There are plenty of websites that provide easy, nice looking templates for your own wedding website, they range from very customizable to fairly basic (Check out Miss Panther's post here for more info). Many have fees and costs involved (often in the $25-100+ range), but there are also free ones out there such as eWedding and WeddingChannel. Yet, I decided that free and easy was too good for me. I wanted a challenge! So I decided to build our own wedding website. I did this for two reasons: 1) I wanted it to be completely custom, 2) I wanted to learn how to make my own website. Armed with Dreamweaver CS4 and this book, I set to work.
Since I am new to this I decided to keep the design fairly simple. This is what you first see when you type in the URL:
Personal Image
Here is the home page:
The banner and left-side menu are on every page, which I set up as a Dreamweaver template. I included a lot of travel info for our guests and a FAQ section where we mention dress codes, average temperatures, and I even let our guests know that we are both keeping our names. I may have gone overboard with the photo section. Currently there are 12 pages of photos and I keep adding more… somebody keep me away from my scanner.
Here are some things you should know if you plan to build your own wedding website:
-It’s not free. I had to pay for a domain name and for web hosting, I used godaddy.com.
-It takes time, especially if this is new to you.
-You will get frustrated, especially if this is new to you.
Why I’m glad I did it:
-Free reign over the design.
-We were able to easily include any information we wanted (lots of sections on traveling to Palm Springs), and omit anything we didn’t want (guest book and online RSVPs—which I know some people love, but I’m a snail mail lady).
-It was a great learning process (and it is still a learning process).
-easy and personalized URL address.
Do you have a wedding website? Did you use an online template or build it yourself?
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