Wedding website examples worth learning from

01Real wedding sites shared by their makers

These were shared publicly by the couples who built them, with discussion on Hacker News. They show what developers chose when they had full control.

• An open-source single-page site (Ram and Antara): story, events, map and RSVP on one page, hosted free on GitHub Pages; the code is on GitHub, and its author later wrote up a version that collects RSVPs without a backend.
• A Polymer-built site (Maggie and Caleb): tabbed pages and a parallax story page; commenters noted it showed nothing without JavaScript, a reminder to keep wedding sites simple.
• An Astro site (Aishwarya and Sahil): a static site on Cloudflare Pages, with the code open-sourced.
• A timeline-style site shared in the comments of the open-source thread, which other readers asked to see open-sourced.

02Layouts, and when each fits

Most wedding sites follow one of a few structures. Pick the one that fits your wedding, not the one with the prettiest template.

03What makes these examples work

The examples that read best keep a clear order and generous spacing, and use at most two typefaces: often a serif for names and headings and a simple sans-serif for details. Cormorant Garamond and Playfair Display are popular wedding serifs; keep scripts for the names only, since they are hard to read in paragraphs.

Color is usually taken from the invitations or the flowers, with one accent. Wedding color palettes shows combinations with enough contrast to read on a phone in sunlight.

04Turning an example into your site

If you code, the open-source sites above are the fastest start: fork one, replace the names and content, and host it free; how to host a website for free covers where. If you do not, use a wedding platform and pick a template with the same structure as the example you like. How to make a wedding website walks through the build.

05Mistakes the weaker examples make

Looking at many wedding sites, the same problems appear in the ones that work least well:

• The date or place is below a large photo, so guests scroll to find it.
• Script fonts used for paragraphs, which are hard to read on a phone.
• Light gray text on a cream background with too little contrast.
• Map links that open a tiny embedded map instead of the phone's map app.
• Content that needs JavaScript to show anything, which fails on some older phones.
• No RSVP deadline, or one only on the RSVP page.

06Copying a layout on a wedding platform

If you found an example you love but do not code, look for a template with the same skeleton: where the names sit, whether the schedule is a list or a timeline, how many pages. Zola has over 600 templates and Joy hundreds, so a close match usually exists. Swap in your own photo and colors and the result will feel more like the example than a template ever looks in its preview.