My Top Wedding Website Picks
Last week I covered how to organize your wedding website content BEFORE building it. This week we will take a look at a handful of my favorite wedding wedsite platforms. Keep in mind there are scads of wedding website platforms out there, and that this is by no means an exhaustive list. It merely represents a review of my personal picks. How did I arrive at my personal picks? I've been researching for weeks. I actually set up accounts and test drove all of the sites listed below.
All the Bells and Whistles: Top pick
What makes this site great? For starters, it lists scores of beautiful designs by over a dozen designers. Many of them are top wedding invitation designers, including Hello Lucky, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Wedding Paper Divas. In many cases you can order an invitation suite that matches your wedding website. I also love the custom aps available. I mentioned one of these in my Carbon Footprint Calculator post during Eco Week. Other aps include playlists, music requests, RSVP, car rentals, hotel bookings, and photo slideshows. In other words, WeddingWire.com is one of the most flexible and extendable platforms out there without being overly complicated. You can also forward the site to a custom URL you set up. This is by far my top pick for features.
WeddingWire.com Sample
Beautiful, Name-brand Designs
MyWedding.Com offers a basic and simple package that is linked to other planning features on the main site. But, like WeddingWire.com, what I love about MyWedding.com are the beautiful designs by heavy-hitting design forms such as Wedding Paper Divas, Minted, Hello Lucky, and Papeterie. Like many wedding website platforms, MyWedding.Com also has the option of matching invitations. Overall MyWedding.Com is super easy to set up and intuitive to use.
MyWedding.com Sample
Most Unique Designs
You will find no rose or diamond ring templates here. Provided in conjunction with Nearlyweds.com, the offbeat bride collection offers unique design templates in vintage, steam punk, goth, art nouveau, and Rock-a-billy designs–just to name a few. Offbeat Bride templates are not free, my they are reasonably priced at 5 bucks per month or $50 per year. You can order matching, off-beat stationary too. While you can totally customize your CSS for the ultimate control, I found this platform to be a bit more limiting for the out-of-the-box WYSIWYG inspired user. Still, the original designs make this a must pick for unique brides who want something other than flowers and frills.
Offbeat Bride Samples
Customizable and easy to use:
While if found OneWed's design templates to be on the slightly better side of average, each template is also highly customizable. You have complete control over basic design elements such as colors, and font types and sizes. The "wedding pre-party" option modeled, on Facebook's social media model also lets you connect with other couples as well as your guests. While I was not overly impressed with most of the designs, I thought OneWed combined a nice degree of customization while remaining easy to use.
Additional Resources and Listings
- 5 best websites for planning your wedding
- Popular Wedding Websites:scroll down for a comprehensive list