A Wedding Website

I always love when couples have wedding websites. I'm one of those dorks who reads through every page and actually does check back to see if it's been updated. I think it might be because I love hearing couples' love stories. So I knew I wanted our own wedding website. Aside from me wanting one, I think it will actually be helpful for our guests (particularly those from OOT), and we're going to use it instead of paper RSVPs. 

I spent quite awhile finding a wedding website that I was happy with. I haven't ever loved The Knot's wedding websites, and almost everyone I know ('in real life'/whose weddings I actually attended) used them, so they were out. I tried Wedding Wire first, but while I really liked their planning tools, I didn't like the choices of layouts they had at all. I also disliked how their RSVP page was set up, and I hated their photo page. I wasn't able to make albums, so all of our pictures would've been mixed together and not at all organized. This probably isn't a big deal for most people, but as I've said before, I'm a big picture person, so it was pretty important for me.

I tried mywedding next, and I ended up loving it! Look how perfect this layout is:

I added Robert Fulghum's "Union" quote to the Welcome page just to add something a little different (and because I love it!). It also has a countdown to our wedding day.

And just because David is too cute for his own good, I'll share the 'Our Story' page with you. I included our proposal story on this page as well:

(Click to enlarge)

For our Wedding Party page, mywedding allows you to upload a photo for each person, so for each of my ladies I added a picture of her and me, and for each of David's guys I added a picture of the two of them together. I know, I know.. More pictures!

For the Photo Galleries page, I separated our pictures into "The First Few Years," "The Last Couple Years," "With Our Families," "The Proposal and the Ring," and "Engagement Pictures":

I also added a Music page with songs that are meaningful to us (that you can chose to have playing while you look at the site), a Wedding Events page with the important details about the ceremony and reception (what the website is actually for), an Attractions page for things to do around the city, a Registries page with a link to our Target (and soon to be Bed Bath & Beyond) registry, a Guestbook page, and a Contact Us page. I'll be adding an Accomodations page as soon as David calls the hotels we've talked about reserving blocks of rooms at.

I'll activate the RSVP page after we send out our invitations. We'll be able to link the Excel spreadsheet that David made of our guest list and then make it so that each guest in each party checks either 'attending' or 'unable to attend' rather than them selecting the number of guests that will be attending. I hoping this will keep people from RSVPing for people that weren't invited, as we're already inviting the maximum amount of guests we can.

Overall, I'm really happy with the results and I'm excited for our guests to see it! The link is on the STDs, which are hopefully going to be sent out no later than next week, so our website will have its first visitors soon! We definitely want to have the Accomodations page and our other registry on the site before we send out the STDs, since I know most people will only look at the site once (if that) right after they receive the link. I'll be adding more details as they're planned, but I'm guessing only a small number will check back and see them, except for when people visit the site to RSVP after invitations are sent out in April.

Hopefully my review of the couple sites I tried was helpful! If I left anything out or you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Are you using a wedding website? If so, what was your main purpose for using one?
 And did you find most people actually visited it after receiving the link to it?