Your wedding website doesn’t have to be lame By Kevin Purdy It doesn't cost a thing to have a website for your wedding these days, but a lot of them look cheaply made. We're not talking design, but a lack of useful, helpful information, along with a suggestion that guests will actually enjoy themselves if they attend. Whether you build your site yourself or stick with the seemingly mandatory template at The Knot (theknot.com), here's a few ideas on making your wedding web presence worth visiting. If your wedding involves a good number of people, buy your own web address, in the style of jimsmithandjanedoewedding.com (or, preferably, something shorter and catchier). That way, you can tell the relatives who complain about your “missing” e-mail where to look, and nobody has to remember a confusing string of random characters. By the way, when you do send out the link (or anything else), use the “BCC:” field instead of “To:,” unless you love interpersonal feuds and abhorrently long printouts. On your site, cover the need-to-know information reporter-style by including the Five W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. Once that’s done, add links to your gift registries, your reserved hotels, and the other basics you’ve seen on similar wedding sites. Then add the stuff that people will actually appreciate.  For one thing, give them great things to do when they’re not getting dressed or packing to leave. Assuming your wedding's somewhere near Buffalo, link them to Bill Rapaport's Buffalo Restaurant Guide (cse.buffalo.edu/restaurant.guide), or, oh, let’s just say, Spree’s new, improved online Dining Guide (buffalospree.com). There aren’t similarly wide-ranging guides to Buffalo’s bars, but your friends could probably make one up, no? Head to Google Maps (maps.google.com), click on the “My Maps” link in the upper-left, and invite them to collaborate with you on a pushpin-style guide to the best watering holes around. That map can easily be embedded on your wedding web page, making it easy to track the distance from the Marriott to Founding Father’s, for example. If bars and taverns aren't your thing, My Maps is a great tool for building any kind of customized city guide. The only thing most wedding guests like more than good food and drink is arguing about the song choices. Give them less to feel righteous about with a group playlist built on FlavorTunes (flavortunes.com). Create a base playlist by searching for song titles or artists, then invite the musically inclined to add tracks to it. That playlist, and streaming audio previews, can also be embedded into your site. What you hand to the DJ, or iPod manager, is ultimately your call, but a hive-mind playlist is an instant conversation starter among the musically opinionated (and, thereby, possibly less socially inclined). Kevin Purdy lives in the Elmwood Village and writes for Lifehacker. SUBSCRIBE NOW Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top