A website to pull together all the details, guest information and registry links (so important!) is just about necessary for weddings planned nowadays. However, that’s not necessarily the case — I have attended a few weddings that didn’t bother with a wedding website. But I figure as the population gets more technically savvy, it’ll become standard practice, the way online registries have become standard practice.

I have built, with my husband’s help, at least one wedding website. It was for free, so it was a big pain in the butt — for the work that my husband and I did (creating original graphics, processing photos, copy editing bios and the HTML work), I would have charged a paying client at least $2,500.

Is there a way around paying for a website? Of course! And I’m this close to heartily recommending this route. Let me explain.

First, all the pros. There is a wealth of free wedding resources online now, including sites that host wedding websites for free. Three that came up when I did a casual search were Momentville, MyWedding.com and eWedding.com. These sites will host a few pages for you and have some nicely designed, simple standard themes. Momentville offers a custom theme builder and it appears all of eWedding’s themes come with a splash page — the Flash intro page that animates, then jumps you to the site.

The pros are obvious. First, these site’s are offering these sites for free, and oh-so-conveniently, also offer matching invitations with many of these website themes. Second, they’re easy — fill in your information, choose a theme, upload a few photos, link your registries, and voilà! your wedding website is ready.

However, don’t forget the cons. One con is that you can’t go in and edit the code yourself, if you are so inclined. (I am.) Another con is that you can’t get your own domain name and connect it to your free page. Well, technically, you could, but it would necessarily be connected to your site. Momentville, however, does offer domain name services if you pay for the premium services. The url of most free website is similar to what you can get on Myspace — http://www.myspace.com/darleeneisms for example (which really is my Myspace page).

I like the idea of using a free wedding website service because, let’s face — the day after the wedding, you really don’t need it anymore.

Another alternative is to go to a free blogging service like WordPress.com and set up a blog, but only use their pages. Or, make your wedding website a part of your existing site. The possibilities are endless, and this shouldn’t be another thing you fret about. Or even need to pay for.