Every geek or nerd who gets married wonders how to weave their passions, hobbies, or quirks into the wedding in a useful way. One idea that has become quite common by now is to create a wedding website.
In our case, this was especially helpful since we weren’t getting married in Germany and needed to provide travel instructions, hotel recommendations, and other useful information for our guests.
This article shares my thoughts and experiences, so you can hopefully save yourself some trial and error.
CMS and Design
For the CMS, I used WordPress, as I do for all my sites. It’s easy to install and comes with an endless range of themes and plugins that let you adapt it to your needs.
Choosing the right theme requires a bit of searching and experimenting—sometimes even customization. That’s a topic of its own, so I’ll leave it aside for now. The important thing is to make it as personal as possible.
For our site, I wanted something simple and intuitive that still contained all the necessary information. It should include our wedding logo and fit the theme of a beach wedding.
Protecting Personal Data
Design aside, protecting personal information is critical. A wedding site often contains personal photos and details, and it even reveals when you—and all of your guests—will be away from home. You don’t want that information available to just anyone.
I used the plugin WP-Members, which enables frontend user registration and restricts content to logged-in users. While the menu still shows all pages to everyone, non-logged-in visitors only see blank pages. Logged-in guests, on the other hand, can view everything.
Collecting Feedback
It’s great to hear from your guests. WordPress already makes it easy to collect feedback, but you can expand it further.
I enabled comments on posts and even used them to organize carpooling—essentially turning the comment section into a ride-sharing board. I also added a contact form so guests could ask us questions directly.
One feature I particularly liked was adding a guestbook. There are many plugins out there, but few good ones. The one I ended up using was Comment Guestbook, which cleverly reuses the comments as guestbook entries. It integrates nicely and can be customized to fit the site’s design.
Directions and Locations
Guests are the most important part of a wedding, and they need to find their way to the right place. That’s true for weddings abroad and for weddings at home, especially if there are multiple locations (registry office, church, party venue).
Instead of just listing addresses, I wanted a visual solution. I used the plugin MapPress Easy Google Maps. The free version was more than enough. It lets you embed Google Maps with pins directly into your pages, making navigation simple for everyone.
Other Plugins
There are countless plugins you can add. A few I’d recommend:
- JetPack, which I use on all my blogs
- a weather plugin to show the forecast for the big day
- a countdown clock to build anticipation
There are endless options, but these can give you a starting point.
Content Ideas
Here’s a quick overview of the types of content we included on our wedding website:
- Introduction of the couple: how we met, what we love about each other
- Location descriptions, with addresses and parking options
- Timeline of the wedding day
- Dress code, if relevant
- Hotel recommendations
- Contact details for us, the witnesses, the registrar, or the event manager
- Gift registry or link to a registry
- Photo galleries and a way for guests to upload their own photos
- Contact form and guestbook
The result was a site that answered most questions for our guests and gave them a fun way to interact before and after the event.
Have fun building your own! And if you have more ideas or tips, just leave a comment.
In Nerdy Wedding Part 2, I’ll share how we added even more nerdy touches to the wedding itself. Stay tuned.
