Stationery 101, Volume 18: Using Wedding Websites in Your Invitations

In my last Stationery 101 post on the importance and necessity of insert cards, I briefly mentioned wedding websites. The internet has taken over all aspects of life as we know it, including all things wedding. From online RSVP services to weekend itinerary details, most couples opt to create a customized wedding website as a way to convey important information to their guests. In fact, one of the first questions I ask couples during consults is whether or not they have websites, and if so, what type of information is on it. Including websites in wedding stationery has become a pretty standard practice - one that I am personally a big fan of.

One of my pet peeves is getting an invitation in the mail with tons of little insert cards thrown haphazardly into the envelope. You know what I'm talking about - hotel cards, direction cards, registry cards, church cards, etc. Invitations are your opportunity to make a first impression on your guests and to set their expectations for the wedding day. Throwing a mish-mosh of information at them can be overwhelmed and feel unorganized. On the other hand, having 4 insert cards designed and printed to match the rest of your invitation design can get very costly.

Enter the wedding website.

Wedding websites help keep additional inserts to a minimum (thus keeping costs and postage down) while still giving important information to guests. It's important to make the link easy for guests to type into their browsers, so if you have a super long website, you'll want to shorten it and add a redirect. You can use free services such as Google URL Shortener, Bitly, or TinyURL to rework your website into a shorter redirect link.

Wedding websites typically go on information or reception cards - never on the invitation itself, and never on the reply card (since guests mail those back to you). If you aren't including the standard information card in you suite, and are only using invitations and reply cards, I would highly recommend printing one small insert card with your website. In my post on ways to save for your invitations, I give the example of printing a small digital information card in a way that ties your entire invitation suite together.

In a time where even grandparents are using the internet, I think wedding websites are here to stay!

Thank you for joining me in another Stationery 101 post! Don't forget to catch up on past Stationery 101 topics here, such as Letterpress 101, Foil Stamping 101, and Engraving 101.

Sincerely,