Wedding Websites 411

Let's review our engagement timeline, shall we?

January 1, 2005 - Started Dating
November 21, 2009 - Got Engaged
July 28, 2010 - GOT A WEDDING DATE

Okay, so that's over eight months of engagement before we had a date, before we could book vendors, and before we could actually have a conversation about the wedding without getting into the Dickens of back stories whenever anyone asked when we were getting married.

I've already discussed how difficult that period was, but now let's focus on the positives.  Sure, there were a lot of things that hinged on the date, but there was plenty of fun things I could do in the meantime.  I could research vendors, contemplate our wedding colors, peruse my favorite wedding inspiration sites, but one task proved much more satisfying than anything else I accomplished over those eight long months: the wedding website.

I knew almost immediately after getting engaged that I wanted we needed one.  I spent more time than I would care to admit putting her together, but I was so happy with the results, and once she was finally finished I really felt like I had accomplished something!

So here's the breakdown of my quest for the perfect website:

Top Priorities:

1. Clean and professional looking: I'm totally anal-retentive when it comes to things I'm creating, and it was very important to me that our finished product would be something I was proud of.
2. Free/Inexpensive: This bride and groom are on a budget!
3. No expiration: Some sites expire one year after you create them, which (with what turned out to be a 19-month engagement) was NOT going to work for us.
4. Enabled for HTML coding: Like I said, I'm control freak.  I hate when things can only be entered a certain way.  I don't need elaborate customization options, but basic formatting tools like bold and italics are absolutely essential.

With those priorities in mind, a front-runner became immediately apparent: MyWedding.com

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It fulfills all of our priorities, is extremely easy to set up, and has tons of customization options!  There are so many layouts to choose from, many of which correspond with popular invitations from online stores like Minted, Wedding Paper Divas, Hello Lucky, and Papeterie, among others.  We have the option to turn off pages we're not using, plus there are blank pages that we can customize to suit our needs.  And the website url is short, which will make it easier to incorporate into our Save the Dates and other announcements.

I put a lot of effort into our site, and I'm extremely proud of the results.  We have pages devoted to Our Stories, the Wedding Party, Photo Galleries, Music Requests, and an online Guest Book.  Other pages feature resources for our guests, including Wedding Events, Accommodations, Local Attractions, Registries, and Contact Us pages.  Hopefully our guests will use and appreciate the site - but even if they don't, I'm grateful to have had something wedding-related to work on while we were waiting for our wedding date.

Are you using a wedding website?  How did you decide which platform to use?