The New Face of the Wedding Web Site – Wedding Planning Web 2.0 Style

One of the newest trends on the wedding horizon is the use of online wedding planning to help the bride, groom and wedding party get organized and stay organized. Wedding websites have been around for nearly as long the internet. Online photo albums provided an easy way for newlyweds to share pictures of the wedding with friends and family far away. These days, though, wedding web sites are far more than photo albums with pretty backgrounds. The best of the wedding sites combine Web 2.0 social media with the savvy of professional wedding planners to deliver 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 web site. The bride and groom can take advantage of multiple integrated databases to keep track of their budget, their guest list, their wedding registries and all of the wedding details in one central place. The best of the wedding planning tools found on customizable wedding web sites include:

A Wedding Budget Planner makes it easy to plan and keep track of wedding expenses. No need for an accounts book and a degree in accounting, either. The better budget planners already list the most common wedding expenses and have spreadsheets set up for your use. Just enter your figures.

A good Wedding Vendor Database is more than a list of vendors you can contact. A customizable database lets you track the vendors you’ve contacted, compare their bids and prices, and record any important communications. It’s a great way to make sure that 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 of your planning easier. Imagine being able to enter your guest list just once, then create customized lists for wedding showers, reception, 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 caterers.

An Email Blaster may be the handiest of all tools – and it’s even handier when combined with the event planning suite described above. Pull together mailing lists based on events, wedding roles or any other field in your database and send out an email to 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 pull together multiple gift registries in one place so that your guests can access them.

Wedding Web Site Meets Web 2.0

But there’s still more. The Web 2.0 wedding web site also makes it easy to share photos, videos, music and more with your wedding party and your wedding guests. Social aspects of a personalized wedding web site allow you to easily communicate with your guests – and make it easier for them to communicate with you. Some of the uses are fairly obvious and intuitive, like emailing a link to a wedding photo album to all of the guests so that they can see the pictures and comment on them. Some wedding web sites, however, offer some rather unique features like polls, quizzes and photo sharing and tagging for both guests and the wedding party.

If you’re in the beginning stages of planning a wedding, be sure to check out what the new breed of Web 2.0 wedding web sites have to offer. You’ll be amazed how easy they make all the planning and organization.