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Ask a Disney Bride – How to Get Your Guests to Pay Attention!

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It has been a little while but I’m back with another installment of:

Ask a Disney Bride

Today’s topic is something I have personally experienced, and I know it is a major universal frustration of brides everywhere!

Dear DWI,


My fiance and I thought it would be so smart to set up a website with all our wedding details listed so guests can access them at any time.  BUT we are still getting calls asking us to personally walk them through everything, from booking hotel rooms to buying park tickets to asking what day the wedding is on (!!!).  How can we get our guests to pay attention to the information we have provided so we don’t have to answer the same question a bazillion times?!?


Signed,
Frustrated in Florida

Yeah, this is a toughie! For our wedding, we set up a website, sent out a newsletter, AND set up a Facebook group for our wedding guests.  Still, we got a few emails and texts messages asking very simple questions in the weeks leading up to our wedding, a time when we were VERY busy with a million other things!  Still, we feel that being so organized with this information did diminish the amount of phone calls we received.  Below are a few ideas and tips to help you get the word out about your wedding website.

 – Include your wedding website with your Save the Date cards.  Better yet, if you make Save the Date magnets, put the website address ON the magnet.  We truly feel this move helped keep our website in front of our guests’ eyeballs since it was stuck on the fridge or a file cabinet.

 – Don’t buy a custom domain that’s not a .com.  I know it’s tempting to get a .info or .us because they are cheaper domains, but no one is going to remember that.  (Editor’s tip – you don’t need to buy a custom domain at all.  The custom domain that comes with a free wedding site through WeddingWire.com or MyWedding.com are just fine.)

 – If the timing works out, send an information newsletter out with your holiday cards to save money on shipping.  Don’t forget to include important information on your newsletter but also write out your website’s address.

 – Chances are at least half of your guests are on Facebook, right?  If you’re not worried about all your friends seeing your wedding site, put the address somewhere on your Facebook profile, like your “about” section.  If you are worried about everyone having access to your site ….

 – Create a private Facebook group for just your wedding guests.  As always, make sure your website is listed somewhere prominent and easy to find.  The Facebook group worked out great for us, because we were able to easily remind guests the RSVP date was approaching, or it was their last chance to get park tickets!  Another nice thing about the group is, if a guest asks a question, the potential exists for another nice guest to answer it on your behalf.  We found that for every clueless guest, there’s at least one who is on top of things.

 – Both myself and my fiance had our site bookmarked at the top of our favorites list, so if we ever got that dreaded email from a guest, our website was easy to open, copy, and paste in to the email with a quick note: “That information is addressed on our website, and if you still have questions after reading it over feel free to reach out to us!”  99% of the time they won’t need to write you back.

Another thing to remember is that not everyone is tech savvy.  Chances are your 90 year old Grandma doesn’t know her way around the internet, and may have misplaced that newsletter, so go easy on her.  Perhaps enlist the help of a family member to make sure Grandma has all the information she needs so you don’t have to worry about it the day before the wedding (moms and dads are great for this!).

Also keep in mind that people who are generally flaky and lazy are not going to suddenly change their ways for YOUR wedding.  No matter how well you organize all your information, expect there to be some hand-holding.

I’m a firm believer that being organized up front will save you a bunch of stress in the end.  So even though there will always be those one or two people who can’t seem to figure out how to navigate your website, don’t let them discourage you!  Just be grateful for the dozens of other guests who figured everything out on their own.

disneyland-wedding
Photo by White Rabbit Photo Boutique

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About Mindy

Mindy Marzec is a life-long Disney fan who grew up in Los Angeles. She started This Fairy Tale Life to share Disneyland travel tips for adults. When not at Disneyland, you can find Mindy at home snuggling with her cats and re-watching Thor: Ragnarok for the billionth time.