For all that we’ve talked about how to make your wedding website pretty (hint: Squarespace makes super pretty ones), the truth is, your wedding website is really about conveying information to your guests in order to help them have a good time. Because the number one rule for having a fun wedding is making sure people know what to expect. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of a big project (like, say a wedding), it’s easy to fall into the familiar trap of thinking ALL the information is important. Which leads to glassy eyes glazed over your wedding website, missing all the good stuff. So before you fall down the rabbit hole, here’s what to include in a wedding website to make it actually useful:

When Meg and I were consulting for this post, she mentioned to me that she’d signed up for analytics on her own wedding website (girlfriend’s been tracking website data since… forever). You know what she found out? Basically the only section anyone visited was the registries page. So while your wedding website is about conveying information to your guests, emotionally it’s really for you and your partner. Which means that before you go crazy trying to design the world’s most interesting wedding website, make sure you actually care about having the world’s most interesting wedding website in the first place. If you want a creative outlet and a cool project that combines your witty writing style and mad design skills, go for it. If it’s just another chore to cross off the list, well, you can still have a wedding website, but give yourself permission to try just a little less hard on it.