9 Destination Wedding Website Tips
Even though in my mind our Costa Rican wedding was not a “destination wedding”, it definitely felt like it to all of our out of country guests. When I started putting together the website, I tried to provide as much information as possible. I felt obligated to be a good host by trying to answer every question I could think of in one place. Last week, I started looking at wedding website designs for my sister which inspired me to share these 9 tips.
1. Find a free website. There are tons of sites out there that offer free wedding websites. I visited the ones I could find and scouted all their designs by my wedding colors to find the one I liked the most and we ended up using http://www.weddingwire.com. Here are some others you can look at: http://www.mywedding.com, http://www.theknot.com, http://www.ewedding.com, etc.
2. Think about the website URL. These free websites store your site in a subfolder under their domain. In other words, we couldn’t get for free “www.MatthewAndValeria.com”, instead we got http://www.WeddingWire.com/MatthewAndValeria. It is important to understand that your guests will not memorize the URL, so keep it as simple as possible and include the link wherever it makes sense: Save the dates, wedding invites, your email signature, your Facebook profile, etc.
3. Think about your site language. Since we had both English and Spanish speaking guests, I decided to include information in both languages and designated a font color for each language to avoid confusing our site visitors.
4. Make your website personal. Whether you have wedding guests you might not be very familiar with (cough cough – Hispanic parents), or all your extended family does not know all of your groom’s family, I really wanted everyone attending the wedding to know about us, our story, our families, and our wedding party. Additionally, since w
e didn’t do ceremony programs, this served as an introduction of everyone walking down the aisle.
5. Include all lodging details. Hotel name, location, special rates with taxes included, and how to get that rate. We also included a table comparing each hotel and what was included with the rate (internet, breakfast, etc.), as well as a map to help guests understand how far away they were from the venue.
6. Provide tourism guidance. Let’s face it, your out of country guests love you and traveled all this way to be there with you on your big day, but they want to have fun and explore the country. We partnered with a travel agency that lowered the prices of their tours and created a wedding email address to simplify reservations for our guests.
7. Consider providing wedding day transportation. The website is a great way to share this information. To do this you need to know how many guests are staying in which hotels and get a schedule from your transportation provider. You can request this information on your RSVP or email your guests. Additionally, we included the transportation schedule on their welcome bags.
8. Don’t forget FAQs and these other pages.
Wedding Day Information. Good for those that may loose the invite or leave the invite back home.
Restaurants. A list of walking distance restaurants surrounding each hotel since most out of country guests won’t rent a car.
Night Life
Attractions
Recommended Apps.
Contact Us
Registry
FAQs. Information about the country, weather, currency, etc. Every time someone asked me a different question I would update this page.
9. Finally, always reference your website. As I said in tip #2 a lot of people might not remember the website URL, so whenever they have questions, provide an answer, include the wedding website link, and remind them to visit the site for more information.
