Wedding Mapper Blog

We were just alerted to a nice review of Wedding Mapper on WNBC 4 NYC. To see the clip follow the link below. Wedding Mapper is discussed about 1 minute into the clip (the viewer will show 1:44 left in the clip).

http://video.wnbc.com/player/?id=114283

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!

We’ve received some amazing reviews from the community of wedding websites out there about Wedding Mapper. It has helped us a great deal as we look towards getting this business off the ground. So we got to thinking: how can we encourage people to tell others about Wedding Mapper and how can we better reward them for helping us make this website a success?

After some digging around we came across a few services that facilitate affiliate programs for other websites. They would allow us to set up a program for all of the wedding websites and blogs out there to create a link that would send people to Wedding Mapper. Then, if anyone they refer to Wedding Mapper pays to upgrade their account we would share 50% of the sale with the referrer.

We’re hoping that this could be a great way for all of the websites and blogs out there that write about weddings, including websites for photographers, wedding planners, etc. to make money for referring a great product to their readers and customers. Your readers and customers will be very grateful to you for pointing out a useful tool that makes their wedding planning process easier!

Getting started with these programs is not cheap, so we’d like to figure out if anyone would be interested in participating in this before we dive in completely. So if you would be interested in acting as a Wedding Mapper Affiliate please email us at affiliate@weddingmapper.com and don’t forget to include your name and the url for your website.

We’re starting to roll out some features associated with Wedding Mapper’s next stage of development. With so many thousands of great wedding maps we thought it would be a great idea to publish these maps after the wedding has already taken place so that future engaged couples can view wedding maps in their area to help them plan their wedding.

We wanted to respect the privacy of anyone using Wedding Mapper, though, so any couple that would rather not have their wedding map published is free to make it private, removing it completely from this part of the site. By default we’re making all the wedding maps anonymous, removing the names of the couple, date of the wedding, and all descriptions that have names or dates in them. Any couple that feels comfortable sharing more information with people can choose to do so, and their wedding map will show up first when people are looking in a specific area as it will likely be more informative than other, anonymous wedding maps.

So far the response from the community of engaged couples using Wedding Mapper has been great. Less than 1% of couples have chosen to keep their maps private. We’ve also received a number of emails from people saying that they wish this had been available when they were planning their wedding and they are happy to have their wedding map published now that their wedding has already taken place. We agree; we think it’s going to be a great resource for engaged couples who are trying to figure out where to have their ceremony or which hotels to use, etc.

We’re working on the interface for exploring these wedding maps. In the meantime we’ve put together a raw list of all publishable wedding maps (where the wedding has already taken place and we have permission to publish the map) in the beginnings of the wedding planning section of Wedding Mapper.

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 didn’t even realize it at the time, but a few days ago we passed the 10,000 registered wedding maps mark. Since you don’t have to register to try out Wedding Mapper this means that over 10,000 engaged couples have found Wedding Mapper useful enough to register for the site over the past 3 months since our launch. A significant portion of those have liked the site so much that they’ve decided to upgrade their accounts as well.

This is just the beginning and we’ve got some great plans in mind to improve the site, but it’s a great start!

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!

Are you getting married? Trying to plan a wedding and communicate all of the details to the hundreds of people who will be attending, from guests to caterers to photographers? Well a wedding map can go a long way towards ensuring everyone has a great time and maintaining your sanity on your special day.

The best part? It’s free and super easy to do.

Here are a few tips on how to create a great wedding map using Wedding Mapper.

• Be sure to include all key locations, including hotels and airports.
  • The key benefit of a Wedding Mapper map is for your guests to be able to see where everything is in relation to everything else. This is especially true for hotels and airports. Guests want to be able to see where they are staying and how close they will be to airports, the reception, the ceremony, etc.
• Tell people about the area, include markers for local attractions.
  • Don’t look at your wedding map as a purely informative tool. This is a chance to tell your guests about a place that is special for you in some way because you chose to get married there. It likely says a lot about you and your fiancee that you chose this location, and you can use your wedding map to show people some of the highlights of the area so that they can learn more about it and get excited to visit.
• Don’t add too many markers.
  • Frequently people get caught up in their maps, adding everything under the sun. The map quickly becomes overwhelming for people who are visiting. Sometimes this is justified because you are showing people all of the nearby vineyards for your wedding in Wine Country or something to that effect, but usually it is because people are just having fun making the map. Pay some attention to the markers you add to the map. Pretend you are a guide book and try to add only the most important attractions, letting people know why something was important enough to add to the map.
• Add Photos!
  • Nothing brings a wedding map to life like photos of each location. It will add an extra dimension to your maps that your guests are sure to appreciate!
• Make sure your guests see the map.
  • So often people create their wedding map and then hide it in the Directions page of their wedding website, making it look like a link to MapQuest. You’ve put some time into this and it’s really going to help your guests get excited about coming to your wedding. Make sure they see it and understand that this is something you personally put together!

If you follow these simple steps don’t be surprised if you get more than a few rave reviews from appreciative guests!

To get started on your own wedding map head on over to Wedding Mapper .

We’ve got another batch of icons up on the site. Based on some requests from users we tried to put together another generic batch to show things like train stations, boats, etc.

Here are the new icons:

Boat	Balloons	Hospital	Limo	Train	Umbrella

If you can’t find an icon that you like please let us know. Also if you have an icon you’d like to use we can help you incorporate it into your map!

Now that the majority of weddings are rolling around we’ve added in some new functionality for the guests under a new section called “Guest Services” when you are viewing your map (will not display when you are editing your map).

1. The Guest Book (now your guests can leave messages for you on your map)
2. Guest Notifications (now your guests can subscribe to receive a notification if your map changes at all)

Hopefully these two enhancements will help your guests stay up-to-date and more involved with your wedding!