Wedding Mapper Blog

For me, probably the singly most important thing about a wedding is that the guests have a great time. I went to two weddings this memorial day weekend and both were a great time, going off without a hitch. In both cases, though, I had a ton of time in between planned wedding activities where I had nothing to do.

So I took to wandering the streets and exploring and had a good time of it. In both cases, though, the groom later told me that I should have checked out X, Y, and Z while I was wandering around. Of course it was too late for me to check out X, Y, and Z.

What was interesting was that both weddings used Wedding Mapper to help people get to the hotel, ceremony, and reception, but neither wedding added any nearby attractions, restaurants, bars, etc. to their wedding map. Although the map ended up being extremely helpful (we printed out one page that showed us how to get to everything we needed to get to), it would have been so much better if we they had listed X, Y, and Z so that we could have known more about the area and taken advantage of visiting a place we’ll likely never come back to.

What’s also too bad was that as soon as I told them they should have listed attractions they were slapping their foreheads saying, “Why didn’t we think of that?”. I don’t blame them for missing it, it’s just not part of “what you do for a wedding” yet. Hopefully Wedding Mapper can change that some day!

Wedding Mapper has been receiving some press recently promoting the site as a great tool for planning a destination wedding. Although the press is very helpful for getting the word out about Wedding Mapper, it’s too bad that the focus is on destination weddings. Almost every wedding these days is a destination wedding for your guests.

Unless all of your family and guests live in the same town as your wedding, then your wedding is a destination wedding for your family and friends. Even if your guests live in the same town as your wedding then Wedding Mapper is a great opportunity to tell people what you love about the area and why it is special to you.

So, although Wedding Mapper can be particularly useful for true destination weddings, it can also be extremely useful for local weddings where people may be coming from out of town or where people may just appreciate seeing a place that is special to you through your eyes!

We get a lot of comments from people saying how they would have loved to use Wedding Mapper to create a map of their wedding if they’d only known about it earlier. Many of these people will not be getting married for months, but they’ve already hired a professional designer or spent hours creating their wedding map by hand to include in their invitations.

Although it is unfortunate that they were not able to save themselves time and money by using Wedding Mapper from the start, they can certainly still benefit from creating a wedding map with Wedding Mapper. When we describe to them how they can still use they almost always end up creating a map and thanking us for the suggestions. So I figure it was time to write a short article about how to get the most out of Wedding Mapper, even if you already have a printed wedding map.

1. An online map of your wedding can help your out of town guests plan their trip more effectively. They’ll be able to easily see where the airport, hotels, reception, and ceremony are, making it easier for them to make decisions about where to stay.
2. Your Wedding Mapper map allows your our of town guests to become familiar with the area before they arrive. I’ve been to two weddings in the past few weeks and both times I was completely unfamiliar with the immediate area around the hotel (even though I lived close by). Had either couple created a map of their wedding and included some highlights in the area I would have known where to explore and wouldn’t have spent all my time just hanging out at the hotel.
3. A Wedding Mapper map gives you a great opportunity to let people know why you decided to get married in this specific place. It may be special to you because it is where you met, or where you grew up, or simply a place that both of you have wanted to travel to for some time. What ever the reason, use your wedding map to describe this special place to people and help them get excited about coming to your wedding. Even if they are local, you can tell them things about this place and how it relates to you and your fiancee that they probably did not know.
4. Your guests, photographer, caterer, etc. can easily get directions to any number of places they need to go during your wedding. People may be flying in, staying at hotels, getting their nails done or pictures taken some place. Nothing is more convenient for them than an online map of the wedding area that they can use to get directions.

There are numerous other benefits of create a map of your wedding online with Wedding Mapper, not the least of which is saving on custom design work by a professional designer. Still if you’ve already gone to the trouble of creating a printed map of your wedding hopefully this advice will prevent you from dismissing Wedding Mapper without giving it a little thought. It is free and very easy to use and can really benefit your guests, your vendors, and yourself come your big day!