By Justine Ungaro, The Unbride
When I was asked to write a DIY wedding article, I thought “sure, no problem” and then the task started to seem rather daunting. You see, as a wedding industry professional myself (I’m a wedding photographer), my take on DIY projects for my own wedding was “hire an expert and let them do it for you”. I’m just not a very crafty person since my creative juices tend to be completely used up by my career (everyone should be so lucky). So when the time came to suggest a DIY project for other brides, I was at a complete loss. So, I had to refer back to my own wedding to think if there was anything that I actually did myself and I could only think of one thing…and that was our wedding website.
When the time came for us to post something for our friends and family to get information about our wedding, I scoured all of those wedding websites and templates and although they weren’t all completely hideous or cheesy, they were all just SO wedding…with scrolly things and flowers and lace and pearls or birds or other embellishments that just did not represent us as a couple or the style of our wedding.
We also didn’t really want to post any stories about our engagement or photos of us. Really, we just wanted something simple that would relay the necessary information while also conveying that our wedding was going to be cool and fun. So, being a photographer who has put up various template sites for different projects, I decided that I should approach this website in the same way as all of the others. So, I went right over to www.bludomain.com and selected a simple template and created our wedding website on my own. I went with the EMMA template, made the purchase (for $200 including hosting for 1 year), and then customized the colors, uploaded our logo, hotel, travel & registry info and voila, instant wedding website complete with background music. And although DIY projects are often an attempt to save money, don’t forget that although this route was more expensive than many of the other options, it was all about filling a need, and that we wanted something custom that wasn’t readily available.
But don’t forget about all of the other free ways that you can relay information about your wedding to your guests. Maybe instead you might choose to create a Facebook Group, a Myspace Page or a blog from WordPress, Squarespace, Typepad, Blogspot or other blog format?
Use your individual knowledge and talents to create something that is yours and yours alone.
To view our wedding website, visit http://justineandgary.com
The Unbride blog was hatched from the mind of wedding photographer, Justine Ungaro who had seen it all and knew exactly what she didn’t want her wedding to be. An avid blogger, she feared she might bore her photography blog readers with details about her own wedding and therefore set out to start a new blog to help connect with other brides who saw their weddings as a statement of personal style as opposed to going along with the wedding status quo. Since then The Unbride has evolved into an internationally celebrated blog in pursuit of inspiring and empowering women to plan their own weddings to be unconventional and unforgettable.
