Do you like the Flash sites you see online and want one of your own, but don’t know how to use Flash?  Well, now you can for free at Wix.com.  I’m not a big fan of Flash websites as a lot of them are not universally accessible.  But you can do a lot of cool things (e.g. animations).

Now that our wedding is done, I decided to update our wedding website to contain mostly photos.  So I tried out Wix.  Here are screenshots of the site I created.

The Wix site editor was pretty easy to use if you’re starting from a template and you need to do basic editing.  Some actions that you need to do may not be easy to figure out sometimes.  The page manager is the part that I hate the most.  It’s hard to get to and hard to understand.  The editor also doesn’t have a media manager.  There’s no way to organize photos (for example) and if you need to use them again, you’ll have to scroll through a lot of pages if you have a lot of photos.

Canditto is a new and convenient way of getting copies of your guests’ photos of your wedding. A lot of guests carry digital cameras to weddings nowadays. And Canditto lets them easily share their photos with you right before they leave on your wedding day. No more waiting for them to send or upload them!

Aylee Bits readers get $50 off with promo code 752834429.

My first concern is that guests might be a little hesitant copying their photos into the machine even though it only copies photos taken for the past 8 hours. My second concern is the price. At $450 ($400 with the coupon) for a week rental, brides might just opt for the free online photo-sharing sites where guests can upload their photos.

There’s more to Shutterfly than photo sharing, photo books and cards.  Shutterfly has its own website creation tool.  And I suggest brides take advantage of this free helpful tool!  It’s very easy to use.

Here are just a few of the features:

• Photo sharing – your guests can easily upload digital photos they took at your wedding
• Privacy and security – you can control permissions (view, comment, contribute, edit, etc) of the whole site and of each page
• Tools (widgets) – there are so many tools available including calendar, map, to-do list, journal (blog), guestbook, bookmarks, videos, files, message board, polls, and a lot more.

Bored?  Need something fun to do?  Martha Stewart Weddings has  fun quizzes for brides (and grooms).  Some of them are very informative as well.

Photo from Real Life Wedding Planning

What Is Your Wedding Etiquette IQ?
Test your knowledge of wedding traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation.

Test Your Invitation Know-How
There are many rules when it comes to writing and mailing your invitations.

Wedding Day Roles and Rules
When it comes to who does what, choosing roles for your wedding day can be a slippery slope. Whether you’re dealing with the bride’s parents or the groom’s parents, make sure you know who should do what.

Do You Know Your Diamonds?
From the setting to the size, there’s a lot you need to know when picking the perfect ring.

Know Your Seating Charts
Figuring out where to seat your guests — and the wedding party, too — can be tricky.

So how did you fare?

We’re in a technology boom and more and more engaged couples now have their own wedding websites.  Wedding websites can be very useful to guests.  These websites usually include detailed info about the wedding and other events, travel info for out-of-town guests, gift registry, and even an RSVP form.

While there are a lot of sites that offer wedding website services and hosting for a fee, there are equally as many sites that offer it for free.  Below are some that I know of:
www.weddingwire.com - my top choice
www.mywedding.com
www.weddingannouncer.com
www.projectwedding.com
www.brides.com
www.theknot.com
www.momentville.com
www.ewedding.com

Unfortunately, I couldn’t customize the free websites as much as I want to.  So I decided to use one that I’m familiar with - the blog platform Wordpress.

Read on…

I know I have been slacking about posting the new updates on the Wedding Resources page.  For the next five days, I will post the most recent updates including descriptions.  Here’s my first installment…

Social Couture is a fabulous home and entertaining store.  It is set up differently than your usual online stores.  The site shows you different entertaining/party ideas complete with photos of the table set-up, decor, etc.  You can then purchase the items to create the same look on the photos.

WeddingWire.com is one of my favorite wedding planning sites.  It includes a list of vendors complete with reviews from brides and grooms.  It is comprehensive and intuitive.  Their tools are one of the most intuitive.  It is a great organizer for brides from budget and timeline to guest lists and seating charts.

Click here for the complete list of Wedding Resources.

I’m going the traditional route. I plan to take my fiance’s last name after we get married, even though it’s harder to spell than my maiden name. While it is what I want to do, I’m not looking forward to it at all. Looking at all the things that one needs to do to change his/her last name looks like a mission in and of itself.

I did ask John if he is willing to change his last name to mine. Since his parents are divorced and he doesn’t like his father, he is willing to do it. But he is not that organized and I’m a bit old-fashioned, so we decided I’m changing mine.

Below are tips and a checklist for changing your last name:

Read on…

Since I like the Brides.com site, I figured I will like their blog Wedded Bits as well.  Unfortunately, not.  I’ve had the blog on my RSS reader for months and I decided to take it out. 

I noticed that most of the entries on Wedded Bits are about wedding products and services.  I’m starting to believe these posts are sponsored – they were paid to post about these products and services.  If there are any tips or advice at wedding planning at all, they revolve around a product or service.  One exception are the “Brides are Talking” posts which pertains to posts in their forums, which I think didn’t really require much effort or thinking from the part of the blog authors.

There was one post where the author began his/her post about a nice venue in Manhattan where they held a bridal shower without mentioning the venue’s name.  Then the author proceeded to talk about a similar venue in California which was the main topic of the post.  I then left a comment asking about the venue in Manhattan, but I never got a response.  Some assumptions I had as to why: they weren’t paid to mention the Manhattan venue; whatever Manhattan venue they were really talking didn’t exist so they don’t really have a specific name they can tell me.