The days of thick oversized vellum envelopes arriving with lavish invitations, reception cards, maps, RSVP cards and pre-stamped envelopes are fading.
Wedding websites are becoming more common as ways to announce the wedding and accept responses. Some include tabs with maps, hotel information, registry information, pictures and biographies on the wedding attendants, details of the honeymoon spot, the history of the couple and the story about how they became engaged.
They have music. They have themes. They have color schemes. They have blogs with updates on the planning.
They have as much personality as you can expect from an inanimate object.
Ashlee Wells and Jeremy Jackson, who are from Northwest Indiana and now live in Chicago, chose to put together a wedding website using a template on the free site MyWedding.com. “It was the easiest option for us to get the information we needed to our guests in a quick and easy way,” Wells says. “We did buy a URL so that we could have a custom web address.”
“The response has been great," she says. "We had a friend design very simple invitations with straightforward information but did not wish to include traditional response cards, maps or much additional information, so it was essential that our website provide an easy place for our guests to RSVP and find out additional details."
Although there was initially concern over some invitees not having Internet access, there ended up only being two that needed help. “My grandparents don't use the Internet, but they just had my mom RSVP for them. Jeremy had a family member that called in an RSVP and we recorded it on the website. I expected it to be a bit of an issue and had considered sending select paper RSVPs but am actually glad we didn't, as it worked out really well.”
“Most brides do use a wedding website to give guests their wedding details. Most go through a free site,” says Christina Zukoski, of the Northwest Indiana wedding consulting company Devoted Weddings and Events. “I had one bride who did not mail out invitations at all and did RSVPs solely online. But it was unique because she was a doctor and traveled and didn’t have a physical address to send RSVPs to. They were very digital and everything was done online.”
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