For the cyberbride
Bill Dyszel
Savvy, Internet-age couples know how much a personal wedding website can help them spread their exciting news. But really smart couples know how to take advantage of it — zipping through the zillions of details that come before that march down the aisle. Making plans is exhausting enough, but then you must communicate them to friends and relatives scattered around the country or even the world. (And yes, by the way, in the middle of all this insanity you have to remember to get married!) You need all the help you can get.
Wedding websites typically include a combination of practical details and romantic items. If you go to www.LongIslandWeddingpages.com, you’ll find out how to build your own website for friends and family for free. You’ll also come across over 60 virtual tours of wedding facilities, over 300 Long Island Wedding Professionals, as well as planning tools, calendars, timetables, and other couple’s wedding websites.
Here are other useful tasks accomplished with a wedding website:
* Post a list of events to eliminate “phone tag.” The last weeks before you tie the knot get pretty hectic with rehearsal dinners, tuxedo fittings, bachelor/bachelorette parties, and of course the ceremony itself. If you put up a list of who needs to be where at what time, you’ll save yourself a ton of phone calls.
* Put up an online gift registry. Make it easier for guests to buy you gifts by including links on your wedding website to online gift registries at major stores. Most major retailers offer an online gift registry.
* Post your pictures. Everyone wants to see photos of the happy couple, especially far-away relatives who want to get a look at a new member of the family.
* Post your story. Guests will ask, so go ahead and post the story of how you two met and how he popped the question.
* Specify where and when the service and reception will be held. Don’t take for granted that everybody knows where your wedding site is located, especially out-of-towners. Consider posting a photo of it so everyone will know for sure they found the right one.
How to put up your wedding website:
That’s simple; marry a geek and let him do it. (Just kidding!) If you’re not computer savvy, consider a company that offers pre-fab wedding websites, sometimes for free, often for surprisingly little. You can also hire any of the many thousand web designers who put up sites for a few hundred bucks to have something all your own. Naturally, the best price to pay for a website is free - just like LongIslandWeddingpages.com offers. If you’re handy with web-authoring tools such as Microsoft Front Page you can probably put up a site on your own. But even if you already know how to do it, you might want to let someone else pull together your wedding website since you’ll have plenty of other details to fuss with as the Big Day approaches.
What a wedding website package might include:
Just as there are lots and lots of websites out in cyberspace, there are numerous features to look for in a wedding website package. If you use a web designer or a wedding website service you might want to ask these questions: * How many pages are included in the package? Most web designers charge either by the hour or by the page. A typical wedding website has a fixed number of pages to which you can post pictures and text. If you want more pages than the package includes, you’ll have to pay extra. Some pre-fab packages only accommodate a fixed number of pages and that’s it.
* Can we update the site ourselves, or do we have to pay for updates? As your plans progress, expect to make changes in the site to keep the information current. At the very least, you want to post ceremony pictures to the site after your wedding day. Some wedding website packages include a certain number of free updates, with extra fees if you get more.
Other packages are built so that you can post your own pictures and change text anytime you want by simply logging on to your site with a special password.
* Can we get extra features like guest books and planning software? Some wedding site packages include handy extra features like planning software to help you keep track of the deluge of details that precede the ceremony. When you’re choosing between two similar packages, details like these can make a difference. * Can we get a CD of our site to use as a wedding album? Some wedding site providers give you a copy of your site on CD after you’re finished posting pictures so that you can keep it as a permanent souvenir of your nuptials. Naturally, any of these features are available for a price. Decide what you want, you might be able to get exactly the right package for your needs.
Sources For Wedding Websites Plenty of service providers will put up your wedding website at a reasonable fee if you hunt around a bit. Here are some samples:
www.LongIslandWeddingpages.com offers the bride a freebie – you can build your own home page for friends and family. In addition, the site is jam-packed with wonderful resources including vitrual tours, a gown search and planning tools.
www.rweddingsite.com offers a no-frills, do-it-yourself package for $29.95. They advertise it as free, but that’s only for a free 10-day trial, which is only useful for shotgun weddings. This is a basic site you can do on your own with a simple design and graphics.
www.weddingscoop.com lists several different packages ranging from the simple Silver one to the more elaborate Platinum. The company that runs the site won’t quote a price directly.
www.waycoolweddings.com/home.htm This site features “way cool” wedding websites.