I’ve received so many sweet compliments regarding our wedding website that I figured it would be worthy of a post for those of you planning your own wedding, looking forward to planning one day down the road or for those who might just be curious!

A note about these wedding planning-related blog posts - I know no bride or groom really wants to be verbally told a bunch of wedding advice they didn’t ask for - I’m in that boat myself in many cases. We (brides and grooms) have lots of questions and we tend to go to the internet for ideas, research and etiquette do’s and don’ts. For goodness sake, we’ve never done this whole plan-a-wedding thing before! And even all the major event planning experience only goes so far in planning YOUR wedding. We tend to ask a few close friends or family for their opinions, to share their experiences or connections but otherwise we don’t really want to be told the best way to do things. So everyone shares this experience of “figuring it out” and we’re all just trying to “stay in our lane” but also totally winging it. But you come out on the other side not only married but with lots of great knowledge on the process. That doesn’t mean you want to become a wedding planner after it but you have lots of learned information that’s mostly only relevant for brides and grooms who are also getting married like right now. Because it’s wild how rapidly the wedding industry and trends change in events like this. So I want to capture this info in as close to real-time as possible without giving away too much before the big day. And honestly, I want to remember the process. As stressful as the decisions large and small continue to be in this process, I want to encapsulate the creative journey to personally reflect on and to showcase the art of creating our special day, not just the result but the attention to each detail and the thought-process in designing a bespoke experience for our loved ones that emanates our love story. So maybe the posts inspire you in your wedding planning process or maybe you’re like me and you’re a sucker for the story behind everything. Either way, I hope these posts bring you even just a sliver of the joy they’ve brought me in the opportunity to share them.

I looked at a few different options for places to host a wedding website and I knew that while I was capable of building something on Squarespace like I’ve done for past work projects or for my blog (I use Squarespace for The Amateur Apron), I honestly wasn’t interested in the bill it would rack up and figured I could sacrifice some customization in order to focus on other aspects of the wedding to which I wanted to devote significant time.

Minted Wedding Websites

Minted drew me in, initially, by the beautifully designed wedding invitations and save-the-dates. I love the elegance of their artist-designed options but I had a very specific design in mind for my wedding paper goods and signage. So after a lot of back-and-forth, I opted to design my own invitations. (I seriously cannot wait to share the post about how I developed the concept for the invitations but I want to wait a little longer for that!)

I say all of that because, one of the cool things about Minted is that they offer website templates designed as a suite with many of their invitations, meaning you can have a consistent look throughout your correspondence. I loved that, and again, it made it really difficult to make a decision, but I went with a template that doesn’t share the *exact* colors of our wedding (not that people really notice but the Save-the-Dates I designed do not share a consistent look with our invitations and signage either but I try not to dwell on that - I tell myself it is just a minor detail that probably HOPEFULLY only annoys me!!) but I loved the simplicity of the website template and I’m so pleased with it!

What to Know About Premium Features for Minted Wedding Websites

It was sheer luck that I happened to sit down to actually create the site on a day that Minted offered free personalized URLs for wedding websites (with a code). Looking back, it would have been worth every penny. Standard wedding websites are free but the code allowed me to unlock the “premium” wedding website features which include the option for a photo gallery (we loved this because it was an easy way to share our engagement photos with loved ones in a super convenient location), a custom URL, password protection (if needed), and custom pages.

The standard wedding website option on Minted (for those who might be curious but don’t want to investigate for themselves right this moment) include address collection (we didn’t utilize this only because we had already done all of that ourselves lol), RSVP for multiple events, and the sites are smartphone-friendly!

Premium features are available for a one-time $20 set-up fee. Not too shabby! And for those that really love the custom URL, (reminder: that’s a premium feature) you can renew it upon the 12 month expiration for a fee.

Yes, I know you can buy a domain for cheaper than that but I have no idea how you would connect it with many wedding website hosting sites that have packaged the wedding website building process to be super fool proof and therefore, not offering many advanced features. But more power to you if you’ve figured that out!! ;)

For full details on the specifics of a Minted wedding website, standard or premium, visit www.minted.com/ido.

The custom URL might seem irrelevant to you - and that’s totally fine - but I will say that it has been so nice for us when you consider that many people will be visiting your website because they read the URL on paper and then manually type it into their internet browser. If it’s lengthy or complex, it might not be as guest-friendly. Plus, I love how simple it looks on our Details card in the invitation.

What Information We Included on Our Wedding Website

I chose the template design titled Namely by Hooray Creative. There are so many options for templates you could easily spend hours debating but the nice thing is, if you select a template you’re not crazy about, it’s simple to change it out for something better.

One of the aspects I love most about visiting other couples sites is the story of how they met or started dating. Some I’ve seen share their proposal story too. I wanted to keep the reading to a minimum for visitors so I linked to blog post here on The Amateur Apron for guests to read our engagement story should they want to keep the reading party going!

Other items I included:

• Our wedding hashtag! #BeStillwellMyHeart

• The suggested dress code

• A general timeline for the festivities

• Gift registry links (and our disclaimer regarding the registry since we are moving to a much smaller home)

• Basics like the address because a vast majority of guests will want to punch it into their GPS and many will likely walk out the door without their printed invitation in hand!

• Photos from our engagement photo shoot

• Our wedding party

You can check out our website at www.darrellandsarah.com.