How to Make a Wedding Website - Jimdo Tutorial

In this guide you’ll learn how to:

1. Select the right template for your wedding website

2. Sign in and choose a domain name

3. Create the right pages for your wedding website

4. Add extras like RSVP forms and links to your registry

5. Upload photos and customize your website to match your wedding style

First comes love, then comes marriage; somewhere in between comes creating the perfect wedding website. Despite all of the options out there right now, building a wedding website is the best solution for creating a centralized location where your guests can find your wedding date, locations for the ceremony and reception, and your registries. You can also share photos, video and other media, and accept RSVPs all from the same place. 

Jimdo makes building a wedding website easy. Any of our flexible designs can become a wonderful wedding website template. And our sites have tools to help you land near the top of Google’s results so if your guests forget your domain name, your site is a quick search away. It is also easy to integrate third-party tools like social media feeds, a countdown timer, and the weather forecast for the big day. 

This guide will teach you everything you need to know about creating your own wedding website with Jimdo.

Whether you’re planning for a big or small gathering, Jimdo is a great solution for creating your wedding’s website. You can even make a wedding website for free and then upgrade to JimdoPro or JimdoBusiness when you feel ready to add your own domain name and want a dedicated email account for corresponding with your guests.

Getting started building your Jimdo website is simple. Visit www.jimdo.com/templates and select a starting template. Don’t worry though, you can easily change Jimdo templates at any time without losing any of your work.

With Jimdo, there’s no one specific “wedding” template that you have to use — Jimdo’s modern and responsive templates are available for all types of websites. With the right images and text any Jimdo template can make a fantastic wedding website that will look great on laptops, tablets, or phones. The template determines where on the page your logo, navigation, content area, and sidebar will appear. You can learn more about how to select the perfect template for your Jimdo website on our blog.

Making the best wedding template choice will come down to the type of specific features and content you plan on showcasing, as well as your personal taste. Choosing a template with a sidebar at the bottom is a good way to display the date of your wedding on every page, but also maintain a wide content area for a clean, modern look.

Prague or Zurich are both good choices. If you have a lot of great photographs from your engagement shoot and want to showcase those, you might consider a template like Rome for your wedding website. You can select or change your template at any time by logging into your website and clicking Templates in the Site Admin and then selecting one to preview from the alphabetical list. If you like it, click Save, otherwise choose Undo and try a different option.

To see all the features of different templates and sort them to find ones that will meet the needs of your wedding website, browse the Jimdo Template Filter, but remember that you can change the color, photographs, and subject matter of the examples very easily.

While anyone can create a free wedding website with Jimdo, most will want to use JimdoPro or JimdoBusiness so they can hide the Jimdo advertisement on their site and register and/or connect a custom domain name to make it super easy for people to find you online.

Choosing the right domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make when starting out with your wedding website. Create your wedding website and choose your domain name before purchasing save-the-dates so that you can include the website address. If possible, the best choice is still to get a .com domain (as opposed to .net or .org) to avoid any confusion. Domains are not case-specific and can’t have spaces or characters other than letters, numbers, and dashes - so don’t be tempted to use other special characters, such as an ampersand (&).

Selecting the right domain might be challenging if your names are common, long, or difficult to spell. In cases like this, consider appending the word “wedding” to the domain. If you still are having trouble finding a good domain name, try using a short phrase that is all run together as one word like “ElleAndBrent.” Since domain names are not case sensitive, you can always make them easier to read by showing them written or typed with the first letter of each word capitalized.

Avoid domain names that are too difficult to spell or ones that use hyphens as those will require you to spend extra time explaining how to reach you online. Another common pitfall is replacing words with numbers - avoid that at all costs.

Most guests expect to find certain information on a wedding website, so you’ll want to make sure that you provide all the relevant information for your guests. A wedding website will have two primary audiences: guests that plan on attending, and invited guests who can’t make it.

Consider adding these pages to your website:

Home:

Your homepage is a great place to display as much important information as possible: wedding date, location, and time. Add a picture of your partner and yourself so that your guests know right off the bat that they’re on the right site. Your homepage is also a great place to add a countdown timer, such as from POWr.io, to let everyone know how close the date is. Also make sure to mention your latest updates. 

Story:

People love to hear how couples met, so share your story with your guests on a dedicated page of your website. Spruce it up and consider creating an interactive timeline with a plugin such as Timeline JS. You can also easily add a slideshow with the Photo Gallery Element. 

Event Details: 

One of the first things that a visitor will want to do on your website is find the details of your wedding ceremony, reception, and any other events you have planned. Start by adding a nice photo and include the date, time, and location of both the ceremony and reception. If your ceremony/receptions locations have websites as well, it’s a good idea to link to them just in case your guests have questions. Consider using the Columns Element to make your page more organized and better looking. 

Travel Info/Hotels: 

If there’s a good chance some of your guests will be coming from out of town, you should include a page with travel information and nearby hotels. Provide the nearest highway exit and directions from the exit to the ceremony and reception locations, as well as the closest airport, rental car options, and ride services. You can also easily add maps with the locations of your ceremony and reception with the Google Maps Element. This is also a good place to include a weather forecast widget so your guests can pack accordingly. Out-of-town guests often like to make a vacation out of the trip, so consider adding some nearby attractions to this page, as well.

Registry:

Your wedding guests are eager to buy you some gifts to start your new life. Linking to your registry is easy: grab an image or logo from the websites of the shops where you’re registered, upload them to a Photo Element, click the chain link icon, and paste in the URL of your registry; or go even simpler with a Button Element. Not interested in an ordinary registry? Zola.com partners with popular stores and allows you to accept cash for your dream honeymoon all from one page that’s easy to link to from your Jimdo site. 

FAQs:

An FAQs page is a great place to include your wedding info at a glance and include any other details that might be helpful for your guests, for example, your meal options, what your guests should wear, and where to send gifts in the event that a guest can’t make it. If you’d like to spruce up the page, you can use an FAQ accordion widget from POWr.io. 

Wedding Party:

Introduce your wedding guests to your maid of honor, best man, and/or any other members of your wedding party. Include their photos, names, titles, and a brief introduction for each member. Use Columns Elements to help align the photos and text.

RSVP/Contact:

Make it easy for your guests to RSVP to your wedding by creating an RSVP page and including a Form Element. Include the pertinent fields: name, email address, number of guests (if you’re inviting +1’s), and dinner preference. It’s also a great idea to allow guests to RSVP to the wedding, reception, or both (a “check all that apply” option). 

This is also a great place to include a contact form so that your guests can ask you questions directly from your site. You might also want to include the contact email addresses for those in charge of bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, etc. It’s a great idea to include a guestbook on this page, as well.

Bonus: Post-Wedding Photos:

Think your wedding website is only relevant until the ceremony? No way! Add a Photos page after the wedding so your guests can revisit the magic. Pro tip: include a Social Feed plugin from POWr.io and set the feed up so that images posted to Instagram and Twitter with your hashtag (e.g. #elleandbrentwedding) are automatically displayed!

One of the first things your guests will look for on your wedding website is to RSVP your wedding. Using the Form Element is an easy way to accept RSVPs on your site, but you can also easily embed an RSVP tool from RSVPify, which includes additional features such as guest list management and the ability to secure RSVPs with a passcode, so only your invited guests can submit the RSVP form. 

After you’ve set up your registries, it’s a good idea to create a page of your wedding website dedicated to linking to the registries. Add the logo of the store where you’re registered and link it directly to your specific registry URL. If you’re planning on accepting donations for your honeymoon, you can also include a PayPal Donate Button by pasting the code into a Widget/HTML element. 

Once you have all your content on your website, the next step is to make sure your wedding website gets the proper attention from Google and other search engines. The practice of actively trying to make your website more appealing to sites like Google is called Search Engine Optimization. You might think this isn’t necessary for a single event, but if your guests misplace their invitation and didn’t save the website address, it’s nice for them to be able to find your site with a quick Google search. Appearing in all the search results that you want will take a little time, but by following the advice in this guide, you will be successful.

Start by using the tools that Jimdo provides. Go to Settings > Site Title and entering your names and your wedding date. Next go through each page of your website and click on the SEO button on the Site Admin. For each page, enter a Page Title. This will appear next to your Site Title in search results, so you don’t want to make it too long. You will see a handy preview of what your Google result will look like that will tell you if you use too many characters. 

Take this opportunity to add a Description for the page as well. Make sure to mention the your names, the wedding date, and location in the description for each page. These will be important terms that people will use to find you on search engines. 

Similar to the page descriptions, make sure you have the relevant text on your website that mentions your names, the date and location of your wedding. It is also important to properly use headings throughout your site. Put a large Heading Element at the top of each page and use Medium Headings and Small Headings to introduce new sections of pages. 

You’re probably excited to share the news with your friends on Facebook and Twitter anyway, so be sure to share the link to your wedding website on your profiles - this will also help you gain further SEO traction.

By this point, you should have most of the basics of building a wedding website down pretty well, but it never hurts to get a bit more advice. Here are some more best practices to follow and some pitfalls to avoid:

• Don’t add any music or video with sound that autoplays to your wedding website. Arriving at a website or flipping to a new page of a site and suddenly having your speakers blaring to life is a surefire way to scare away your visitors. 

• Do include a form for RSVPs. Make sure to include a field for each piece of information you need. Also be sure to add a contact form so your guests can contact you in case they have questions or special requirements.

• Don’t make the homepage of your wedding website into a splash page. A splash page is when you arrive at a site and just see and image and a button and nothing else. This is frustrating for your visitors and will not do you any favors with search engines.

• Do add text to your homepage in a logical and clean way. Adding your wedding date, location, and time is the best way to give your guests what they are looking for.

• Do add a map to your Event Details page. Include the locations of the ceremony, reception, and any other events you have planned.

• Don’t delete the website right after the wedding. Add photos from the ceremony, reception, and honeymoon. Include the website address on your thank you cards so your guests remember to come back and check for pictures.

• Do include a guestbook. Let your guests check in and say congratulations! 

For more ideas for your wedding website, check out our blog post The Best Free Widgets for Your Wedding Website.

Building a wedding website is not difficult, but there are a lot of small details that you need to make sure you take care of. This checklist can be really helpful to make sure you don’t forget any of the steps that will help you be successful with your website. If you have trouble with any of these steps, please explore the Jimdo Support Center. 

• You registered or a connected a unique custom domain
• You created an email address using your domain
• You tried out a few templates and selected the right one
• You have created 4-8 pages of your website
• Your navigation menu does not break onto a second line 
• (for templates with horizontal menu)
• Your headings font stands out but is easy to read
• Your paragraph font is very easy to read and not overly stylized
• You hid the login link
• You hid any unnecessary footer links
• Your background images are high-quality and look good
• Remove unnecessary or redundant header text
• You use images regularly on every page
• Your paragraphs are in short blocks of 2-4 sentences
• You are using Columns Elements to place content next to each other
• You are accepting RSVPs on your website
• You have added a guestbook to your website
• You added a favicon 
• You updated the Site Title
• You added a Page Title and Description in the SEO panel for each page of the site
• You linked to all of your social media profiles from your website
• You linked to your website from all of your social media profiles
• You have linked to your registries
• You have added a map
• You have added a contact form

http://elleandbrentwedding.jimdo.com/

Template: Prague

Nothing beats using original professional photographs on your wedding website, but that isn’t an option for everyone. If you need some great photographs for your website, there are dozens of websites with fantastic photographs that are free and legal to use. Here are just a few ones to start with. Click on each image or links to download the example or others from the same source:

More Wedding Photographs on Pixabay

More Wedding Photographs on Unsplash