In most categories of my wedding budget I have overspent. Firstly because, despite all good intentions at the beginning of wedding planning, you do get swept up in the YOGMO mentality (you only get married once). But also because no-one really talks about how out-of-control wedding costs actually are. So yeah, that £15k budget is looooong gone, bruv.
However.
An area I think I actually saved money on, was my invites. Or I should say, lack of.
I decided to use a wedding website to invite my guests to my wedding and honestly it’s been way better than I thought it would be. I thought it would be an easy way to cut costs, eliminating the need for getting physical invitations designed, printed and posted. But actually, I’ve realised over the course of wedding planning that a website is just… better? Here’s why.
Why a Wedding Website is a MUST.
1) It’s cheaper than invitations.
Ok the obvious, as I’ve already stated, is that there is a cost saving involved in using a website. I built my wedding website on WithJoy.com and it is completely free! I was actually kind of shocked that it’s all free because there are so many good features you can use. I did decide to get a custom url from GoDaddy, just so that it was easy to remember and looked a bit more sophisticated. But it was super cheap, around £10 for a year.
If the only set-back to you is that you like the idea of printing something so that people can put it on their fridges, I recommend doing a physical Save The Date, then using the website as the official invitation. Best of both worlds.
2) You can fully control the guest list and track RSVPs.
Gone are the days of getting texts and emails with your wedding RSVPs, which you then have to track on a spreadsheet. Instead, the dashboard on With Joy does it all for you. Not only does it track RSVPs, it also tracks guest food choices, song requests and anything else you want to ask them. You can export it all if you need to email your caterer the food info, it’s super easy.
3) Day guest and Evening guests can see different information!
I love this. If you are having additional guests in the evening, you can also invite them using the wedding website. Each item on your website can be tailored to who can see it using tags you give to each guest. So if you have evening guests, they won’t be able to see the ceremony details and won’t have to give food choices. And if you like they can see something different that your day guests can’t – maybe the parking info is different or you need them to use a different entrance for example. It’s all very tailored to what you want to show each guest.
I also used this to show extra info to guests staying the night before the wedding, it’s very handy!
4) You can include so much more info than on an invitation.
There’s a lot to fit into your average wedding invite – venue details, food choices, timings, accommodation, parking, RSVP info. It’s a lot. But on a website you can put as much or as little as you like. You can include a timeline of your day, eliminating the need for Order Of The Day stationary. You can include some information on your relationship/your love story to add a bit of context. You can include lots of photos if you like, or link to a gift registry. Totally your call.
I liked being able to put up photos of my wedding party on a page, as well as adding different hotel options for my guests depending on budget.
5) You can gently remind people to RSVP by email.
Let’s face it, people have busy lives and don’t always RSVP right away. Whereas if you’ve sent physical invites, it can be awkward to have to call someone to remind them to RSVP, on a wedding website, it’s completely painless. The wedding website theme translates to emails and there are custom emails to remind your guests to RSVP. They look professional and not too pushy. I like them a lot.
6) Any updates are easy to communicate.
Similarly, you can easily update any information on your website. If anything changes after you’ve sent your invite you can immediately amend it. Sure you can amend it on the website, but you can also add a banner to the top of the site with any updates, or you can send one of those fancy emails out to guests with the updates.
7) You can add a password to your wedding website.
If you’re worried about just anyone accessing your wedding info, don’t! You add a password to your site so only guests that have it can get in. You can also stop Google from putting your website on search engines with one click, so there’s no chance of wedding crashers.
Ok I’ll stop gushing. I realise this totally reads as a sponsored post but I promise it isn’t! I was just super impressed with my With Joy wedding website. It went down really well with my guests and made tracking everything so easy for me from a planning POV. I highly recommend getting one.
Happy wedding planning, lads!
