Wedding websites

I love wedding websites. And by that I don't mean the ones that tell you what dress to wear, what flowers to choose, what shoes will best show off the results of the ultimate diets which they also happen to detail. No, the wedding websites I rate are the ones that are like a massive online invitation – and more.

The joy of wedding websites is that you can add more detail than you can with your average invitation – unless you are sending out a telephone directory – and without the risk of people losing vital bits of information. By all means send out a myriad of information by post, but frankly opening some wedding invitations is like a ticker tape parade. Those of us who are disorganised, messy or have small children are particularly susceptible to losing the vital bit of paper that gives us the vital details of the wedding list – particularly if not with a more established purveyor of wedding goodies like John Lewis or similar – the address to RSVP, menu choice if having multiple options (see earlier post on this!) etc. Basically all elements that will be tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot if the guest loses the bit of paper. Then there are things that may be useful to the guest such as maps, venue details and instructions, timings etc. Only the dappiest guests are likely to lose the actual stiffie – or whatever creative equivalent you may have concocted – but it does happen. Particularly when people are travelling.

For the uninitiated, the wedding website is a whole website devoted to your big day. What better? You can make it as complicated or as simple as you like – from a one page replica of your main invitation to a multi-page site featuring multiple tabs.

Before you throw your hands up in horror at the thought of all this techiness, the answer is yes, you can do it. And you can do it by yourself. This is partly because the advent of the wedding website has made it easy peasy. Check out this link via Mashable and the world of wedding websites will be opened up to you! These are all US based sites but should work internationally but if you are in the UK and want to use something closer to home – if such a thing exists or matters in cyberspace – then try Getting Married or Wedding Site Both are great fun, simple to use and a new channel for all that untapped creativity you didn't know you had until you thought about getting hitched.

So what to put on it... mix, match and omit as you fancy:

Number one: The essentials. Date, time, location. But you already knew that.

Number two: Details of your wedding list. Particularly if you have lists from multiple retailers.

Number three: A map. Or a Googlemap link should do the job

Number four: Useful information. Will there be a cash-only bar? Does the venue have restrictions relating to high heels? Is parking available? Should taxis be booked in advance if the wedding is in a rural location? Any dress code?

Number five: Details of local hotels, B&Bs and self-catering. If you fancy giving your guests an easy ride when it comes to finding a place to lay their heads. Equally it may be useful to drop in some local taxi numbers to help them to find their way home.

Basically this is your forum to do what you wish. My favourite to date was one by friends who planned to live in a smallholiding in the Highlands of Scotland. Instead of having a wedding list you could buy them things they were going to need to make their dream of the good life complete. On the website there was a cartoon map where you could click on the pigsty and pledge to buy them a piggy or the pigsty, likewise with the henhouse and vegetable patch. The groom was quite techy and I have no doubt that this was a bit complicated to create and beyond what the template-based providers offer but the point is that having a website offers a lot of possibilities to do anything you like as well as helping your guests out a bit.

Stationery and food – Printed menus and multiple meal options

If you want to be grand about your wedding you may think that a printed menu – preferably by Smythson – is the way to go. My feeling generally is that printed menus are a bit of a waste of time and money.

Aesthetically they add to clutter on what is already likely to be a fairly busy table. Think about the place names, napkins, cutlery, crockery, flowers, favours (more on this another time) table names holders, wine bottles, water jugs and all the other things you might have that might be more useful on the table and what you will end up with is a load of waste paper that looks scruffy pretty quickly after a red wine bottle and a vegetable dish have been dumped on top of it after it has been thrown into the centre of the table.

In practical terms they are also pretty obsolete. At most weddings with conventional menus there is a 'choice' of one dish. So no need for a menu. Oui?

Some couples do have a choice of dishes for their wedding, but nearly all caterers will make you give exact numbers for each option beforehand and it will probably work out as being more expensive to have multiple options. Chasing up flakey friends who have not responded to find out what exactly they would like for dinner is also stress you don't need when you could be having more fun enjoying your last weeks of freedom, experimenting with nail colours, getting smashed choosing your wine for the big day or selecting your vajazzle design for your wedding night... or whatever floats your boat. For these reasons I would avoid anything complicated beyond alternatives for vegetarians and those with food intolerances.

Multiple options also slow the service down as waiting staff, however professional they are, are not psychic and there is always going to be an element of hanging around waving plates asking 'Fish or chicken' in a rather Christmas-works-night-out style. It is possible that if you do go for this option you would not notice this though as only the very worst venues would not have primed staff to know what the bride and groom were having... but it does happen.

Some guests like to have a menu in order to know what they are eating. But in my experience the flowery descriptions on the menus at weddings bear very little resemblance to the dry chicken breast in creamy sauce that often ends up in front of you.

I often try to avoid reading the menu anyway as nothing depresses me more than knowing that for pudding there will be strawberry tart or shortbread with cream: read this as a sugary dry mass-produced pastry case or biscuit with a sad strawberry on top and a scoosh of UHT whipped cream. Too depressing and makes me wish I still smoked so I could go for a fag when pudding came along instead of sitting looking at it.

The 'anybody know what we are going to be eating' chat is a good icebreaker between guests anyway. This lifeline is taken away by the ability to have a look at a menu directly in front of their noses and they might have to find alternative gambits. In fact, if you really wanted to have a giggle and get guests talking you could always publish a menu that bears no resemblance whatsoever to what is on the plate so that people could speculate on whether the printers or the venue got it wrong. But if this is the case you have to ask yourself why you are inviting such conversational cripples to your wedding anyway. If the answer is that these are your friends, consider emigrating. And staying away so that you can disconnect yourself from these people and start a new life.

Out of small acorns... the best weddings will grow

This is a blog spot for all the girls who didn't know they wanted to get married – or rather to have a wedding. The two are kind of different.

If you are the sort of bride-to-be who has been planning their wedding since they were six, then this probably isn't the right forum for you. Get ye to Brides magazine or You and Your Wedding and they will give you the perfect tools to make your dreams reality. Trying to make dreams reality is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when planning a wedding, but more of that later. They certainly have lots of pretty dresses, corporate wedding venues, trinkets and sparkly wedding gubbins that will help you to while away the hours and make you wonder how many extra tens of thousands you need to spend to have the day you have dreamed of all your life.

If, on the other hand, you have found yourself with a nice significant other and are seriously contemplating spending the rest of your life with them – in a committed, let's-get-married type of way – then hopefully this blog might be helpful. Particularly if what you are looking for is a great party where everybody has a really good time rather than all eyes being on you on your special day while everybody else has a bloody miserable time because you've blown your entire budget on your shoes and they are doing without food and drink as a result.

Here is where I come clean and admit that I am the owner of a wedding venue. This is something I was thrown into as a result of a combination of fate, heredity, marriage and ooh la la. All of this came about after having been the girl who never wanted to get married and had previously lived life as an independent globetrotting magazine editor specialising in the luxury end of the market. While this does make me a slightly unlikely wedding advisor, it also means that I can sift out the good from the bad, the tacky from the chic and the kitchy cool from the downright crap.

It also means that I have met a lot of brides, bridegrooms and entourages and assisted with the planning of many weddings. In my experience the best parties are orchestrated by couples who have a few ideas – or no idea – to start off and  build. Those who learn as they go and come up with cool ideas as they learn are rarely disappointed.