I don’t think we have ever relied so heavily on technology to bring us closer to our loved ones, and the weddings that have gone ahead are no different. Whether it’s announcing a change of date or that the wedding will now be virtual, Joy has got all the features needed to help this already stressful time a bit calmer.
If you already have a wedding website with Joy (if not, you can sign up here), then here are the new Covid specific features:
- Announcement Banners – You can now add an announcement banner to appear across your Joy wedding website and mobile app, so that if your plans have changed you can quickly draw guests’ attention to your news.
- Change the Dates – If your wedding plans have changed and you need to alert your guests of a new date, Joy’s Change the Dates help you do just that. Send unlimited free e-cards to your guests, available in hundreds of beautiful designs and featuring fully customizable text.
- Virtual Weddings – During the COVID pandemic and social distancing, couples are turning to virtual weddings. You can now live stream your wedding directly through your Joy wedding website and mobile app to have your loved ones celebrate virtually with you! This is incredibly easy for your guests, as they simply visit your wedding website at the time of your wedding to tune in. Following your wedding you can upload the recording of your livestream to your wedding website, allowing your guests to continue reliving your big day!
- Live Photo Album – If you choose to have a virtual ceremony or minimony, ask any guests that are present with you to add photos to the ‘Moments’ shared album on your Joy wedding website, which updates in real time so your virtual guests can follow along from afar.
- COVID Wedding Calculator – Joy’s COVID Wedding Calculator helps you determine changes you may need to make to your wedding plans amid COVID-19 and provides an overview of options that could help you. Use it as a resource to find a wedding plan you and your loved ones feel comfortable with.
- Wedding Planning with Joy Facebook Community – Join their Facebook community to ask questions and share advice with other couples in your shoes.
- COVID-19 Wedding Advice – For everything you need to know about wedding planning amid the coronavirus pandemic, visit our COVID-19 Wedding Planning Resource Center.
If you haven’t joined Joy yet, or are fretting, you may have to keep sending out paper invitations, now may be the time to switch everything to online.
- Joy allows you to plan everything about your wedding in one place.
- Joy is 100% free for couples!
- Hundreds of beautiful wedding website designs with the ability to customise layouts, fonts, and add photos and videos to your wedding website
- Save-the-dates, change-the-dates, and invitations that match your wedding website. Send unlimited, full customisable save-the-date and invitation e-cards for free through Joy, or order printed invitations through our printing partners. Now more than ever, couples are turning to online change-the-dates and invites to quickly update guests of changing wedding plans amid COVID-19.
- RSVP manager
- Ability to ask RSVP questions and follow up questions for multiple wedding events. For example, you can not only ask who is coming to each of your wedding events, but ask additional questions such as which meal they would like for each of your events
- Custom RSVP questions with conditional logic – this means that if a guest RSVPs ‘no’ they won’t receive any follow up questions. However if they RSVP ‘yes’ they go on to answer any other questions you have set up such as meal preferences, dietary restrictions, etc.
- Use the RSVP questions to help you plan, such as asking guests if they need a hotel room in your room block, if they need transportation to your wedding events, etc.
- Ask COVID specific RSVP questions such as if a guest would be more comfortable attending the wedding virtually (such as via Zoom) rather than in person, if a guest will be willing to wear a mask and practice social distancing at the wedding, etc.
- Guest list manager – keep your guest lists for all of your wedding events organized with Joy’s guest list manager.
- In your master wedding guest list, simply tag certain guests with labels, such as “Rehearsal Dinner” or “Bridal Luncheon” to quickly create sub-lists within your master guest list.
- Assign and limit plus ones within your guest list, so that a guest can only RSVP for the amount of people you have designated for them
- Then, it’s easy to send an invitation through Joy only to guests tagged with the Rehearsal Dinner label, and to set the settings of a custom RSVP question so that only guests invited to the Rehearsal Dinner can see and respond to that RSVP question when they go to RSVP on your wedding website
- As RSVPs are received, guest counts are automatically updated within your guest list
- Customisable privacy settings
- Make certain sections of your wedding website public and certain sections password protected
- Control which guests can see which events on your wedding schedule and which guests can see/reply to RSVP questions. When each guest goes to RSVP for your wedding, once they have entered their name a custom wedding schedule will appear for them with which wedding events they are invited to, and they will see custom RSVP questions based on which events you have indicated they are invited to
- Google Maps integration, so guests know exactly where to go and can click the address link of an event on your wedding schedule and it will open in maps to guide them
- FAQ & Travel Tips pages allow you to share all the details your guests will need to know about your big day, and saves you time answering guest questions! Especially during COVID-19 guests will have plenty of questions about your wedding plans, so the FAQ section allows you to address any covid-specific topics such as how to join your virtual wedding livestream if you are having a virtual wedding, safety measures you’ll be putting into place if you are gathering in-person, social distancing expectations for your wedding, etc.
- Uber and Lyft integrations, so guests can order a ride at the click of a button from your wedding website
- Booking Assistant travel feature helps guests find and book the best deals on accommodations for your wedding location
- Ability to send push notifications to your guests with updates and reminders about your big day
- Registry integration to link all your wedding registries in one place, whether traditional gift registries, cash funds, or charitable donations
- Mobile app for you to plan on the go, and for guests to keep your wedding details handy
- Multiple admin access – there is no cap on the amount of people who you can grant admin access to your wedding website
I do sympathise with what you are going through right now, it must be so stressful living in this limbo of unknowns, and all you want to do is bring all your loved ones together to celebrate something extraordinary. I hope sites like Joy can help, and so can we. We have been a little quiet lately because, to be honest, not much is happening in the wedding world. Take care of yourselves, and we will get through this!