Do It Yourself: Free Online Wedding Maps
by Elizabeth
Editor's disclosure: Shiny Orb, a shopping site for inexpensive bridesmaid dresses, receives no form of compensation from Google Maps. Also, Elizabeth previously worked at Google, though not on Google Maps.
My husband and I got married last summer at a fairly secluded beach with limited parking. So when I thought about how all the guests would arrive at the ceremony, I started freaking out. Even with massive carpooling plans, it would be difficult for the guests to find parking in a timely way. I really needed to provide everyone with a map that laid out where all the potential parking spots in the vicinity. Since most of my guests were going to use Google Maps to find driving directions, I decided to create an online wedding map with Google Maps.
Creating a free custom wedding map is easy if you have a Google account.
Getting started
- Go to maps.google.com
- Click on the "My maps" link on the left (below the Google logo)
- If you are not logged in, click the "Get started" button and log into your Google account
- If you are already logged in, click the link on the top-left that reads "Create new map"
- Add a title and description about your wedding map for your guests. I'd suggest making your map publicly viewable so your guests won't need a Google account to view it.
Adding places of interest
- Click the placeholder icon at the top of the map
- Zoom to your first location.
- Click the location of your choice to place the icon -- you can always move this icon later
- Add a title and description for this place in the bubble that appears
- Click the icon in the upper right of the bubble to change its shape/type
- Click "Ok". Congrats! You've just added your first marker. Now, rinse and repeat this section to add other places of interest. For my wedding map, I added parking markers to indicate parking areas near our ceremony location and also added nearby hotels. Feel free to add touristy-places-of-interest and nearby eateries/bars to your wedding map.
Sharing
- After you've finished adding markers to your wedding map, click the "Done" button in the upper left corner of your screen
- Now click on the link that reads "Link" in the upper right corner of your screen. The first link can be copied and sent to all your guests
That's it! Now you have a wedding map. The great thing about this tool is that you can customize it with other lines, shapes, links, directions, photos, videos, and much more. Check out these FAQs on Google's website for more details: http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68480
Posted by Jennifer Chin, Elizabeth Yin
