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With
this Mouse, I Thee Web By Winda Benedetti June 25, 2002 | No matter what people say about your wedding - that it will be the most beautiful, important, spectacular moment of your life, that you will be a vision of beauty, a glowing beam of joy, the picture of sublime happiness - do not for one moment forget the following: Planning your wedding will be a hair-pulling, life-consuming, monumental pain in the bustle. By the time the actual wedding day arrives, you will be stressed out, exhausted and perhaps even psychotic. Trust me. Planning my wedding this year drove me to the razor edge of mouth-frothing madness. I was saved from lunacy and a stomach full of ulcers by three things: 1) A super-hero team of helpful friends and family, 2) a saintlike fiance and 3) the wonders of modern technology. On the first two counts, I got lucky. As for the third, here's a friendly piece of advice for anyone who's getting married, thinking about getting married or helping someone get married: Get online. Get wired. Get with it. How people planned their weddings before the advent of the Internet is beyond me, but now that the Internet exists, don't even think about planning one without it. The list of ways in which the World Wide Web can assist the happy couple-to-be is longer than a bridal train. It can help the bride find the perfect dress, the groom find the perfect ring and guests find the perfect wedding gift. It can make organizing a bachelor party or bridal shower a cinch - even when the guests are spread across five states. With a computer, a modem and a few minutes to spare, you can even transform your best friend into an ordained minister certified to preside over your blessed event. Plus, "The Internet has made it so men can research wedding things without being embarrassed about carrying around a wedding magazine," says Carley Roney, editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Knot (www.theknot.com) - a wedding Web site that offers "advice for the to-be-weds of today, not of yesterday." If you've already started planning your nuptials sans the Net, don't worry. It's never too late to tune in and log on to the wedding superhighway. Here's how. Get organized "Planning a wedding is like launching a full-blown film production," Roney says. That being the case, coordination and organization are of the utmost importance, and there are a whole host of Web sites dedicated to helping brides and grooms do just that. TheKnot.com, for instance, offers soon-to-be-weds a variety of helpful organization tools. Enter the date of your wedding and the site will create a checklist of things that must be done (i.e. selecting a caterer, booking musicians) and the date by which they should be completed. If you're having hard time deciding how much money to spend on what, The Knot also offers a budgeting tool. Simply punch in the amount of money you'd like to spend on the wedding and it'll tell you how much cash to set aside for each item. Evite.com - a popular event-planning Web site - is an essential stop for those of you hosting a bridal shower, bachelor or bachelorette party. Each month some 5,000 wedding-related events are organized via this easy-to-use site, says Evite spokeswoman Genevieve Ostrander. Here, you can quickly create an online party invitation and send it to guests via e-mail. Invitees can R.S.V.P. easily and as organizer, you'll be able to keep track of who's coming. Seattle resident Staci Martin, who married Drew Wolfe on June 15, relied on the wonders of modern technology to coordinate her wedding plans with far-flung friends and family. Martin's mom and two of her wedding attendants live in Kansas and a third bridesmaid lives in Indianapolis. "I can't imagine what I would have done without e-mail," she says. "I probably would have been on the phone 24 hours a day and that just doesn't work when you have a job." Martin and her fiance created their own wedding Web site - also known as a "wed" site. Wed sites are an increasingly popular way for couples to celebrate their nuptials as well as organize and disseminate information about their ceremony. "Event Web sites - wedding Web sites in particular - offer centralized information for the guests," says Ken Bailes, a friend and freelance Web designer. "This is especially helpful for out-of-towners who can also be provided with information about the city they're visiting." As a wedding present to me and my fiance, Bailes and our friend Shamus Daily built us a wedding site that included driving directions, hotel information, an R.S.V.P. form and gift registry information as well as links to other activities guests could do while they were in town for the wedding (see their work at Shamusdaily.com and Kennybailes.com). Karin Kuntz, a Seattle-area wedding planner and founder of Simply Elegant Weddings, says wed sites have helped couples get around one sticky taboo - telling guests where they've registered for gifts. While it's inappropriate to list that information in the printed invitations, Kuntz says it is perfectly acceptable to print a wed site URL on the invitation and then list the gift registry infor- mation there. For those who don't have Web pros for friends or the skills to build a site themselves, there are plenty of other options. Both TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com offer simple, free tools that allow even the greenest Internet newbies to create their own wed sites. Go shopping Whether you're in search of the perfect ring or seeking a scenic reception site, the Internet is a good place to start looking. When Martin began her wedding quest, she knew she wanted to hire a professional planner. She searched WeddingChannel.com for recommendations and found Kuntz, who has her own Web site at www.simplyelegantweddings.com. "Almost everyone in the wedding industry has a Web site," Kuntz says. Surf the Net and you'll see that photographers display examples of their work, cake makers show off their baked creations and jewelers offer a nearly endless array of diamonds and gold. Martin perused TheKnot.com's massive gown gallery when she was shopping for a dress. The site offers pictures of 20,000 different dresses - wedding gowns, bridesmaids' dresses and frocks for the flower girls. They can be sifted through based on designer, neckline, silhouette and price range. "It was really fun to be able to look at all the different dresses," says Martin, who e-mailed to her attendants pictures of several bridesmaids' dresses so they could help her choose. But Roney warns: "It's one thing to look for your gown online, but buying your gown online can be dangerous." Perusing the wedding dresses online is a great way to get ideas and narrow the search, she says, but a bride should not buy a dress without trying it on first. I also learned through personal experience, that you can't always trust an online store to deliver your purchase on time. I ordered my wedding shoes (a pair of platform boots, to be precise) from L.A.-based ChineseLaundry.com. Although I ordered two-day delivery, a week later the boots still failed to arrive in time for a final dress hemming. Generally speaking, though, I found the Internet to be a great wedding research tool. Even if you don't buy anything, there are lots of fabulous ideas to be found. For instance, my husband and I searched the Internet extensively for wedding rings that suited us. Although we didn't purchase them online, we did print out pictures of several rings we liked and then took them to a local jeweler who used the photos as a starting point to create our rings. By the power vested in me ... Since my husband and I don't subscribe to any particular religious faith, the question arose: Who would say the magic words to make us married? Paying a random justice of the peace to preside over the most important ceremony of our lives seemed hollow somehow. So, we asked our dear friend Dave Knopes to do the deed. A good man, a wise man and a man never at a loss for the right words at the right moment, Dave's only problem: He wasn't a bona fide minister. That dilemma was solved quickly - and for free - thanks to the Universal Life Church and its Web site, www.ulc.org. This Tucson-based organization seems to exist primarily to transform average citizens into real-life ministers with only the click of a mouse. Visit www.ulc.org and you, too, could be guided through the super-simple ministerial process. The nondenominational church's only requirements: "promote the freedom of religion and do that which is right." The Universal Life Church claims to have ordained some 20 million ministers worldwide since 1959 (ordination can be done by mail for those without an Internet connection). Marriage laws differ from state to state, but in Washington state, Universal Life Church ministers are good to go. According to Washington code, "any regularly licensed or ordained minister or any priest of any church or religious denomination" is allowed to solemnize a wedding ceremony. Although some people might be horrified at the thought of using an Internet-created minister, it was one of the best decisions we made while planning our ceremony. Rev. Knopes delivered not only the best wedding speech I've ever heard, but having such a good friend preside over the event made it that much more meaningful to my husband and me. Don't before you say 'I Do' A warning: If you and your guests are sticklers for decorum, be careful not to tread across a few etiquette lines when using technology to plan your big day. For starters, although it's acceptable to e-mail the invitations to a bachelorette party or bridal shower, the etiquette police say it's not acceptable to e-mail your wedding invitations or send them via a party-planning Web site such as Evite.com. "The general consensus is that it's not very Martha Stewart," says Kandus Kane, a spokeswoman for Evite.com. "It really is a faux pas." On the other hand, Roney says it is OK to send a "save the date" e-mail to your guests, as long as you follow it with a printed invitation. Says she: "The bigger faux pas is sending thank you notes via e-mail. You can order your thank you notes online, but you can't write them." Nancy Dunnan, co-author of the "Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette," agrees. "If someone spends the money to get you a gift, you should take the time to hand write them a thank you note."WEDDING WEB SITESREST: There are plenty of wedding Web sites out there, and a lot of them offer pretty much the same thing. A few that stand out: The Knot (www.theknot.com) This all-encompassing site is full of helpful advice and useful tools. Peruse pictures of some 20,000 wedding gowns, create your own personalized "Wed" site and chat with other brides. Indiebride (www.indiebride.com) This site is dedicated to those who are sick and tired of the wedding industry. Writes founder Lori Leibovich: "Our goal is to explore the whole marriage process, the highs, the lows and the complexities." She wants the site to be a place for "would-be brides who have more on their minds than planning a reception, women who never for a second believed in Prince Charming and who have not, despite all the cultural cues, been breathlessly awaiting their wedding day for their whole life." And she points out that the terms "fantasy," "Cinderella" and "princess" have been banned from its pages. The Wedding Channel (www.weddingchannel.com) This comprehensive site offers loads of wedding planning advice, as well as help planning the honeymoon (check out the photos of some top destinations from Mexico to Europe). Weddingchannel.com also offers a comprehensive bridal registry - log in and select gifts you'd like to receive from The Bon, Macy's and Neiman Marcus, among others. Universal Life Church (www.ulc.org) The Universal Life Church is dedicated to ordaining anyone who wants to be ordained. All it takes is a visit to its Web site and three minutes to spare, and you, too, could have the power to say "I pronounce you husband and wife" and have it mean something. P-I reporter
Winda Benedetti can be reached at 206-448-8223 Copyright © 2002, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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