Gift Guilt: Part Two
In this second installment of Gift Guilt
I will give you the steps on how to gracefully offer friends and family an easy opportunity to give a wedding gift to the couple who chooses to elope or have a tiny wedding.
In the first installment, I wrote more about the philosophy behind this particular article and shared the first step of the guide.
Now that you’ve registered at your locations
go make yourself a wedding website. There are tons of free ones and they are all just about the same. Here are some to check out:
When you make your wedding website you get to upload photos and tell your story of how you got engaged. Spend some time on this, especially since most of your loved ones won’t be there to see your wedding. Sharing how you met and the journey of falling in love is always a beautiful one and will help friends and family feel close to you, even if they are far away. There will also be a section for for details about your wedding day, as well as a registry option. Fill out the registry section, you will come back to Wedding Day Details.
The second component is the wedding announcement
Before your wedding pick out a wedding announcement and have it made up. Don’t put any pictures on it, but make sure that you invite people to view photos from your wedding day at your wedding website. If your wedding website URL is ugly or long, you can go to to Tiny URL and custom make one.
You can also create a digital wedding announcement here and send it to your loved ones electronically, too. Punchbowl offers some great free options. Though, the suggestion is not instead of sending print announcements, but in addition to them
(If you are struggling with the wording for your announcement, scroll to the end of this post for some suggestions.)
After your wedding (Congratulations!!)
update your wedding day details section of your wedding website with the story of your wedding day in the Wedding Day Details section. Be descriptive and really tell the story of your ceremony. This will not only help your loved ones imagine the scene better, but will also help cement the memories for you, too. Along with the story of your wedding day, upload the photos from the ceremony before you send your wedding announcements. The ideal time frame for this is within a week of your ceremony.
Now, here is the hard part:
do not blanket your social media with all the photos from your wedding. I know it’s hard, but if your photos are everywhere, no one has any reason to go to the wedding website. Post two or three as teasers and then invite people to read the story of your big day at your wedding website.
And that’s it!
To recap:
- Register at stores with online registry options (enjoy the sku guns!)
- Create a wedding website
- Create a wedding announcement and work on getting addresses
- Get married
- Update your website the pictures and story of your big day
- Don’t upload tons of photos to social media
- Send announcements
- Get gifts
- Send thank you notes
This guide does not guarantee that you will receive boatloads of gifts from your family and friends. This guide does show you how to discreetly and gracefully give people the opportunity to do so, if they choose.
In another blog, I will show you the formula to write a great thank-you note!
Elopement Announcement Text Ideas:
_________________________
Because we love you
We thought you should know…
We ran off and got married
Without a lot of show!
Carrie and David
Got married on your wedding date.
You were all in our hearts on our special day!
_________________________
Because you are good friends,
we thought you’d like to know
that we ran off and got married.
We did it on the go!
Jennifer Murray
and
Ashley Holt
tied the knot
on [your wedding date and location]
and now reside in their new home:
[new home information]
_________________________
Time moves so quickly and so, too, does life
we were so anxious to be husband and wife
our days were filled, our schedules too
so we ran off and said our I do’s!
Elizabeth Mooneyhan
and
Elijah Redman
eloped
on [your wedding date]
and now happily at their home:
[Your new home information]
_________________________
We’re hooked on each other…
We cast our lines
into the sea of love,
and we both hooked a keeper!
Emily Miller
and
George Burdell
were married at sunset
[wedding date]
[ceremony location]
_________________________