World Wide Weddings
Jessica Emerson and her fiance live in Los Angeles. Their parents live in Arizona. And their extended family is spread across England, France, Argentina and Israel. Including everyone in their wedding plans would have entailed dozens of long-distance phone calls and overseas postal delays.
So a year after Uri Fleming proposed, Emerson solved her communication crisis as would any tech-savvy bride.
She launched her own Web site.
Providing the details of her June ceremony--directions, color schemes, even a synopsis of how Fleming popped the question in a jewelry shop while she tried on rings for fun--Emerson’s site regularly updates family and friends on the wedding’s latest developments.
“For us, [launching the site] was the most natural thing to do because what else do you do when you have information to share? You put it up on the Internet,” Emerson, 22, said.
With families living hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles apart, so-called wed sites like Emerson’s are fast becoming a popular way to keep far-flung relatives in the loop about the big day.
Combining something old with something new, wed sites meld one of society’s most enduring customs with one of its most recent innovations. Couples without the time or money to share news with loved ones individually can now share it with the whole world at once.
“It’s not the people in the neighborhood coming to a wedding anymore,” said Jim Lyna, creator of a Maine-based Web design service at https://www.aswewed.com. “It’s people from all over.”
Wed sites are primarily functional, reducing the number of times brides and grooms must answer the same questions and eliminating bulky wedding invitations crammed with maps and hotel listings.
Most sites provide basic information about the ceremony: times, dates, places. The more sophisticated ones include directions, air fares and details on the wedding party. A few even encourage guests to RSVP online.
Some couples go all out, creating sites as elaborate as their wedding ceremonies. Online quizzes test guests’ knowledge of the couple. Automated tickers count down the days, hours and minutes to the ceremony. Videos broadcast proposals captured on film. And biographies of the couples’ families include profiles of pet dogs, cats and even chickens.
“There’s all you could ever want to know and more,” said Season Moore, who recognizes wed sites with unique designs at https://www.bestweddingpages.com.
Sites replete with live streaming video of the wedding ceremony can cost a couple more than $1,000 to have made. But most for-hire Web designers can create simpler sites for about $100.
Couples with design experience can build their own and register a specialized domain name (such as https://www.aboutdamntime.com) for about the same cost. Sites such as https://www.weddingchannel.com and https://www.theknot.com also offer Web-building services and host users’ sites for free.
Though the majority of couples planning weddings today do not have wed sites, the number is growing, said Jerard J. Monaghan, president of the Assn. of Bridal Consultants. When his daughter was planning her wedding in the early 1990s, she mailed her guests a newsletter containing details of the event--an innovative idea for the time. With the evolution of the Internet that followed, couples can now give their guests much more.
“One of the trends of last decade has been the personalization of weddings, the bride and groom putting their own stamp [on it], and wedding Web sites help them do that because they can put out more information than they previously would have,” Monaghan said.
Emerson’s site, for example, includes photographs of her registered china, as well as color samples of her linens. And though she mailed each of her groomsmen a postcard to fill out with their tuxedo measurements, she posted a copy online. If a groomsman loses the card, he can simply print it from the site.
Other couples toss in a bit more kitsch.
Deanna and Russell designed the site for their Mackinac Island wedding with graphics of Renaissance minstrels, photographs of horse-drawn carriages and orchestral music.
Marne and Steve included an online journal. One of Marne’s entries for February: “After spending a Saturday with the girls, looking for the perfect dress, I visited Spiegel’s online catalog (thanks for the suggestion Angela!) and found a dress. I ordered it up and what do you know I love it!”
Matt and Greg asked their friends to tell them apart--from closely cropped photographs of their legs.
And Leslie and Eric, uncertain which song to play for their first dance, are taking an online poll. Choices include “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” by Stevie Wonder, “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke, “Day and Night” by Frank Sinatra and “A Kiss to Build a Dream” by Louis Armstrong. According to the site, about 150 people have voted. It doesn’t indicate which one is ahead.
The need to convey a lot of information to a lot of people at once has prompted some wedding consultants to include wed sites as part of their service. Before she offered sites three years ago, Betsy Wilbur, owner of Master Plans in Pasadena, had to respond individually to wedding guests’ inquiries. Now she can refer most people to her clients’ Web sites.
“Along the way, it occurred to me this is a really good thing that went well with what I was already doing,” she said.
Most Web designers suggest launching wed sites about six months to a year before the wedding, though online hosting packages vary. Couples marrying within the next few months can follow the lead of newlyweds such as Alex and Syneva Barrett, who launched their site two months after their wedding to post photographs of the ceremony and honeymoon. Within the first month of its debut, the site received more than 50,000 hits from family and friends eager to view the pictures.
“We put a lot of time into planning the wedding, and having it last only three or four hours is kind of a letdown. It helps in lengthening the memory for us,” said Alex Barrett, who has since created his own Web design business, https://www.wed-designs.com, in Minnesota.
There are no rules outlining how couples should publicize their wed sites, but general practice discourages them from printing the URL on the wedding invitations. Instead, they should include it on a “save the date” notice sent to guests several months before the invitations are mailed. If the site is not yet launched at that time, its address can be printed on a separate card included in the invitation packet.
As for the sites, couples are encouraged to include registry information, eliminating those awkward moments when guests inquire where they can purchase wedding gifts. They should also consult their wedding photographers about copyright issues before posting pictures of the ceremony online.
Although tradition has long directed weddings, guidelines for wed sites are less defined, giving couples more freedom when creating their own.
“The original etiquette books didn’t cover Internet etiquette,” Wilbur said.
Regardless of how a couple’s site is designed, it should reach out to those attending the ceremony, giving them a connection to the couple. Guests who might be friends of the couple’s parents but not the bride and groom themselves, for example, can learn about them before attending the ceremony.
“The wedding Web page is the way to start the community around the wedding,” said Adam Berger, chief executive of Los Angeles-based WeddingChannel.com.
The sites, however, should not give away too much about the event. Concerned about “taking some of the gasp factor away” from her ceremony, Emerson is not posting the wedding invitation online until after invitations have been mailed to her guests.
And she won’t include pictures of her wedding dress.
“You still want people to be overwhelmed when the bride walks in,” she said.
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Christine Frey is a freelance writer.
