Thanks to a year of virtual development (#pandemiclife, amirite?!), more and more couples are moving their wedding planning online. From the comfort of their cozy couch, soon-to-be spouses can book a venue, buy their wedding dress, and plan their honeymoon! Many couples are even choosing to create wedding websites as a central form of communication with their guests. These online tools give loved ones easy access to the registry, things to do around town, and all the details and logistics for the big day. However, this modern format raises concerns about privacy.

Data brokers scour the internet in search of personal information they can resell, and your wedding website could be subject to this threat. Other cyber scammers pursue vendor fraud– posing as fake photographers, florists, or DJs and tricking couples out of their money. While online wedding planning is advantageous, it’s crucial to know and avoid the risks of online vendor fraud. To make sure your wedding day goes off without a hitch, keep reading to learn the do’s and don’ts of wedding websites!

WEDDING WEBSITE DO’S

Luckily, there are several ways to achieve a cyber-safe wedding website! Be sure to say “yes” to the following tips:

• Do Secure Your Site: When creating your wedding website, make sure to hide private data, decline requests for information collection on registry platforms, and create a wedding burner email (a tip from our wedding hacks!) instead of using your personal one.
• Do Strengthen Your Logins: To help everyone’s accounts stay secure, make sure you and your guests set up multi-factor authentication and choose strong passwords. Multi-factor authentication can help fortify your online accounts by enabling the strongest authentication tools available, such as biometrics, security keys or a unique one-time code through an app on your mobile device.
• Do Verify Your Vendors: Confirm that the wedding vendors you hire operate legitimate businesses and have real addresses, references, and payment methods. This is where a wedding planner comes in handy!
• Do Stream Safely: If you’re planning on live streaming your big day on a wedding website, use a secure network or Virtual Private Network (VPN) and conceal personal information.

WEDDING WEBSITE DON’TS

To ensure your big day is even more secure, it’s essential to avoid common mistakes people make in their online wedding planning. Make sure to steer clear of these errors on your wedding website:

• Don’t Use the Venue’s Wi-Fi: It might seem like the obvious choice, but using an unsecured Wi-Fi connection can make it easier for hackers to access your data. Instead, opt for your phone’s hotspot or a VPN.
• Don’t Cluster Your Information: Although having one website for all your wedding transactions is convenient, you shouldn’t keep all your personal information on one platform. To make your data less vulnerable to attack, spread out your information on multiple services.
• Don’t Post Without Permission: Before you publish photos and videos from your wedding on the internet, ask permission from those featured in the post and delete anything they don’t want on your public gallery.
• Don’t Keep Websites Active: This is a big one! Rather than keeping personal information public long after the big day, you should deactivate your wedding websites and registries. Most wedding planning sites make it easy to deactivate or delete your accounts after the big day.

When it comes to wedding websites, there’s a lot that can go wrong. However, knowing the signs of cyber security breaches and the best practices for preventing them can keep you and your guests protected. That way, you can walk down the aisle knowing your wedding day is cyber safe! Looking for more resources on how to keep your wedding cyber safe?! Head on over to our friends at Norton for the 14 ways to avoid vendor fraud and other precautions for a cyber-safe wedding!