Creative Brief: Create a wedding website that looks “f*#@ing rad.”
A friend of mine from high school is getting married next year, and she thought it prudent to invest in more eco-friendly ways of getting people to her wedding than the traditional manner. Here was her plan:
First, don’t send out RSVPs or invitations in the mail. Second, have a completely online RSVP solution so neither she (nor her husband-to-be) would have to manually sort through all those RSVP cards that have now been through the mail twice. Third, have a site that doesn’t look like it was made by someone who would very clearly rather be doing almost anything other than web design.
I was thrilled when Liz asked me to build their site because I knew I would have to come up with a working RSVP system, something I had never done before. It started off based on the Showtime plugin I wrote for the WVAU site and evolved into a completely different beast, with automated mailing lists and even a “Forgot your password?” function.
I’m going to go on a little rant about wedding websites for a moment. I hope you’ll indulge me.
Almost every wedding website made by a do-it-yourself service that I’ve seen has been a tasteless affair that in no way reflected the joyous ceremony that it was promoting. But those services get used for a few very good reasons:
1. They’re automated and work right away.
As far as psychological barriers go, this is huge. People who have had bad experiences with any kind of commissioned artist (graphic designers in general and web designers in particular) have endured the horror of not only getting overcharged for poor work, but of missing immovable deadlines because their hired gun just didn’t get it done on time.
Also, there’s the tremendous appeal of simplicity; give us a date, a few pictures and your names and we’ll have you up and running in a few minutes.
Kind of like Vegas.
2. They’re cheap.
By including things like the domain, hosting costs and an easy-to-update template for as low as $100 a year (some are even free), these organizations have put together a package that, at first glance, seems like a hell of a deal.
Also a little bit like Vegas.
3. They can manage your RSVPs.
This is required. It doesn’t matter if the actual tool is confusing or difficult to manage – if it works at all and it’s cheap, people are gonna use it.
I’ll leave out the obvious Vegas joke here.
So what’s the problem?
“Alright,” I hear you saying. “They work and are cheap. Why are you telling me?”
Do-it-yourself websites are nothing new. They appeal to any number of basic feelings, not the least of which is that instinct that says we all have an artist living inside of us that just needs the right tools to get out and express himself.
I don’t think that someone thinks they’re creative because they can pick a theme out of a line-up, but it’s still a way of feeling like you had a hand in the process; something you can feel pride of authorship in.
The fundamental reason to hire a professional designer/developer instead of using one of these services for a wedding website is the exact same reason you would hire one over using a service like Blogger or Squarespace or any of the other countless outlets that promise an end to your web developer woes: you want your stuff to be cool.
A wedding is like any other event; you can choose to make it your own or you can do it the way everyone else does. Have a bridesmaid quote Corinthians, rent the Colorado Ballroom at the Double Tree and make sure the little kid who’s carrying the ring wears a bowtie. Boom. Insta-nuptials.
Creating cool shit takes time, experience and attention. Hire someone to make cool shit for you, and you can devote your 24 hours to things that you actually care about and are deserving of your attention.
