Putting the www in Wedding

I know I want to keep our invites simple. The invite itself, a postcard style RSVP, and the outer envelope. No fancy pocket fold contraptions, no "wedding booklet", no belly bands. Just clean and simple (read, less expensive).

Therein lies the problem. If I want simple invites, then I need another way to inform our guests about all the things that would traditionally go into the invitation. Directions, lodging, reception and ceremony info, and registry preferences. So what's a girl in 2010 to do?

Create a wedding website. 99% of our guests are tech savvy enough to type in a URL, and a website is by far the easiest way for all of our guests to access any info they may possibly need about our wedding. In fact, it may be more information than they ever care to know.

I spent a good chunk of time today reading up on all the major "create your own" wedding websites. Some are free, some are not. Let's explore.

{Wedsite}

Wedsite was just. . .o.k. I wasn't really impressed by the templates and the interface was not very intuitive. Moving on. . .

{eWedding}

eWedding is a great site. It offers a variety of templates and is fairly user friendly. Yet I still felt like I couldn't customize the templates enough and they all seemed to be very "modern" looking.

{Wedding Website from the Knot}

Way before we even got engaged, I was a shameless member of the knot. When you sign up with the knot, you automatically have a website that is linked to your profile that also syncs with your guest list manager on the site. It was easy to use, and I even set one up for us to show how easy it is. The templates were kind of . . .meh. I wanted a website that I could truly customize and make it truly look like us.

I ultimately decided to go with wedding window

Although this one is not free (a monthly membership to have unlimited use of the site) I was really really impressed with this site. Creating our website was so incredibly easy and I was able to customize the colors, photos, text, well, pretty much everything about the site. It also comes with a handy budget tracker and guest list manager that is so fun to use! 45 minutes worth of fiddling with it, and here are the results

As we add info to the site, it will show up on the left hand side. Yeah, it's a little blank right now, but I am crushing on our wedding website big time! Now when we send out our invites, the only info they will need to know is our URL! I plan on adding information in the coming weeks so the website will be ready to go when guests receive their invites.

How have you used technology to make your wedding or life easier? Did you decide to make a wedding website?