Wedding Website

As soon as we realized that people did wedding websites, Nathan and I knew that we wanted one. We are both rather tech savvy people and really loved the idea of having a website dedicated to us and our wedding. So, it was just the simple matter of finding which website to use. Haha...simple? Yeah right. 

There are a shockingly large number of wedding website providers. Now, if we had just made a website with the first provider we found and not looked any further we probably would have still been happy with a free site. However, the more we looked...the more features we realized we wanted. In the end, our list of requirements looked a lot like this:

• Unlimited Storage: a lot of the free websites had great features but only 50 or 100 mb worth of storage. I don't know about anyone else, but a lot of my pictures are 3-4 mb each, so that just wasn't going to cut it. We wanted to be able to have real photo albums on our site.
• An RSVP Function: While we will obviously still be sending out formal invitations with cards for people to return, we wanted people to have the option of doing it online instead. It will make our life a lot easier to keep track of people on the computers rather than sorting through and endless supply of paper responses. Surely some of our relatives won't have the slightest clue about how to even access the site, but it was still something we wanted to have available.
• Gift Registry: Most websites (free or paid) did have this page available, however, I still consider it a must have. It is considered rather impolite to put that sort of information directly on an invitation. So it was really hard to decide how to let people know where we will be registered. This way the information is just included as part of the wide variety of other things on our wedding website. It's not rude to include a website that happens to have registry information on an invitation or save the date...which is rather silly when you think about it, but that's just the way it is I suppose.
• Custom Domain Name: This wasn't even something that I had thought about before I began researching websites in earnest. Lots of websites offer this feature for an additional fee. The more we thought about it, the more that we decided it was worth paying for...a short/simple domain name clearly makes more sense when you think about printing save the date cards and invitations. It looks better and will actually fit (always a plus).

So, with these key features in mind...we started to seriously look around. I must have looked at 20 or more websites that allowed you to create your own website. Just when I thought that I had found "the one," I'd realize that it had limited storage space even after you paid to upgrade it or that there was no easy way to get a custom domain name. The biggest problem was finding a website with unlimited storage space that didn't cost over $100 to have the website up and running for a year. 

FINALLY, after browsing websites for hours on end, I came across Forever Wedding Websites. It had all of the features that we wanted and would only cost $60 for a whole year. While that might seem like quite a bit compared to the free options, it's important to remember that the wedding website was very important to us and that we really wanted unlimited storage and a custom domain name. Both of which would cost money no matter where we wanted the site from. It also didn't hurt that they had a cherry blossom theme available. 

Right now we are still using the 7 day free trial to make sure that it is EXACTLY what we want. Last night we had some technical difficulties with it and I was ready to throw in the towel. It is not super easy to update the site compared to others that I tried...but I have learned that it is doable. I think that this will end up being our final site. Once we spend some time working with it, I'm sure it will turn out beautifully. So far it's very attractive...the only complaint that I have is that there isn't an easy preview option. Instead you have to open up the site to see how it looks. Other than that though it has been going well. Now I just have to think about how to describe myself, our story, the day he proposed, our wedding party......you get the point! We still don't have all the details set yet, such as time and place...so our website will be incomplete for a little while yet. However, it's exciting to have it started!!!