Welcome to Fall everyone! Around here, the air is definitely cooling down. To celebrate, we’ve launched four new design templates for our wedding websites and email wedding invitations. You can find them all in our Design Boutique. We hope these help make your wedding planning easier and fun!
As with all of our templates, you are welcome to customize font type, colors and images to make the design your own.
Photos by Vivian Chen Photography
The Glö-Couple (tell us a fun fact about each of you):
Melanie, Paramedic, six-foot-six on the inside five foot nothing on the outside and
Tommy, Paramedic, Melanie’s EMT teacher
Celebration Date & Location:
April 2014
Pinole, CA, USA
Tell us how you got engaged:
Working in emergency services we see a lot of families tragically pulled apart and realized if we weren’t married there would be no protection for the other if the worst happened.
We needed to get married for all of the legal aspects that being married provide (which was a long running joke throughout our engagement, yay tax breaks,) but also because we didn’t want there to be any questions about our commitment to each other.
He was my EMT teacher when we first met, both in unhappy relationships. I began working at the same company as him about a year later and we became really good friends and partners. We “rescued” each other from the smoking remains of our relationships and realized we had really strong feelings for each other.
Our relationship has survived his official divorce, his being every red flag in the book to my parents, me going to medic school, three moves, getting a puppy, two job changes, one car explosion, buying a house, and me learning how to be a step-parent. We’ve done more pre-married than most folks do to each other after marriage, and we are a thousand times stronger for it. In the face of all that, our wedding was *cake*.
What’s the overall ‘feeling’ you’re aiming for with your celebration:
We wanted a super intimate, backyard, relaxed fun family atmosphere. The kids are a huge part of our family’s story and having the wedding in my childhood home really brought it all full circle.
We got the super relaxed family wedding by doing as much of the planning together as possible. My parents lovingly tended the purple and white pansies and kept the deer from eating them, my fiance and I made my bouquet forty five before the ceremony, the kid fell and scraped her knees an hour before the ceremony and the grandmas tag-teamed getting her cleaned and bandaged. We greeted each guest as they walked in up to the moment I was shooed upstairs to get dressed.
Important : everyone feeling like they contributed something to the wedding and having a good time day-of, tasty snackable food, good champagne, tabletop decorations that were multipurpose and helped tell our story, personalized vows that weren’t too cheesy, an amazing photographer.
Unimportant : fancy chairs, a DJ or band (yay iPod DJ Dad), a “signature” cocktail, a videographer, too many cheesy-pinterest-DIY projects.
Are you adding any fun twists on tradition:
We wrote our vows based on the love-honor-and obey model, but twisted each to better fit us. We drank *a lot* of tequila to use the tops as bases for our centerpieces. We went to our favorite beach to get beach rocks and filled each base, topped with a succulent, tied a pretty bow in our wedding color around the neck and used it as a centerpiece/tablecloth holder/wedding favor. They were gorgeous.
What was the inspiration for your Glövite and Glösite design? If you made them yourself, tell us how you did it.
Purple and rocks was our “theme” at the beginning, it morphed into purple and rocks and flowers somewhere near the end with the Glosite design really helping to bring all the “paper” aspects together. The paperless invite matched the paper invite matches the thank you notes. It all added up to be a really pretty theme.
Any good planning tips and tricks for the couples who are just starting to plan?
Double check your font color, what was a really pretty purple up close was really hard for some of my family to read on their computer screens, in retrospect, hard for us to read too.
If you’re still planning: What are you looking forward to the most about your celebration? If you’ve already celebrated: What is your favorite moment or memory?
Favorite moment was standing in a circle after the ceremony with our champagne and everyone giving their toast.
What’s the biggest “say what?” moment or funny story that’s happened since you started planning?
I forgot to say “yes” when he proposed initially.
Who are the magical partners who helped bring your celebration to life?
Dress : Maggie Sottero Myra ;
Suit : Tommy Hilfiger
Shoes : Converse all stars
Hair piece : Tiger Lily
Cake : Oakland Bakes ;
Photographer : Vivian Chen Photography
Flowers : Blooms by the Box and DIT
Snacks : Luckys deli counter
Drinks : Costco
We see lots of wedding celebrations where guests speak more than one language, and we are loving it! My own wedding was a blend of English and Italian, and neither side spoke the other language, which made logistics challenging. We hired a translator for the day, and I’m still not sure what happened during the English-language speeches, but my husband and his Italian family were in stitches (as in laughing SO hard that wine was spurting out of their noses) pretty much the entire time.
We receive lots of inquiries about whether it is possible to use Glo to create a wedding website and email wedding invitations in multiple languages (hint: the answer is YES!) and whether we have any top tips to offer. I always point couples toward this fabulous example of a dual-language wedding website and online wedding invitations. Along with this example, here are the top tips we like to share:
Some couples start out thinking that they need to create different websites for each language or different pages, but what we recommend is to simply include both languages on the same page. This is much easier for you logistically and it also signals to your guests that you are planning a celebration catered towards everyone that is attending (and not favoring one set of guests over the other.) Plus, most guests are really excited at the idea of attending multi-language weddings as the know they’ll have a chance to experience different cultures coming together in celebration.
Along with including both languages on a page, be sure that the page titles on the menu reflect this as well. Information is not useful for a guest if they don’t know where to find it.
On glosite.com – our system is set up so that you can add different events to your website (each with an event description and customizable RSVP questions) and then specify which guests are allowed to see each event on your website when they view. This feature is great for those hosting a rehearsal dinner or limited-attendance ceremony that not all of your guests are invited to attend. This feature also allows you to create a different version of each event in different languages. This option makes things easy if you have specific RSVP questions that you’d like to ask guests who speak one language and not the other or events that are language-specific (i.e., event will primarily be attended by guests who all speak the same language.)
If you do not have language-specific events or RSVP questions, then we still think that creating multi-language event descriptions and multi-language RSVP questions is the easiest from a logistics perspective. How you tackle this part of your website is completely up to you!
In contrast to your wedding website, where we suggest combining multiple languages in one place, for invitations and save the dates we suggest creating different versions for each language. The benefit is that you’re not trying to cram too many words together in a smaller space, plus you can customize the invitation wording as needed for each audience. If you are sending email wedding invitations on glosite.com, you can create an unlimited versions of an invitation and then easily send each version to the appropriate set of guests.
Logins and Passwords
Glosites require that guests log in to view the Events and RSVP pages so that we know what events to display for the guest that is viewing. If your guest clicks through from an email wedding invitation or Glo message, they will be logged in automatically. However, if they come to your site by typing in the URL (for instance, if you are sending paper invitations and including the URL), then guests will need to log in using their email address or by searching for their name (it’s your choice.) The login instructions are in English, but any browser with an automatic translator installed will translate these instructions. To be on the safe side, you can also opt include a note on this login page to give your non-English speaking guests any extra guidance they might need. You’ll find this feature on “Manage Glösite” > “Privacy and Login settings.”
You can also choose whether each guest should choose a password the first time they log in to your site to prevent others from logging in with their email address/name. Again, these instructions are in English and will be translated via the browser or you can incorporate directions into your note. You can also decide to turn the password feature off, which means guests won’t need to think about it. It depends on how secure you would like for your site to be.
RSVP submission button
The text on the RSVP submission button is in English, however browsers with a translation feature installed with automatically translate this for your guest. If you prefer, you can also include a note at the top of the RSVP page to let non-English speaking guests know to click this button to submit their RSVPs.
Do you have any other tips for inviting and organizing multi-lingual wedding guests? Let us know in the comments!
Let’s face it – since the average wedding today has tons of out of town guests, you’re probably going to have a good number of guests who have no idea where they are going. Maps are about to become your guests’ best friend – and fortunately for them, you can add lots of maps to your wedding website. Previously, we’ve talked about how to create a fun “things to do and see” map for your wedsite, but today’s post is all about the step-by-step instructions for how to add a driving directions map to your Glösite. (Though these instructions are relevant for any website where you can paste in custom HTML code.)
Here we go:
Head on over to Google Maps and enter a destination or starting point in the location field
Roll over the section on the left and click on the “directions” link
Enter the starting point where guests will be coming from or to (depending on what you chose in step 1) – double check that your “from” and “to” locations are correct on the map. You can choose the mode of transportation: car, public transit, walking, etc. at the top. If the results show multiple ways to get from point A to point B, choose the one you prefer guests to use by clicking on the blue or grey path on the map or the choices listed below the to/from details.
In the top, left of the page, click on the menu icon (the one that looks like a hamburger with several vertical lines.) This opens the menu
On the menu, click “Share or embed map”
Click on the “Embed map” tab – on this tab you can choose the size of map you’d like to embed. Then highlight and copy (control-X) the embed code to your clipboard
Head on over to your glosite.com account. Navigate to the page where you would like to embed the map. When you are editing the page, you have two options for pasting in the code. The first is pasting it into the Widget Box – this will place the map at the bottom of the page. The second option is to click the HTML button on the text editor – this will allow you to paste the code directly into the text area on the page and the map can appear anywhere (e.g., before or after other text, photos, etc. on the page.)
(Hint: you can also embed the map in an Event description using the HTML button on the event description text editor.)
View your Glosite wedding website, navigate to the page where you’ve just added the map and there it is!
Earlier this week, we quietly rolled out a few new design features for our email wedding invitations. Now we’re ready to shout about them! Up until now, you’ve been able to choose an online wedding invitation template from our boutique or create and upload your own design template.
Of course, you can also edit the wording for your save the date or invitation, as well as add images, customize the envelope stamp, and choose envelope font colors for the “to” and “from” names.
Now you can do even more to customize your online wedding invitations to fit your personality. Here are the new features:
Choose a custom color – choose a color from the color picker that works with your invitation design. If you have a particular color in mind – you can also enter the hex code for an exact match
Upload a design – upload a photo or image with a pattern that you love and this pattern will fill your envelope liner
Choose a custom color – choose a pop of color to brighten things up or select a color that has a good contrast with your invitation design to make it stand out
Upload a design – the best option here is to upload a patterned design that will seamlessly repeat (we call it “tiling”) – that way the design will fill the entire screen no matter what screen size your guests are using when viewing
You’ll find all of these new features when you are editing your Glövite invitations on your glosite.com account! If you’re stuck on what wording and text to include on your wedding invitations or save the dates, how to address your envelopes or how to word your RSVPs, we wrote a handy mini-series earlier in the year covering these topics:
Read Part 1 of this miniseries, which covers Save the Dates.
Read Part 2 of this miniseries, which covers RSVP wording.
Read Part 3 of this miniseries, which covers wedding invitations.
Read Part 4 of this miniseries, which covers addressing invitations.
Photos by Katya Nova
The Glö-Couple (tell us a fun fact about each of you):
Krista, Support Analyst, owns two feisty lionhead rabbits and
Pat, Nurse, enjoys movies about genetically altered sharks
Celebration Date & Location:
5/28/13
Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
Dreams Palm Beach & Jellyfish Restaurant
Tell us how you got engaged:
We got engaged while on a trip to the West Coast of Canada. We both love to travel, so it only made since that we incorporate that love of traveling in our wedding. What better way to start our married lives than on a beautiful beach with an intimate group of our family and friends.
What’s the overall ‘feeling’ you’re aiming for with your celebration:
We really wanted our wedding to be an easygoing and fun celebration of our love. Having a destination really helped in that respect. We could not have asked for a more beautiful setting. We tried to keep things as simple as possible. Since we had a strict budget, we focused on the particular aspects of the wedding that were more important to us, such as photography, food and setting. Other things such as flowers or decorations weren’t as important, mainly because with such a beautiful setting you need to let it speak for itself. Another important aspect was trusting our vendors and their abilities to make our wedding day amazing.
Are you adding any fun twists on tradition:
We had a ring warming ceremony, where we asked our guests to silently make a wish for our marriage. Once the rings were passed through the crowd and returned to us, they were not only filled with our vows for each other, but our family and friend’s support of our marriage.
What was the inspiration for your Glövite and Glösite design? If you made them yourself, tell us how you did it.
We wanted something that reflected our colours with the feel of our wedding. One of our friends designed the background for our Glosite and our Glovite save the dates and invitations. The designs encompassed a rustic, beach feel using our colours – peacock blue and natural beach tones.
Let’s show off your Glövites and Glösite
We worked with one of our friends, who is fantastic with graphic design, to create some designs that suited what we had envisioned.
Any good planning tips and tricks for the couples who are just starting to plan?
We honestly loved having a Glosite and sending out the Glovites to our guests. The Glosite was an easy way to keep in touch with our guests regarding booking flights, room prices, or anything important that came up in regards to the trip. It was also handy to have all of our contacts in one space.
Having a travel agent to take care of the trip bookings was so helpful and saved us, and our guests, a lot of work.
Pinterest is great for gathering inspiration for your wedding, but it can get overwhelming so it’s best to focus on the details that are important to your wedding.
If you’re still planning: What are you looking forward to the most about your celebration? If you’ve already celebrated: What is your favorite moment or memory?
The whole day was full of so many amazing memories, such as seeing each other for the first time, dancing all night on the sand, and even spending the whole week with our family and friends. It’s hard to choose just one memory!
Who are the magical partners who helped bring your celebration to life?
Ceremony Venue – Dreams Palm Beach, Punta Cana
Reception: Jellyfish Restaurant
Photographer: Katya Nova Photography
Travel Agent – Kris Rathbone at Cruiseshipcenters
We often get questions about how to add a URL link to a wedding website – one that your guests can click on to take them to another webpage. Adding a link can be helpful when you are listing accommodation options, things to do in the area, information about your venue, or even links to you registries. Kate and David used a ton of links to help their guests find babysitters, taxis, and activities for their wedding.
Each text editor works a little bit differently, but the principle should be similar across them all. On our text editor, the button to add a URL link looks like a chain link. Here is a quick video tutorial that walks you through how to add an active URL link to your Glosite wedding website.
Some of you may have already noticed, but we’ve added several new email wedding invitation and wedding website templates to our design boutique in the past few months. One in particular that we wanted to highlight is the new Your Photo template. This one puts you guys front and center. You can use your favorite image – maybe from your engagement session, a recent trip you’ve taken, or a special occasion during your journey together. We know you’ll find something fun and hope you enjoy this new option!
Still searching for the perfect wedding website design template? Check out our design boutique for many more options!
it’s great to use technology as a hack for saving time and money (like inviting guests via email wedding invitations, sharing information with a wedding website, collecting RSVPs online, or crowdsourcing your wedding photos with a hashtag.) But technology can also present a host of privacy issues for both you and your guests.
If privacy is a concern for you, here’s are some tips on how to protect yourself from all kinds of mischief-makers and wedding crashers to keep your wedding details and your gust list data nice and private.
You’ll want to make sure that only the people on your guest list have access to any private information on your wedding website. The most secure sites give the option to have all or some of your pages behind a guest login. This way, only guests who are on the guest list can access your pages. For an added layer of security, you’ll want to password protct your pages. At Glosite, we allow guests to choose their own password – which means they are less likely to forget it and that it is more secure than everyone having the same password to share.
Stalkers can be clever, so make their life harder by choosing a non-obvious wedding website URL. Choose a more generic website URL rather than one that contains your names, venue name, or specific wedding date. Some great option are a URL that includes a loose description of the location (e.g., “Beach” or “Mountain”), your initials instead of full names, or your theme. For instance “beachlovebirds2015.glosite.com” or “LmarriesM.glosite.com”
It’s easy to find almost any type of information online these days, let’s not make it easy for those who aren’t on your guest list to see your wedding details. If privacy is key for you, it’s important to choose a wedding website provider that will allow you to prevent your website and all of its content from being searchable by Google, Bing and other online search engines. This will add an extra layer of protection on top of having your content behind a login and password.
Many of your guests will want to share their join and excitement online. If this makes your nervous, then don’t be shy about asking guests not to post information or photos on their various social media accounts. If you are crowdsourcing your photos, use a third party service that has build in password or privacy settings, such as a service that requires viewers/participants to be approved, rather than a hashtag.
Your wedding photographer will be a master of their craft and your photos will be beautiful, so it’s only natural that your photographer might want to show them off online. If this is not something you are comfortable with, be specific with your photographer about your wishes. Ask your photographer not to submit your wedding photos to blogs or publications – or to only share photos that do not feature your faces, guests’ faces or any identifying details you wouldn’t want the general public to know about.
Do you have other tips about how to maintain privacy on your wedding day? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments!
Save the Date – Diana & Laurent by Steadfast Weddings
Do you have an amazing engagement video to share? Did you make a Save the Date video? Or do you just want to send a personal video message to your wedding guests? They will love any one of those options!
Let’s make sure that we get your video up and running on your wedding website for everyone to see. There are lots of options when it comes to video hosting, but one service we know many Glöbies like is Vimeo.
Here’s a quick tutorial about how to add a Vimeo video to your Glosite wedding website. It assumes that you’ve already uploaded your video file to Vimeo.
Step 1: Log into your Vimeo account and navigate to your video
2) Hover over the video so that the menu pops up and choose the “share” icon (it looks like a paper airplane)
3) On the Share pop-up, click “show options” and customize your video’s appearance and settings. We recommend a width of 600-800 pixels wide depending your site design
4) Highlight and copy the embed code
5) Log into your Glo account, navigate to “Manage Glösite (your website)” and click “edit” next to the page where you would like to add your video
6) Paste the code into the “widget box” at the bottom of the page OR use the HTML button on the text editor to insert the code within the text on your page
7) Preview your Glösite to check the appearance and layout of the page.
