What I’m about to suggest might make your grandparents squirm.
Utilizing online communication and social media can enhance your wedding, from planning to post-honeymoon. There. I said it.
Now, I’m not suggesting you ask guests to tweet your vows and I’d be the first to give a groomsman the evil eye if he was stepping out of line to get a better Instagram angle. However, Twitter, the interwebs, smart phones, and the like can be a fun way for people to engage in your special day.
Social media is a fantastic way to brand your wedding, create excitement, build community among guests, and capture memories.
Whether you’re tech-savvy or not, here are a few easy ways to blend your wedding with the digital era.
Wedding Website
This may be a little cliche, but wedding websites are the best way to communicate a ton of information in one place. You can easily refer inquiring minds to the website for dates, times, locations, and directions for any events pertaining to the big day. Guests have easy access to wedding registries.
Many online wedding hubs like The Knot and Wedding Wire offer free websites with stylish and functional templates. The process of getting ours started was a fun thing for Tim and I to do together. We wrote bios for our wedding party and narratives of how we met and our engagement. Out of town guests appreciate the details.
Hashtags
With a specific hashtag, you can brand your wedding and keep track of candid photos and tweets from the wedding party and guests. Tim and I started tweeting with the hashtag #teamgardner when we got engaged. Our friends followed suit and now, I could go back and read everyone’s tweets with that hashtag in one place.
The same concept applies to Instagram. Decide on a hashtag you’d like people to use and start spreading the word. An Instagram photo is a good place to announce your hashtag.
Smart Phone Apps
Organizing? Dress shopping? Reception decor? Even bouquet designing? Yes, you guessed it, there is an app for that. Smart phones make planning a wedding fit nicely into a busy schedule. But, wedding apps aren’t solely planning oriented. My two favorite apps for a wedding are Wedding Countdown and WedPics.
A simple, customizable countdown makes it easy to see just how many days left until you say, “I do!”. When planning (or life outside of wedding planning) got stressful, Tim would pull out the countdown and the diminishing numbers helped put things in perspective.
Waiting for final edits of your wedding photos is second only to waiting for that countdown to be zero. It can be agonizing. Use a photo sharing app, like WedPics (which is conveniently free), to consolidate all of your guests’ candid photos and video. This option is more interactive than Instagram and since you can upload digital pictures later, it doesn’t exclude people who refuse to jump on the smart phone bandwagon.
Even if you did all of these things, I think you’re grandparents would still show up at your wedding. The great thing about incorporating tech-savvy elements into your wedding is that participation is optional.
