Nothing can compare a couple for the whirlwind amount of work a wedding asks of them: What is over in a day takes months of planning, much of which is spent trying to communicate with invitees. For many couples, a website dedicated to “all-things wedding” eases this burden, from providing links to gift registries to updating guests with locations, dates, and dress codes.

But what do you do with your wedding website after you’ve said “I do”? Is it destined for the vast sea of forgotten websites, or can it take on a new form, one that works as an ongoing memory of an important day? In this blog post, we’ll look at the various ways a wedding website can be re-purposed, giving it an enduring new life to share with friends and family.

A Photo Album to End All Photo Albums

There’s no two ways about it: We take a lot of photos these days, especially when we’re looking our best. Your wedding’s website can act as a portal for friends and family to peruse and download photos from your wedding. Here are some free tools and a bit of common sense advice when it comes to uploading wedding photos to your website:

• Create a hub for guest photos: Rather than have guests send you .zip files with their own photo documentation of your day, consider adding a line to your website or social media event page that will indicate an online hub where all their photos can be shared. Dropbox works very well in cases where several people need to upload photos to one place. Once your guests have sent in their photos, you can curate your favourites on your website.

• Keep copyright in mind: Most professional wedding photographers will have guidelines as to how you can share their photos, and it’s important to respect them. If your professional photos don’t come with a watermark, be sure to credit your photographer on your page.

• License your own photos: Without proper licensing, photos of your wedding day can be used for commercial purposes without your knowledge. Make sure to license all your photos, so that it’s clear to others whether or not they’re free to re-use. PicMarkr lets you add watermarks to all your photos if you feel the need, but Flickr reigns when it comes to licensing large batches of photos at once. This WikiHow page shows provides a step-by-step on how to go about licensing your photos on Flickr.

Make Connections

With Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites, it’s easier than ever to stay in touch with (and spy on) the new friends and connections your guests made following your Big Day. IM Creator makes it easy to keep track of all the “likes” and “shares” your wedding has enjoyed with social widgets, but other free services exist to help your wedding’s website go the extra social mile:

• Tint: Tint aggregates social media profiles, events and most importantly, #hashtags into one beautiful media stream that can be embedded into your website. The service gets pricy at the pro level (premium plans start at $40 per month), but their free service still lets you connect to two social media accounts of your choice.

• Twubs: If your wedding guest list is full of Twitter addicts, adding a live streaming widget to your website will help guests to keep track of what’s going on second by second, which will also act as a valuable time capsule of your wedding’s miscellanea.

Image Credits:

Louise & Will-260 by John Hope (Flickr Creative Commons)