Welcome back to our green wedding journey! Today, we’re diving into the world of digital wedding invitations and how we opted for a sustainable, multilingual approach using an online wedding website. Going digital isn’t just eco-friendly—for us it’s also practical and personalized, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!
Embracing Digital Wedding Invitations: Less Paper, More Love
When it came to wedding invitations, we faced a delightful challenge: our guests are from all over the world and speak three different languages! So, how could we invite them in style while minimizing our environmental impact?
Printing traditional invitations would have been a waste of paper and resources. We would have had to print them in 3 languages: Spanish (my mother tongue), German (my fiance’s mother tongue) and English as a universal language for the rest. As you can imagine, that was utterly impractical and expensive. Also, it would have been a waste for the environment because, after a while, all those cards end up in the rubbish or collecting dust in a draw.
Roland and I have a strong affinity for digital solutions, so I went on a quest to find specific tech-friendly alternatives. That is how I found Joy—a free wedding website that allows us to create beautiful digital wedding invitations and much more. By going digital, we’re reducing paper waste and carbon emissions associated with printing and shipping. It’s our way of extending our love for the planet to every aspect of our wedding preparations.
Online Wedding Websites: More Than Invitations
Nowadays there are many options to create a free or low-budget website, anything from WordPress, Wix or Jimdo. The issue with these is that they still require a certain skill and knowledge, and they are not specific to weddings, so your brain will need to work overtime to design, build and customise all the sections you need. Moreover, you may have some costs if you want to use your own domain or paid plugins.
A good and easy alternative is Canva. Canva offers the option to create and publish simple websites and even if you are a newbie, you can surely find a great-looking template from the many free ones they offer. They are super simple to customise, and you don’t really need to have any previous knowledge to get quality results. In fact, I started drafting our site there, but it got a bit complicated with the languages and other content we wanted to include, so in the end, we opted for a SaaS Wedding Website.
There are many dedicated wedding websites out there that offer easy-peasy and free high-quality services. Some of the nicest ones I found are Say I do or The Knot, where you get a wide array of free resources and some paid ones on demand. There are some also available in other countries and languages. Of course, it all depends on what you need and want. After researching many of them we decided to go with Joy.
What makes Joy extra special? It’s not just about invitations. You can build your whole Wedding Website with it. They have hundreds of beautifully crafted templates to choose from, and you can customise your colours, fonts, graphic elements, etc., so the whole thing will look super professional and impressive.
This versatile platform lets us do an awful lot of stuff that makes managing your wedding a breeze:
1 Design with Ease your Digital Wedding Invitations
Choose a design template from the many available, customise it and bang! In just a few minutes, your professional-looking Save the Date, Ceremony and Email Invitations are ready. From here, you can send them electronically to your guests or print them if you prefer.
2 All Your Wedding Details in One Place
Add all the important information about your wedding to your Wedding site, from venue details to the program schedule or hotel suggestions. Guests can access them anytime, from any device without printing anything. You can even post updates to the site and send them emails with changes or news.
3 Manage your Guest List Like a Pro
This is probably one of my favourite features! It is much more than adding your guests to a list; it is, in fact, a guest-managing tool that will save you so much time and effort to have all your guest details in one place. You can send them the invitations directly from the platform, track their RSVPs, send them updates, and include questionnaires to collect all the details you need from them (such as food allergies, accommodation needs…) etc.
4 Hotels and Accommodations
You can include the details of your hotel block bookings or recommendations for eco-friendly hotels and lodging options nearby.
5 Gift Registry
We are not using this option because we have lived together for many years and don’t need more physical items. But I can see that if you are setting up your love nest for the first time, this gift registry can be extremely useful. You can select the presents that you want and align with your values, and then guests can easily select something from the list.
6 Guest Mobile App
In addition to the normal website, The Joy app allows guests to access all your Wedding details on the go. It includes some practical and cool features like a Personalised Schedule or the Add to Calendar functionality. But it is also fun, it lets guests upload and share photos, capturing precious moments from your special day.
7 Multilingual Magic: Bridging Language Barriers
With guests speaking different languages, creating multilingual invitations and sharing all the wedding details in several languages was essential for us to ensure that everyone felt included and informed.
Unfortunately, none of the wedding websites I checked support multilingual content. I had to put my problem-solving hat on, and eventually, after some research, I found a workaround. Joy’s site is only in English, but thankfully, it offers extensive customisation possibilities. In the end, I created 3 different websites, each in one language. It took extra time, but once the English version was done, it was a simple copy & paste process.
In my opinion, this is a thoughtful touch that reflects the diversity and unity of our global guest list.
Sustainability Benefits of Going Digital
Choosing digital invitations isn’t just about convenience—it’s a sustainable choice with multiple benefits:
- Reduces Paper Waste: No more stacks of paper invitations destined for the recycling bin.
- Minimizes Carbon Footprint: By eliminating printing and shipping (to us and each of the guests), we’re lowering our wedding’s environmental impact. Often, these aspects get overseen. Printing inks can be harmful and contaminate water and soil, so if you go for a printed version, look for companies that use eco-friendly alternatives.
- Accessible Anywhere: Guests can access our wedding details anytime, anywhere, without relying on physical mail.
Personalized and Practical: Our Joyful Wedding Experience
By embracing a digital Wedding Site for our wedding invitations, we’re not just throwing a wedding; we’re making our guests feel special and keeping things easy-breezy. With a sprinkle of sustainability, of course.
Here’s to a joyful celebration that is as eco-friendly as it is unforgettable!
Stay tuned for our next blog post, where we’ll deck out our wedding with sustainable decor that’s straight out of our green dreams. Get ready for more tips, tricks, and a whole lot of love! 🌿💍💚
Lola is the founder of Green Cloud Nine. Nature lover and environmental activist since she was a teenager, Lola has always been a great fan of homesteading. She is continuously experimenting and finding her way to be more self-sufficient and sustainable.
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