by Amy, Christine, and Elizabeth

   

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In this modern age, having a wedding website is extremely popular if not critical.  But, there are so many choices for building a wedding website out there.  How do you know what to look for?  What do you add to your site?  Two brides, Amy and Christine, share their thoughts and experiences with us.

Amy

For our wedding, we browsed through a few different online options and ended up using www.mywedding.com. We chose this site because it was easy to use, included all the page options we wanted, and had appealing templates and background schemes. On our website, we posted important logistical information such as where and when the wedding and reception would take place, travel information, and hotel choices. We also included more personal tidbits such as how we met, how he proposed, as well as short blurbs about everyone in the wedding party. For out of town guests, we did some research on fun activities to do around the area and posted those ideas on the website.

Christine

Although my fiance and I looked through several wedding site hosts, we ultimately decided to make our own through Google Sites.  We wanted the ability to completely customize the design and layout but also wanted to take advantage of the preset features available through Google.  In addition, although most wedding sites provide a free year of hosting (for limited features), they begin to charge fees to host the site beyond the first year.  With Google Sites, we have free web hosting, giving us the ability to maintain the site and post updates (wedding-related or not) for many more years to come.  

To take full advantage of Google Sites, you do need to devote some time to familiarize yourself with all the features.  My fiance and I spent a decent amount of time tweaking settings to get the exact look that we wanted.  Although Google Sites has a graphical user interface, basic knowledge of HTML is helpful for manipulating code when things don't display quite right, especially across different browsers.

If you want a distinct and unique look for your wedding website and have the time to master the different features of Google Sites, then I highly recommend trying it out.  However, if you don't have much experience with web design, it may be easier to use one of the free wedding site services available online.