What is at the core of your wedding? It’s not the flowers or the dress or the cake. Nope, it’s you two, and your love. Your family and friends will, no doubt, be ecstatic to celebrate your love from near and far—that’s the beauty of weddings. What happens when people don’t know both of you? How do they join in the excitement? We’ve all received the wedding invite from a college friend whose fiancé’s name we don’t even know, or the baby announcement for the cousin we didn’t know was pregnant. (Of course, this is much less common in the age of social media, but it still happens.) We’ve also all found ourselves too happy for a celebrity we don’t know who has gotten engaged… that’s because we feel like we know their love story. But now, it’s time to share yours.
In all seasons of life, but especially this pandemic season, sharing your love story on your wedding website is key. Not all of your family and friends will know your love story inside and out, and… well… they should. Your love has been a journey, no matter how long or short, and as you invite folks in to celebrate this culmination of your love, invite them in all the way. Give them that good rom-com warm-fuzzy feeling before they ever arrive on wedding day (or send you a toaster, as it may be).
With Squarespace, you can customize your wedding website indefinitely. As you figure out exactly what to put on your website, let the creativity flow. So, pour yourself some wine, and let’s write your love story… your guests will thank you.
Step-by-Step
Just Start
The hardest step of any journey, especially something like writing about yourself, is to just start. It’s one of those things that won’t just happen, so make it intentional. You and your fiancé might want to set aside a date night to work on it together. Or, perhaps one of you is more the ‘writing’ type, and you can start the process and then bring your partner in for the edits and collaboration.
If just sitting down and writing a whole love story gives you pause, it might be the most helpful to start by brainstorming your ideas. Knowing exactly what you want to include is half the battle, and I tend to think that starting with more ideas and then paring it down is preferable to staring at a blank screen with no ideas to run with. Start by answering these questions:
- Where/when/how you met?
- Your first date.
- Other memorable adventures / dates / trips you’ve been on.
- What are your shared interests, hobbies, and activities?
- List out the big moments: moving in together, buying your first home, if / when you’ve. added kids and pets to the crew.
- Funny memories and stories.
- Think about the things you love about each other (this is a fun piece to write separately).
- The proposal story (obviously!).
Think Of Your Audience
With all writing, it is key to think about who you are writing for and to. Your wedding guests are your family and friends… so you can write conversationally and naturally as if you are just talking. No need to turn this into a resume or college essay, keep it real and true to you two. And… don’t forget that folks will be reading who would very much like it to stay… appropriate. 😉 Fun, silly, authentic… and still okay for your partner’s great-grandma who you’ve never met.
Keep It Chronological
Sure, you could get fancy and go backward or something, but the easiest way to think about your love story is to start at the beginning. Where and how did you meet your partner? What was the first communication, or the first time you met? Your first date? Follow the story all the way through to now… wedding planning, and your pending wedding day.
Write Drunk, Edit Sober
This is the forever rule of writing—and no, you don’t actually have to be drunk. What you must do is have a few drafts. Write the first version without paying too much attention to details or grammar. When you circle back to edit, you can fix all those little things. The other piece to watch for when it comes time to edit is being overly detailed. You want to keep people’s attention, so try to not let your ‘About Us’ page of your wedding website become an accidental novel.
Story Format Ideas
The Story
The obvious option is to… ya know… write your story. It’s simple and straightforward, and you don’t need to do anything fancy to make it special. You could mix in some photos to our ‘Love Story’ page (screenshots of your firsts messages to each other, anyone?), and call it good. No need to make it any more of a challenge, this is a great option.
The Two-Sided Story
One fun idea, that definitely splits the work between you and your beau, is to each write the story from both of your perspectives. It would be so fun to write them totally separate from each other, and then swap… no doubt your perspectives will have some super sweet similarities and some even sweeter differences.
The Timeline
If you’re not big into writing a longer form story, a fun option would be to create a timeline that shows the major moments of your love story. You can add photos or graphics to create a super interesting visual timeline. Pro tip: There are tons of free places on the internet that will help you make DIY graphics, timelines, and more—in 2021, you don’t even have to be a graphic designer.
The Video
In lieu of a written story, you could create a video. Set up a camera on a tripod and tell your story—talk about a personal touch! If you want to get really fancy, you could edit the video to include snapshots from your life with your fiancé over the years. If not, just set up a camera somewhere with good lighting and tell your story (something like this little series from Glamour). Think of it as a family heirloom, a video you get to keep forever.
The Artists Journey
Are you or your partner artistic? Put it to good use. Use those skills to create an artistic story of your life together. It could be a comic-style visual story, a series of paintings or drawings, or any other collection of your artistic skills that represents your love story—your friends and family will be wowed.
do you have a wedding website? did you create an epic ‘our story’ section? Share it with us in the comments, please!
This post was sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace makes beautiful wedding websites happen in a matter of minutes, thanks to their user-friendly software (full of features) and modern, minimal template designs (and really great wedding-specific templates, that don’t look like every other wedding website you’ve ever seen.) Trust us when we say that you want to make a wedding website with Squarespace. You’ll save yourself a bunch of time and hassle, and make sure your guests are super informed. Click here to start a free 14-day trial and get your custom wedding website URL today (It’s free with your annual subscription). And find all our Squarespace posts with tons of helpful tips and tricks, right here.
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