The New Face of the Wedding Website: Web 2.0 Wedding Planning

One of the most recent trends on the wedding horizon is the use of online wedding planning to help the bride, groom, and wedding party get and stay organized. Wedding websites have been around for almost as long as the Internet. Online photo albums provided an easy way for newlyweds to share wedding photos with friends and family far away. These days, however, wedding websites are about much more than photo books with pretty backgrounds. The best wedding sites combine Web 2.0 social networking with the knowledge of professional wedding planners to offer a planning tool that does everything but bless the marriage.

Tools you can use for the bride and groom

Planning tools are the heart of the modern, personalized wedding website. Bride and groom can take advantage of multiple integrated databases to keep track of their budget, guest list, wedding registries, and all wedding details in one central place. The best wedding planning tools found on customizable wedding websites include:

A wedding budget planner makes it easy to plan and track wedding expenses. You also don’t need a ledger and a bachelor’s degree in accounting. The best budget planners already list the most common wedding expenses and have spreadsheets set up for you to use. Just enter your numbers.

A good wedding vendor database is more than a list of vendors you can contact. A customizable database allows you to keep track of the vendors you’ve contacted, compare their offers and prices, and record any important communications. It’s a great way to make sure you don’t miss important deadlines with your vendors.

An integrated event planning suite includes a calendar, a basic event planner, guest lists that integrate with your events, an RSVP organizer, and a seating chart to make all your planning easy. Imagine being able to enter your guest list just once, then create custom lists for bridal showers, receptions, rehearsal dinners, and other wedding-related events with just a few mouse clicks. You’ll find it invaluable for putting together lists for invitations, thank you notes, and catering services.

An Email Blaster can be the handiest of all tools, and it’s even more useful when combined with the event planning package described above. Assemble mailing lists based on events, wedding roles, or any other field in your database and email everyone at once.

A gift registry is another wedding tool that’s been around for a long time, but Web 2.0 tools allow you to bring together multiple gift registries in one place for your guests to access.

Wedding website meets Web 2.0

But there is still more. The Web 2.0 wedding website also makes it easy to share photos, videos, music and more with your wedding party and guests. The social aspects of a personalized wedding website allow you to easily communicate with your guests and make it easy for them to communicate with you. Some of the uses are pretty obvious and intuitive, like emailing a link to a wedding photo album to all guests so they can view and comment on the photos. Some wedding websites, however, offer some pretty unique features like polls, quizzes, and photo sharing and tagging for both the guests and the wedding party.

If you’re in the beginning stages of planning a wedding, be sure to check out what the new generation of Web 2.0 wedding websites has to offer. You’ll be amazed at how easy they make all the planning and organizing.