How to choose a wedding website provider without losing your mind

My mother texted me, appalled. 

“Did you know this magazine recommends that your wedding should have branding?”

Unfortunately, I did. I’m in the early stages of planning my own wedding, and have been to a fair amount of friends’ nuptials. So at this point, on invitations and wedding signage galore, I’ve seen enough intertwined initials surrounded by curlicues or signals of the couple’s interests (suns, bikes, mountains, everyone is outdoorsy???), to know that creating a ~visual identity~ for one’s wedding is par for the course — maybe even a requirement — these days. 

One of the ways that design takes center stage in contemporary weddings is through the wedding website. When people are on the cusp of matrimony, they create a site with all the relevant (and not so relevant) information about their upcoming event, and often, themselves as a couple. The color scheme, fonts, and general look and feel of the site often carries over to the paper invitations and actual wedding.

These websites are, granted, extremely helpful for guests. For most weddings I’ve been to, I refer to the website — not the paper invitation, which has been lost somewhere — for information about where the heck I’m actually supposed to show up, and when. The websites also help guests find valuable info like which hotels to book, how to RSVP, and how to find your online gift registries. Modern AND helpful: Oh my!

I’ve also learned from friends, and through my own planning research, that websites can really help out with organization on the couple’s end. The best allow you to digitally collect addresses (who has those on hand these days?), format and print mailing labels, collect complicated RSVP information (gluten free or nut allergy?), track gifts you’ve received and thank you notes that need sending, and more.

But, like most wedding-related services, the world of wedding website providers is overwhelming, and the choice of who to go with can be paralyzing. There are two main players — The Knot and Zola — as well as smaller companies with more specialties in design, mailing, and customer service. 

The main question you need to answer to figure out which is right for you: What features do you want?  Chief among them are questions like, How granular do you need your RSVP tools to be? Do you need the ability to add custom questions, or privately show multiple events? Do you want to register at individual stores? Or would you prefer to have a universal registry? The answers to these questions around RSVP and registry features can really help narrow things down.

But there are other things to consider as well. How original do you want your graphic design elements to be? Are you willing to potentially have the same website and invitation design as a friend? Do you want to get in digital bed with a smaller company or a larger one? Are you more about supporting independent artists (for a fee) to get a unique website and invitation design, or are you hoping for the most features for the lowest price? (None of these things are wrong!)

As with most wedding choices, whoever you go with for your website will be just fine! You can chew over the questions endlessly, but remember this: A website’s main, uncomplicated function is to provide a digital repository of information for your guests. That doesn’t require branding or photos or widgets or a knowledge of HTML. Whoever you go with, it will work out.

I’m at the very beginning of planning my wedding, and part of me already wants to rebel against all the things I’m supposed to have: the website, the Instagram-perfect decor, the “first look” photo. Contemporary wedding “shoulds” seem to have taken a fun party and meaningful ceremony and turned the whole thing, in the words of my planner (who I hired to simplify wedding planning in the first place), into a “production.”

But the wedding website actually has the potential to make things less overwhelming and easier to manage. Also, putting a site together — posting photos, typing up all your information, choosing freaking gifts — actually seems fun. A digital preview of the big day makes it all feel more real, not to mention, exciting.

Here’s a summary of the main providers out there, and what distinguishes one from the other, to help you answer those inevitable questions.

Just don’t stress too much about that visual identity, OK?

The Big Guys

and are the heavy hitters in the wedding website spaces. Unless you’re looking for a high level of customization, both pretty much have everything you could want, including:

• Free services.

• Low-fee for custom domains ($19.99 for The Knot, ~$15 for Zola)

• Plenty (think: hundreds) of design templates

• Robust RSVP services

• Registry integrations

• Matching paper invitations you can order 

• Guest list/mailing management

• Password protection/search de-listing (if you choose)

However, there are a couple things that distinguish these two, both from each other, and from the smaller guys. 

Main advantages of Zola: 

• In RSVP offerings, both services allow for multiple custom questions and +1 management. Zola adds the ability to display private events, like rehearsal dinners, to which only the people invited can RSVP. 

• The Zola registration lives on the wedding website itself — it doesn’t send you off-site like The Knot does. If you want a , a Zola website is an easy, natural complement. 

Main advantages of The Knot:

• It’s easier to include registries from more places. Zola lets you add other registries, but it’s . You can still add a Zola registry to a The Knot website.

• They have social media integration that pulls in photos from hashtags or Facebook albums.

Big guy disadvantages:

The main drawback with these sites is a little counterintuitive: Both do more than just provide a wedding website. The Knot is a full-service wedding empire that provides vendor reviews and connections, blog posts, sales info, and more. Zola is a registry company in addition to a website provider. That means:

• The websites of the companies are a bit more cluttered and difficult to navigate, simply because there’s more there.

• problems with customer service.

• The privacy policies of both of these websites (, ) are long and complicated. They do spell out that they share data with third party services for advertising.

• You will get promotional emails from Zola and The Knot recommending products and services. For example, Zola representatives send registry users emails with suggestions for products to include in the registry. I don’t love the way that that makes me feel: like my wedding is just an opportunity for brands to sell me things.

Bottom line: iI you want the most wedding-specific features, and you don’t mind using the same, corporate sites as most of your friends, these players are dominant for a reason.

The Specialists

Hot on the heels of the power players are smaller companies that boast advantages like more custom design, responsive customer service, supporting independent artists, and more. Each come with their issues: For example, some are pricier, and some have more limited RSVP or registry features. If there’s one feature that’s really important to you, make sure to check out whether these providers have it. 

There could be value in taking the road less traveled. Here are some of the most notable smaller wedding website providers: 

: The best thing about Minted is the fact that it licenses designs from their “community” of independent artists. It also spotlights the artists themselves throughout the site, so you’ll know who made the art you’ll associate with your wedding — it’s not just an anonymous graphic designer at a firm somewhere. Minted offers over 1,000 designs, with easy integration with invitations and day-of paper. They offer free wedding templates, or you can choose to go as custom as you want (with related costs). If you’re going with the free sites, choose carefully: Only some templates offer RSVP integrations, and their registry functions are basically links off-site (not a fully integrated shop, like Zola). 

: The thing that most distinguishes Joy is its clarity and user-friendly interface. Comparing all the sites, Joy’s description of its services and offerings was the most easy to understand. It’s free, unless you want a custom domain (though you will have to go through a service like GoDaddy to do this). The design options are more limited, but in terms of features, Joy has most of the essential capabilities as the big players (though not multiple event invites, like Zola, or social media, like The Knot) — sans a lot of the clutter. Joy functions on a do one thing, and do it well, model. 

: If you combined Minted and Joy and charged a pretty penny for it, you’d get Riley & Grey. This company describes its designs as “bespoke,” and the look and feel is all-around fancier and more customized. If you think the ease of a smaller, dedicated company and unique designs is worth $35 per month, this site is for you.

A website is a website is a website

General website providers are offering some templates built specially for weddings. This might make sense for you if you’re someone who already uses these sites, so you know your way around them. The biggest plus is that they offer a lot more customization features; the templates allow you to play with fonts, pages, and layouts to a greater degree than the other providers. However, these sites generally don’t provide the RSVP and registry integrations at the same level as dedicated wedding website providers. 

Wix offers this, but I immediately found it difficult to navigate. The most viable one is . $12/month for 12 months gets you a custom domain and 8 templates to choose from. The RSVP and registry features are pretty basic, but the design and customization is sleek and simple, just like Squarespace’s other offerings. 

Fuck It

Remember when weddings didn’t require websites? Absolutely nothing out there says you must have one. But if you still want some sort of digital information out there for guests — without the attempt at branding or social media integrations — might we suggest the humble Google docs + forms combo? If you just want to put your wedding date + crucial info online, you can save it in a public Google doc. If you want to manage RSVPs and a guest list, you can send out Google forms. No branding, no design, no “our story.” Simplicity is bliss.