How to create a wedding website: a step-by-step guide

To create a wedding website, start once you have a date and a venue, decide who builds it, gather your details, plan the pages your guests need, write your story, set up your RSVPs, and share one link. Seven steps, in that order. This guide walks you through each one.

There's a moment, a few weeks after the engagement, when the messages start to feel like a part-time job. Where is the venue? What time does it start? Is there parking? Can I bring someone? Your guests love you. They just also really need the parking details. A wedding website answers all of it in one place, and you send one link instead of the same answer again and again.

Whether you make a wedding website yourself or have one built, the steps are the same. This guide is about the how: when to start, what to decide first, how to collect RSVPs, and how to get the link to every guest. For every section the website itself should have, see our full wedding website checklist.

Wedding website steps at a glance

1. Decide when to start. Once you have a date and a venue.
2. Choose who builds it. You, with a free builder, or a designer.
3. Gather your details. Times, addresses, dress code, RSVP deadline, and photos.
4. Plan the pages. Start with the questions your guests will ask.
5. Write your story. As a story, not a timeline.
6. Set up your RSVPs. One form, one deadline, one place for every reply.
7. Share the link. On your save the dates, in your invitation, and in every message.

1. Decide when to make your wedding website

Start as soon as you have a date and a venue. You don't need every detail. A website can go live with the essentials and grow as your plans firm up.

The deadline that matters is your first message to guests. If your save the dates carry the link, and they should, the website has to be live before they go out. Then every guest has the same link from the start, and every update lands in the same place.

Count back from that date. If you're building it yourself, the setup is quick and the writing is what takes time. If you're having it built, a designer needs your details before they can begin. At WedlySite, a website takes about 21 business days from the day we have everything we need.

If guests are flying in, whether to South Africa or anywhere else, start earlier. They'll want flights, places to stay, and visa details before they can say yes. Our page on destination wedding websites covers what guests travelling in need to know.

2. Choose who builds it

This is the DIY vs done-for-you decision, and both routes work. The right one depends on your time, your budget, and how much of the work you want to do yourselves.

Build it yourself

Free builders such as Zola, Joy, The Knot, and Wix give you a template and the tools to fill it in. You choose a layout, add your details and photos, write the words, and switch on the RSVP form. A free website costs nothing but your evenings.

This route suits you if you enjoy the making, you have the time, and a template look is fine for your wedding. It's a fair choice. Just know where the hours go: the setup is the quick part, and writing your story, your FAQs, and your travel notes is what fills the evenings.

Have it built for you

A designer or a small studio builds a custom website for you. You share your story and your details. They write the words, design every page around your wedding, and hand you one finished link. You review it, ask for changes, and share it.

This route suits you if you'd rather not learn a builder, the writing is the part you dread, or you want the website to look like your wedding and match your invitations. Not everyone needs to build their wedding website. Some couples just want it done.

Our guide to free vs custom wedding websites weighs both routes in full. If you're leaning towards a designer, here's how to choose a wedding website designer, and what a wedding website costs at every level.

3. Gather your details before you start

Whichever route you choose, the website is only as good as the details behind it. Gather these first and the build goes quickly:

• Date and times, for the ceremony, the reception, and anything else across the weekend
• Venue name and full address, with a map pin, not just a street name
• Your RSVP deadline, and what you need to ask each guest
• Dress code, in words a guest can act on
• Where to stay and how to get there, for anyone travelling in
• A handful of photos you love, from an engagement shoot or your own phones
• Notes for your story, how you met, the moments that mattered, and the proposal

4. Plan the pages your guests need

Plan your pages around the questions your guests will ask, not around what other wedding websites have. Most weddings need the same core:

• The essentials: date, times, venue, parking, and dress code
• The programme for the day, from arrival to the last shuttle or ride home
• Travel and places to stay
• Your story
• RSVP
• Gifts or registry
• An FAQ: children, plus-ones, photos during the ceremony, and the weather plan

Our checklist of what to include on a wedding website goes through every section and what to put in it.

For a wedding abroad, add a page for guests travelling in: the nearest airport, visas, currency, the time zone, plugs, and the weather that time of year. Guests flying in need it long before the wedding, so put it up early.

5. Write your story

This is the part your guests actually read. A story section isn't a biography, and it isn't a list of dates. It's a short story: how you met, the early days, the moments that mattered, and the proposal.

A few things help:

• Write it the way you'd tell it over dinner, not the way you'd fill in a form.
• Pick three or four moments, not every year.
• Read it aloud. If it sounds like you, it's done.

Your story deserves more than a bullet-point timeline. It deserves to be told properly. If writing it is the part you dread, a designer who writes can do it for you from a conversation. That's how we work: one call, and we write it.

6. Set up your RSVPs

RSVPs are where a wedding website earns its keep. Collect every reply through one form on your website, instead of across WhatsApp, texts, emails, and conversations at family lunch. One form means one list, and one list means you always know your numbers.

A good RSVP form asks for:

• Each guest's name, not just the name of the person replying
• A yes or a no, for each event if there's more than one
• Dietary requirements and allergies
• A space for questions

Set a clear deadline and put it on the website, in the invitation, and on the form. Send one reminder before it. And make sure the form works on a phone, because that's where your guests will open it.

At WedlySite, every reply goes straight into a private spreadsheet shared with the two of you, dietary requirements and guest questions included. Our guide to collecting RSVPs by website, WhatsApp, or text covers the rest.

7. Share the link

A website only works once guests have the link. Put it everywhere they'll look:

• On your save the dates, so it's there from the first message
• In your invitation, next to the RSVP deadline
• In one message to each family group, pinned if you can
• In every update you send, instead of retyping the details

Send it however your guests already talk. That might be WhatsApp, text, or email, and it often depends on where they live. A short address helps too: a domain with your names is easier to type and easier to remember than a long link.

A digital wedding invitation is the neatest way to share it. Guests tap the invitation and arrive at your website. When the two are designed together, they look like one wedding. See how that looks in our digital invitation examples.

One mistake to avoid

The easy mistake is treating the website as a digital copy of the invitation. An invitation is read once. A wedding website is a place guests come back to: when the link arrives, when they book somewhere to stay, and the week before, to check the times.

So it needs to be complete, easy to find your way around, and it needs to feel like you. A template with your names swapped in does the job. A website that opens with your story and carries your style gives your guests something worth reading.

If you'd rather have it built

That's what we do. We're Emma and Juan, based in South Africa and working with couples everywhere. Here's how it works:

1. You share your story, on one call with us
2. We write, design, and build, in about 21 business days from the day we have everything we need
3. You share one link, and that's it

No platform to learn. No template to wrestle. No tech stress.

We have one base package and a menu of extras, so you choose what you want instead of picking a column:

• The Whole Story ($497): the wedding website, complete. Your story written for you, the signature envelope opening, RSVP with dietary requirements and guest questions, a dress code section with illustrated examples of what to wear, up to 10 photos woven into the design, and a year of hosting.
• The Love Letter ($647): the website plus matching Digital Invitations and Digital Save the Dates, saving $94 against the menu.
• The Happily Ever After ($1,097): the full matched set, before, during, and after the day, on your own domain. Saves $260 against the menu.

Every extra is priced on its own. Build your own quote in the price calculator, see our work, or start your story.

After the wedding

Your wedding website doesn't disappear after the last RSVP. The flowers are gone. The cake is gone. The website stays: your story, your photos, the names, and the details of the months before you married. Something you'll open again years from now.

That's the difference between a tool you used once and something worth keeping.