(Just a bit of know-how is all it takes)
My daughter is getting married in three weeks. He proposed last night.
(It's complicated, but not “shotgun”-complicated, for what it's worth.)
As such, we have to get the word out quickly to the important people, now that it's official.
We could do evite, but it's expensive
My wife, who loves planning these kinds of things, actually steered me away from evite.com, even though it would work.
The premium package is nice, but it comes in at $1.50 per invite. Given the circumstances, that's more than she wanted to spend.
I came up with a solution that ended up using a lot of what I already pay for, and only cost an additional $3.66, total.
I can do websites 🙂
I already pay for hosting through SiteGround and I already have paid for an essentially unlimited lifetime license for the GeneratePress theme.
All I really needed was a domain, so I headed over to Namecheap and picked one up.
I originally was thinking of a .com domain, but the first-year deal, even with a coupon, was $6.98 for the first year. Other top-level domain deals were much better:
- .shop was $1.48 for the first year
- .art was $1.98 for the first year
- .xyz was $2.00 for the first year
- .me, .pro, .ink, and .blog were $2.98 for the first year
- .info was $3.48 for the first year
I ended up getting a .info domain. It was simply (bride first name) hyphen (groom first name) dot info. It was the best compromise between cost and actually describing what the site was about (it was info about the upcoming wedding).
So with the 18-cent ICANN fee, my domain cost me $3.66. It renews at $21.98, but I won't be renewing. This makes it a one-time cost.
Rolling the website out
I pointed the domain to my SiteGround hosting, and created a new WordPress site in the admin area.
I installed GeneratePress and the premium plugin once I could get into the admin area.
I installed the WPForms WordPress plugin. The Lite (free) version comes with a template for a party RSVP form, so bonus.
I whipped up a quick page with a beautiful, happy picture of the bride and groom, a brief message saying that the person reading it is invited, and the contact form to capture their response.
I set the homepage to point to this announcement page, and now I can send people there as soon as the bride and groom give me names and emails.
Handling the responses
This is the part that may end up making up for the $3.66 sticker price. I'll need to handle:
- Keeping track of who responds, and what they say
- Handling spam coming through the contact form
- Making sure I follow up with people if needed
- Answering all of the various kinds of questions that arise
- Re-sending the link to people who lose it
- Sending a follow-up link for the livestream and whatever else we want to put there
But for the moment I'm not borrowing trouble and am hopeful that this will do just fine!
(Speaking of not borrowing trouble, depending on your situation, it may be a decent idea to consider a prenuptual agreement. Check out this HelloPrenup review over at Saving Advice.)
Thanks for reading!
Hi, I'm John and I encourage people to work for themselves, and on themselves, every day to sleep better at night.
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