Wedding 2.0

The wedding invites have started landing on people's doormats today. I've borrowed the title of this post from one recipient, who emailed me to amusedly point out that this wedding uses virtually every Web 2.0 service there is.

I hadn't really thought about it, but yeah, guilty as charged. :-)

We used web applications quite a bit...

The photograph on the invite cards (see above) was imagined by Jane, photographed by me, uploaded to Flickr and printed by Moo. The information sheet inside includes a link to a custom Google Map showing the locations of all the venues and local hotels, written as a succinct TinyURL, as Google Map permalinks are a bit too long to type in!

Some people even get a little Moo sticker of the same design on the back of the envelope!

The wedding gift list is also available online, if guests want to partake, via John Lewis's Gift List system. Which took a lot of the stress out of the whole thing... well, for me and Jane anyway!

Behind the scenes, Jane and I have also made heavy use of Google's services, including Google Calendar to keep track of what needs doing when (or, more often, who needs paying when!), and there's a spreadsheet on Google Docs that's keeping a record of the list of attendees, the budget, and more!

I'm a great believer in not using "technology for technology's sake", which might sound a bit unusual coming from someone who's bread and butter is in computing. But I think when you work in IT, and regularly come across people trying to force technological solutions to problems that don't need them, you inevitably become a bit of a technology agnostic. Part of my job is saying to people "are you sure you wouldn't be better off writing this on a scrap of paper?".

I'm quite happy writing stuff on a scrap of paper when it's quicker than firing up a spreadsheet, but in this case I think that it's been very worthwhile making use of the techologies available. Putting the wedding budget online, for example, has meant that I can tinker with it during lunchtimes at work. Both Jane and I have access to it from more or less anywhere, without having to carry around a dog-eared bits of paper like Norfolk's answer to Earl Hickey.

On the day, we're doing without the services of a professional photographer (the budget wouldn't stretch), and relying on guests to share any pictures they take via a Flickr group created for the purpose.

Which reminds me, we need to make some cards with the details of the Flickr group to hand out to guests on the day ... back to Moo!

An Atom feed of Jane and Simon's wedding is available at: www.oknowyouregoingtofar.com