How to Make a Wedding Website

make a wedding website

Creating an interesting website around one of the most important days of your life, your wedding, is an ideal way to keep your family members and friends up-to-date concerning your special day. In fact, you can easily showcase your best photos in a cool gallery, show off your spectacular cake, or offer a heartfelt video that reveals your unique wedding vows. While some of these sites are only meant to keep people informed about your upcoming wedding, others are actual ways that allow your guests to interact. Here’s what you need to know on how to make a wedding website.

Consider using WordPress to build your wedding site since it’s the perfect platform to use. Here is a detailed list of various plugins and tips that will help you create your perfect wedding site in order to complement your special day.

Choose the Look and Feel of Your Theme

First, you’ll need to choose a theme that you feel will highlight your wedding in the best possible light, and then start customizing all the unique details. In order to personalize your new site, upload a customizable background image and header image in WordPress. Your background image could be an attractive floral pattern or a nice visually-pleasing pattern that’s not too busy on the eyes. Likewise, you could use a special photograph or even your wedding invitation as your header image on your site. There are many free interesting patterns and themes to choose from on other sites such as MySiteMyWay or Subtle Patterns. You may also choose to modify the colors of your overall theme by cleverly harmonizing them with the main colors of your wedding.

Key Pages to Incorporate

Use the following pages to help you neatly categorize all the necessary information you need to incorporate into your site. Here are some common pages you may want to add:

  • Photos: use a photo and/or video gallery to highlight your special event
  • Venue: include a detailed map to both the wedding and reception locations
  • Who’s Who: this page will highlight all the details about the people involved in the wedding including the names and photos of the wedding party, ushers, etc.
  • About Us: a brief history about how the bride and groom met, the story of the proposal, or any future plans of the couple
  • Blog: use a blog in order to keep your family and friends up-to-date with the plans or show off the wedding party dresses, rings, talk about the entertainment or venue, give the latest news on rehearsals, flowers, catering, etc.
  • RSVP: use this interactive page as an easy way to know who’s attending or who isn’t
  • Links: offer information about local restaurants in the area, car rentals, hotels, etc.
  • Guestbook
  • Gift Registry: use this page to highlight the items you would like to receive for your wedding presents

Keep Organized

Essentially, a wedding is a project that needs to be well organized. WordPress is an ideal way to keep your wedding project on schedule while showing everyone key information about your special day that they may need to know about. Many things go into planning your ceremony and even the most simple event planner plugin can prove to be priceless.

WordPress Events Planner – WordPress Events Planner is a free plugin that’s specifically designed to manage key events. The plugin includes event registration, categories, PayPal, a form manager, locations, and much more. It offers confirmation emails along with a downloadable list of specific registrations such as responses, attendees, payment info, status, etc. in addition to various templates. It utilizes regular WordPress tools including custom fields and post types, and options as well.

Here are some other plugins and tools to create your one-of-a-kind wedding site.

RSVP ME – RSVP ME provides users with a handy event calendar widget that offers a lightbox popup for your special event. It enables you to denote the venue, date, address, and other necessary details. Guests can easily respond by visiting the events webpage or through the calendar widget and send a message along with their response. Also, the events are searchable and you can list multiple events for a single day. Therefore, your guests can easily respond to your wedding and/or reception separately if they choose to.

Provide a Gift Registry – Offer a gift registry on your wedding website by providing links to a registry online like Amazon Wedding Registry, or simply incorporate a listing right on your website.

You can easily choose to place the items that you’re wishing for with the price tags and let your guests send you the money for them through PayPal. Even though it’s been updated recently, this tool will no longer be updated or supported in the future. Therefore, you should remember that if you choose to download it.

Private Content – If you choose to keep your special wedding site private and only want to share things with those you’re close to, you can use the Private Content plugin. This unique plugin allows you to only show your content to those users with particular roles. Easily set your pages and posts to only be viewed by subscribers and no one else can access it. Place a simple shortcode on just a few pages or on as many as you like. The plugin is free and very easy to use.

Use WP Google Maps – Everyone claims that this is the easiest to use of all Google Maps plugins since it doesn’t limit the user regarding features. It’s quite simple to design a custom map using certain markers with key categories, links, images, and descriptions. You can choose from either the free or professional version. WP Google Maps’ free version fully supports ‘Streetview’, which allows you to design as many markers as you like using animations, is customizable, lets you integrate polylines and polygons, and can also be used as a widget.

Feature Interesting Photos and Fun Videos – Want a very useful plugin for your wedding site? Use Cincopa to post your favorite photos and videos of virtually anything related to your wedding, including everything from the entertainment to the cake to the ceremony itself. This excellent plugin utilizes HTML5 and is also responsive. Conveniently, it offers more than 40 skins as well as a lightbox. From just a simple dashboard, all your media can be easily managed. It can display several different types of files and even provides key analytics that will help you determine which photos and videos your guests liked the best. To use this plugin, you’ll need to subscribe to Cincopa.

Comment Guestbook – Comment Guestbook is a free plugin that adds an interactive guestbook powered by WordPress. It will maintain a consistent style that goes along with your theme as well. Also, if you decide to change themes, there’s no need to change your guestbook. Have your guestbook show in the sidebar along with your guest comments or maybe you want to keep them separate. Use a shortcode for your guestbook.

Incorporate a WordPress Countdown Timer – WP Countdown Timer is a free plugin that provides you with an accurate countdown timer for years or for seconds, based on your personal preference. Using a shortcode, it can be placed on virtually any page. Simply set your specific date and time of the special event and anywhere you decide to place the unique shortcode, the timer will display. Although you can only have one timer, it’s very easy to use overall.

Now that you know about some exciting features on how to make a wedding website, have some fun and get started today.

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