Your wedding website address has one job that no other part of the site has: it has to survive being typed by someone who read it once, on paper, possibly without their glasses.
That is a real constraint and it rules out most of the clever options.
The rules that matter
- Short enough to fit on one line of an invitation. If it wraps, it will be mistyped.
- Spellable by someone who has only heard it. Your surnames may not be, which is a real argument for first names.
- No hyphens if you can avoid them. People forget them, and nobody says them aloud.
- No numbers, especially the year. Nobody remembers whether it was the year or the date, and half will guess wrong.
- Unambiguous when read out. If it contains a word that can be spelled two ways, expect both.
What most couples land on
First names beat surnames in almost every case. They are shorter, easier to spell, and the people receiving the invitation know them.
The common shapes are both first names together, both first names with the word and, or first names with the year removed. Adding the word wedding helps if your names alone would be ambiguous, and hurts if they already read clearly.
Double-barrelled surnames, apostrophes and anything with a silent letter are worth avoiding even if it is your actual name. This is an address, not a nameplate.
Your own domain, or a subdomain
Most wedding website builders give you an address under their own domain at no cost, and that is genuinely fine for a great many weddings. It works, it is free, and guests do not care.
Buying your own is worth it in three cases: your names are common enough that the subdomain you want is taken, the address is going on printed stationery you care about, or you want an email address to match.
| Option | When it is the right call |
|---|---|
| A subdomain from your builder | Almost always. Free, immediate, and nothing to renew or forget. |
| Your own domain | Printed stationery, a matching email address, or when the name you want is already taken. Costs about as much a year as a bottle of wine. |
When the name you want is taken
Two common first names are a common combination, so this happens constantly and it is not a sign you have chosen badly. There are four ways out and they are not equally good.
Adding a middle initial usually works and stays spellable. Adding the word wedding works and adds length. Swapping the order of your names works and nobody will notice. Adding a number does not work, for the same reason the year does not: guests cannot remember which number it was.
The option most couples overlook is a different ending. The name may be gone on one domain ending and free on several others, and for a wedding site nobody is judging which one you used. It is worth checking two or three before compromising on the name itself, because the name is the part that has to be remembered.
If none of that lands, the subdomain your builder gives you is almost always available in some form, costs nothing, and removes the problem entirely.
If you do buy one
Buy it from any registrar you like and point it at your site — with a custom domain that is usually a single DNS record, and HTTPS should be handled for you rather than being something you configure.
Register it for at least two years. The renewal will arrive in the middle of the wedding year, which is the worst possible time to be dealing with a domain expiry notice, and a lapsed domain takes the site off the internet without warning.
Check what happens to the address afterwards. Some couples keep it as a small archive of the photographs and the guestbook, which only works if the domain is genuinely yours rather than borrowed for the season.
Test it before it is printed
Write it on a piece of paper and hand it to someone who has not seen it. Ask them to type it. Then say it out loud on the phone to someone else and ask them to type that.
Those two tests take five minutes and catch nearly everything: the silent letter, the ambiguous spelling, the hyphen nobody heard. Stationery is expensive to reprint, and an address that does not work is worse than one that is boring.