Earlier this week we featured a little post about the possibilities that wedding websites can cater for and just how easy it is to set one up, and so today we thought we’d delve a little deeper and have a bit of a discussion about the relative merits of having a wedding website over sticking with good old fashioned pen and paper. So which way should you go? Time to put it to the debate!
In the Red Corner, keeping things analogue and arguing to keep things on pen n’ paper, but then unlike Matt she does actually understand how pen & paper actually work and doesn’t have the handwriting of a poorly tutored rhinoceros, it’s Dom “The Tog Bride”
In the Blue Corner, lover of all things digital and, having road-tested one himself earlier this week, arguing for the wedding website. he claims to keep a digital office to save the rainforests but in reality has just been typing so long he can’t remember how a biro operates, it’s Matt “The Gormless Groom”
Wedding Website Vs Pen n’ Paper
FIGHT!!!
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Dom: Whilst there are one or two companies offering specifically designed wedding templates, making and designing a website is a matter of personal taste and if you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for pre-designed they can end up being expensive and incredibly time consuming to set up, time and money that could perhaps be better spent on the wedding itself.
Matt: If you have lots of guests coming to your wedding it can be much more time consuming trying to keep all of them in the loop with any changes or details they might need to know. Having a wedding website provides a simple way for all your guests to find the most up-to-date information about the wedding along with a whole host of info you can’t easily put in a letter such as interactive maps and videos.
Dom: Digital messages and information just seems so much less personal, whereas creating beautiful invites and personalised stationary is a lovely thing to receive in the post. After all we only ever seem to receive bills and bad news in the post these days, it’s so nice when someone posts something lovely and happy through the door!
Matt: There’s so much you can do with a wedding website without much hassle thanks to some great templates. They can provide an easy way for the guests to RSVP, share photos and videos and even include an online wedding gift-list or allow people to donate to a honeymoon or a house-improvement fund rather than buy you stuff you don’t really need!
Dom: Making stationary yourself and sending out hand-written letters isn’t just more personal for the guests, it feels much more special for you as the bride and groom. Weddings are traditional events and somehow doing everything digitally just feels wrong. There’s nothing like hand-crafting written invitations or scribbling down notes in your pretty wedding notebook or sending out thank-you cards you’ve made yourself, it’s all part of the wonderful planning process!
Matt: But a wedding website is not just for the guests either! A website can allow you to express your personality in ways stationary can’t and also provides you with a one-stop-shop for all your wedding information whilst allowing you to send anything you want your guests to see out instantly, from table plans to schedule updates to local hotels and parking spaces.
Dom: Having a wedding website sometimes means people just check the website rather than talking to you personally which might on the face of it be considered a good thing in terms of time saving, but weddings are an amazing way of bringing you closer to your friends and family and in my book that means having more, not less contact with all of them in the lead-up to the day. There also might be privacy issues as those that you actually don’t want to find out any details about your day can easily stumble across it!
Matt: Wedding websites are useful not just in the lead-up to the wedding but on the day itself. For example guests can check the schedule to see if they have time to nip back to their hotel room or you can provide maps to venues so anyone lost on the day itself can look it up on their phones and be sure they can get there.
Dom: But lots of wedding venues are in areas with little or no phone signal and if guests are relying on being able to look up where they need to be on their phones and haven’t got a physical copy of the details you actually could end up with far more lost guests, not less!
Matt: With templates like the one we looked at earlier in the week setting up a wedding website is so quick and easy (and free!) that even if you do want to send out paper invites and information it’s probably worth having a wedding website anyway to provide additional info you can’t get into the letter.
So those are our thoughts but where do you stand? Leave a comment to join the debate or simply place your vote in our poll below!
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