfect wedding website? When should you start thinking about your wedding website? How will a custom-built wedding website benefit you? We have all the details on that!
Learn what it takes to build a fully custom wedding website of your dreams! We walk you through the 7 steps for building the perfect wedding website from scratch. Plus, learn when is the best time to start thinking about your wedding website, our #1 favorite tool for building wedding websites and why having a wedding website is an absolute game changer. And rest assured that you don’t need to tackle this task alone, we’re here to walk you through it all.
Why have a wedding website?
Wedding websites are an absolute game changer! Let me just say - it is ABSOLUTELY worth having a wedding website!
❤️ A wedding website is the perfect way to showcase your love story in a very unique and personal way.
❤️ It gives you the opportunity to provide all the necessary information to your guests that you would never be able to fit on paper stationery. Plus you can update all your guests on any changes in a matter of minutes and have it available to them instantly.
❤️ It makes wedding planning SO MUCH EASIER - collecting RSVPs online without any effort at all, emailing all your guests and connecting to your wedding’s social media - are only some of the benefits you can enjoy.
Before we dive in, you might be interested in Wedding websites: building from scratch vs using a template. We walk through the things that you should be aware of so you can make the decision for yourself. Choosing between using ready-made tools or templates or creating a custom-built wedding website can be a difficult decision. Both options have advantages and disadvantages and there’s no right or wrong choices, you should go with the choice that fits your unique needs the best.
In my biased personal opinion, a fully custom-built website is the way to go as I can’t imagine compromising on any wedding day needs. I wouldn’t choose a template for myself because I think the benefits of a custom website are simply unmatched. I absolutely LOVE designing custom wedding websites for my clients so let me walk you through the seven steps of building a custom wedding website of your dreams!
When to start thinking about a wedding website?
There's not really a right or wrong answer here but the quicker you start thinking about it the better. Trust me, it’s never too early to start thinking about, creating or even launching your wedding website and you’ll always wish you started earlier than you did.
If you already know at the very early stages of your wedding planning that you want to have a wedding website then make sure you plan it well ahead of sending out your invitations. This is because the wedding website is an anchor point for all things your wedding and it facilitates invitation sending and online RSVPs. You can also set-up your wedding website before even sending out the initial save the dates. Your website doesn’t need to be filled with all the details (you probably don’t even have them yet). At this stage it will give the initial impression and the date of your wedding and that’s perfectly good. Think of it as the build-up to your invitations like when companies announce new products or upcoming sales, you get to create a little hype of your own.
Alternatively, it is also possible to do your wedding website at a later stage leading up to the wedding itself. But then it might be a bit too late to implement some useful capabilities. E.g. if you already sent out invitations with RSVP instructions by mail then there’s not a lot of point in creating a system for online RSVPs anymore.
No matter which route you take, the quicker you start working on your wedding website the easier and more seamless the process of wedding planning will be and the more benefits you’ll reap from having a wedding website.
Where to build a wedding website?
First, you might be interested to read wedding websites: building from scratch vs using a template to choose between using ready-made tools or templates or creating a custom-built wedding website.
If you’re as set on custom-built wedding websites as me then I want to share my absolute favorite tool for creating stunning wedding websites from scratch - Squarespace. I love it for so many reasons but specifically for wedding websites it’s an all-in-one platform offering the best overall value and experience. It offers many benefits like easy and integrated domain purchase, hosting & design, affordable pricing and many built-in capabilities enabling things like online RSVPs, information gathering and easily emailing save the date & invitations or any other communications to your guests. It’s a value-packed platform that houses all your needs under the same roof and provides the best most efficient approach for wedding websites. There are other very similar tools available but Squarespace is my absolute favorite one.
✨The 7 steps to build a custom wedding website of your dreams ✨
1. Creating a wedding theme
As with any website design, the foundation for building your wedding website is branding. This might sound surprising in the context of weddings but hear me out. It requires branding-level support to turn the wedding of your dreams into a reality. Branding for weddings is realized through what I like to call a “wedding theme”. Essentially it is a light touch branding exercise that creates the visual elements that bring your wedding to life - wedding mood board, your logo or letter mark, custom color palette, typography and custom graphics for your wedding website (and stationery). The wedding theme will serve as a visual basis for every touchpoint of your big day.
2. Preparing the inputs
The second step is gathering or preparing all the contents and information that will go into the website. Here you can think about showcasing your love story, providing all relevant information to your guests and any other instructions that apply. When talking about showcasing your love story - tell your love story through storytelling but also through images and/or videos. Your wedding website is THE perfect place to show off your stunning engagement shoot images/video and get everyone excited about your wedding. You also need to prepare and gather all the information that your guests need to know at this stage. Note that this information will change and expand as you come closer to your wedding. This is to be expected and it’s completely normal to keep updating your wedding website with the most accurate information that you have at the time, more on that later.
It can be a little bit overwhelming and stressful to figure out what exactly needs to go on your wedding website or making sure that you aren't missing any valuable information. For that reason I always provide my clients with a guided questionnaire and a checklist to make sure that you know exactly what information you need to gather and to give you that peace of mind that nothing has been forgotten.
3. Designing a wedding website
Now that we’ve gathered all the necessary inputs it's time to design your wedding website. This is my favorite part as I get to put it all together and create a stunning wedding website by putting your wedding theme to work and incorporating all the inputs you provided. The process involves creating a strategic, fully-functioning and aesthetic website that is responsive and will work across devices of all sizes (desktop, tablets, mobile devices).
Tip - you might be interested to learn about the elements of website design besides the creation of stunning visuals - read it here.
4. Incorporating all capabilities
After we've gone through your review and feedback of the wedding website design, it’s time to set-up all of the capabilities that will make your life so much easier. By far the most useful wedding website capabilities are online RSVP gathering and setting up email campaigns to manage your guest list. Email campaigns can be used for many different purposes, e.g. sending out invitations, sending a link to your wedding website, updating your guest with any new information, sending reminders etc. There might be a need for other integrations or capabilities depending on your wedding plans and needs.
5. Finalizing the website
Finally, tying up all the loose ends and finalizing the website before it is published. Here I run the final checks to make sure that everything looks and functions the way it is intended. This step involves walking through and testing your whole website and setting it up for the intended audience.
Setting it up for the intended audience means ensuring that your wedding website is discoverable and showcases the way that you want it. Wedding websites include many personal details so it is completely understandable that it might not be desirable for everyone in the world to be able to find this information and to also RSVP on your personal site. Ensuring that the wedding website meets these discoverability criteria is an important part of my job. This can be achieved by strategically crafting all touchpoints that lead to the wedding website and limiting the website audience by hiding it from search engines and/or introducing a password for accessing the site or specific pages.
FREE RESOURCE
WEBSITE DESIGN & BRANDING CHECKLIST
In case you’re wondering… What are key elements of a strategic website design & branding? How to ensure your website & brand identity tick all the boxes? Does your current website & branding (still) suit your needs?
6. Launching your website
After all the design work is done and I’ve crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's, it’s finally time to launch your wedding website! I will connect your custom wedding domain with the site that we've created and publish it online. Once the website is live you can share it with your guests through a link on your wedding invitations, social media, and emails or through a QR code that links directly to your website.
7 Updating the website
As mentioned before, your wedding website will need to be updated as you come closer to the wedding day because more and more information becomes available. It is advisable to update your wedding website in batches. By this I mean it's not practical or desirable to change your wedding website every time you get new bits of information. It is far better to combine all this information and update your wedding website on a periodic basis (e.g. monthly or X amount of time before the wedding). That way your guests have more clarity and you can also notify them once you've made large updates to the website. I'm sure you can understand that everyone has very busy lives and it is far better to update your guests with useful info once or twice than bombarding them with new information every single time you get small updates.
I hope this post has been useful in understanding how to build the perfect wedding website. It’s quite a process and there’s so much to think about but the good news is…
You don’t need to do it alone, I can help!
The way I see it, weddings are big and beautiful events that require lots of preparations & careful planning. They also need beautiful visual elements that showcase your unique love story through every interaction and make planning a wedding a breeze. This can be achieved through strategic website design and branding, which I happen to be so passionate about! 🤍
You absolutely can and should…
Reclaim ease of mind - Save your precious time and energy, enjoy the process without any stress or overwhelm and have fun while ticking all the boxes for your design needs. Our signature process is stress-free and offers you all-in-one support.
Elevate your wedding - Leave behind searching the internet for hours or winging it when it comes to your wedding design. Elevate your wedding by celebrating your love story, expressing your personality and showcasing truly unique visual elements at every interaction.
Own your story - Experience wedding website & stationery design that makes your life easier while impressing your guests with stunning visuals. Gain confidence and write your own storyline through fully custom designs that fit your wedding day perfectly!
You can also reach out to ask any questions about your design needs, I’d be more than happy to help! Or if you're ready to jump in and turn your vision into a reality then you can have a look at our offering now!
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