What to Put on a Wedding Website: The Information Guests Need

Who this is for

You have a wedding website, or a template waiting for one, and you want to know what actually needs to be on it. Not the how-we-met page. The information that stops guests from texting you at 11 p.m. This guide is a page-by-page checklist, the wording for the questions couples dread, the privacy settings worth using, and the build order. Every number in it is current as of September 2026.

The message schedule around the site, from save the date to thank-you note, is in our guest communication timeline. This article is what the site says.

The job of the site

A wedding website has one job: answer the question before it is asked. Paper carries what cannot change, the date and the names, and the site carries everything that can, because the site can be edited after the invitations are in the mail. The FAQ page is the answers to the questions you receive most often or expect to receive. That is the whole site in one sentence.

Seven questions come up most by text and email: dress code, the children policy, the plus-one policy, parking, shuttle availability, how to flag dietary restrictions, and what time to arrive. If your site answers those seven, most of the texts never arrive.

The pages, tiered

The content sorts into three tiers.

Tier	What goes in it
Required	Your names and the date; ceremony and reception venues with full addresses; ceremony and reception start times; the RSVP form with its deadline; the dress code; hotel block or lodging guidance; the registry link
Worth having	Schedule of events; travel and transportation; the FAQ page; wedding party introductions; local recommendations; a photo gallery
Optional	Your story; a countdown; a guest photo upload; a live-stream link; a hashtag

Two notes on the required tier. The registry link lives here, not on the wedding invitation or anything tucked inside it. Emily Post calls inserting a registry list or a checklist of wanted gifts poor taste, so the registry travels by word of mouth and the website instead. Shower invitations are the one exception, where a preprinted registry card is standard. And the RSVP form is the page guests use most, so it belongs on the homepage or one tap from it, not buried in a menu.

The schedule and travel section should repeat everything that was on the invitation, then add the hotel block, suggested places to stay, parking and transportation, and travel notes. If more than a fifth of your guests are traveling, the travel section becomes a page of its own; what goes on it, airports and block links included, is in our out-of-town guests guide.

The ten questions to answer before you pick a design

Ten questions decide the site: the date and time, the location, how to RSVP, plus-ones, children, what to wear, the itinerary, parking, what to know about the venue, and how to flag a dietary restriction. The seven guests ask most are all in here; the other three are the basics they assume you have already answered. Work through them in a document before you open a template. The design will take an evening; the answers take decisions.

This is the decision list, not the FAQ itself. Keep the published FAQ to 8 to 12 questions, because guests stop reading past 15. If it runs longer than that, the schedule and travel pages are probably underbuilt.

1. What is the date and time, and what time should I arrive?
2. Where is it, with full addresses for each location?
3. How do I RSVP and by when?
4. Can I bring a guest?
5. Are children invited?
6. What should I wear?
7. What is the order of the day?
8. Where do I park, or is there a shuttle?
9. How do I tell you about a dietary restriction?
10. Is the venue accessible, and who do I contact with another question?

The last one covers wheelchair accessibility and a contact method, and both are the kind of answer a guest should never have to ask for.

Wording the sensitive ones

The rule is the same every time: one polite line, no justification. No plus-one explanations, no kids-policy justifications. An explanation reads as an opening for negotiation.

• Plus-ones. One line that works: “We are only able to host the guests named on your invitation. Thank you for understanding.” It holds because the envelope already named who is invited; the decision itself is in our plus-ones guide.
• Children. Warm and closed, in one line: “Our celebration is adults only. We hope you will take the evening for yourselves and enjoy it with us.” Warmth is fine; a reason is not, because a reason is something to argue with. Alternatives, and the case for each, are in our adults-only wording guide.
• Dress code. One line, with context only if the venue changes what people should wear. “Cocktail attire, please. The ceremony and reception are located outside, so please dress according to the weather.” Then define the code, because guests do not agree on what the words mean. The Emily Post definitions, in plain terms: black tie is a tuxedo, and an evening gown or a dressy cocktail dress; black tie optional is a tuxedo or a dark suit, and a gown, cocktail dress, or dressy separates; semi-formal is a dark business suit and a short dress; festive is cocktail attire with a seasonal touch; dressy casual is a blazer with slacks, and a dress or dressy pants. Cocktail is not a separate entry on that list. Zola treats cocktail and semi-formal as the same level, so pick one of the two words and use it everywhere.
• Arrival time. Give three times, not one: when the ceremony starts, the earliest guests can arrive, and when they need to be seated. “Ceremony at 4:00. Doors open at 3:15. Please be seated by 3:45.”
• Unplugged ceremony. Frame it as a kind request about presence, not a ban, and add a separate FAQ line on where photos will be shared afterward. The second line is what makes the first one land.
• Dietary restrictions. Say how, not just that: a field on the RSVP form or an email address, and a date by which you need to know.

What not to publish

The site is public unless you make it otherwise, and three kinds of content should not be on a public page.

• Events not everyone is invited to. Keep the rehearsal dinner and the bachelor and bachelorette parties off the public schedule, because a public listing produces confusion and unexpected arrivals. That does not always mean leaving them out entirely. Zola and The Knot both have a private event setting that hides an event from the schedule while the guests invited to it still see it when they RSVP. If your platform has no such setting, keep the event off the site and tell those guests directly.
• Your home address. Privacy counsel recommends keeping the registry as private as the platform allows, listing a P.O. box rather than a home address, and using a first name and last initial on the site so that automated scrapers have less to work with.
• Gift pressure and guest-list reasoning. Leave off gift expectations, explanations of who is not invited, phone numbers as the default contact, and anything out of date.

Then use the settings. Joy offers Private (a password before any page), Public, and Hidden (per-page control), plus a separate toggle for whether the site can be found on Google, with indexing taking a week to a month. Zola offers a password you print on the save the dates and invitations; its search-engine opt-out takes about 30 days. A password is the best way to keep wedding-day details away from people who were not invited, and it has one real cost: guests forget passwords. Print it on every piece of paper that carries the site address.

The build order and who maintains it

The site does not launch finished. It goes live in two phases.

Phase	When	What is live
Minimum site	With the save the dates, 6 to 12 months out	Names, date, city; ceremony and reception locations; hotel block; basic travel
Full site	2 to 3 months out, complete before invitations mail	RSVP form, dress code, schedule, FAQ, registry, wedding party, local picks

Set the RSVP deadline three to four weeks before the wedding; the reasoning, and how it protects your caterer date, is in our RSVP mistakes guide. Destination weddings run earlier at every step, and how much earlier depends on how far your guests have to travel.

One person owns the site. Not both of you, and not the planner by default. That person updates the schedule the day anything changes, checks the FAQ against the questions actually arriving by text, and takes the site down or turns it into a photo page after the wedding. An out-of-date website is worse than none, because guests trust it.

The pre-send test

Before the invitations go out, hand the site to one guest who is not in the wedding party and ask them to answer the ten questions above using only the site. Every question they cannot answer from the page is a text you will get again and again. Then check three things yourself: the RSVP form submits and you receive it, every address opens in a map app, and the password, if you set one, matches what is printed on the paper.

Planning in Chicago?

The Chicago-specific page is transportation. Guests staying downtown want the shuttle pickup hotel and times, and guests driving want to know whether the venue has a lot or a garage and what it costs. Put both on the travel page, and if the ceremony and reception are at different addresses, say how guests get between them. The published vehicle rates and a worked shuttle schedule are in our Chicago transportation guide, and the room-block details are in hotel blocks.

Mistakes to avoid

• Designing before deciding. The template is an evening; the ten answers are the work.
• Explaining the guest list. One line, no reasons, for kids and plus-ones alike.
• A dress code with no definition. “Cocktail” means five things to five guests. Define it.
• Private events on the public schedule. Rehearsal dinner and bachelorette details go to the people invited, not to the site.
• A public site with your home address on it. P.O. box, first name and last initial, password.
• Letting the site go stale. One owner, updated the day anything changes.

The site that works is the one nobody has to ask about. Build it in two phases, answer the ten questions, and keep the private things private.