Yeah, I know. This might not be the first question that springs to your mind when you think about getting married but then you don’t do web programming for a living. Or maybe you do. And if that’s the case, this was probably the 2nd thing you thought of, was it? Yeah, we’re a strange breed.
Those dumplings, like domain names, are cheap. At Fried Dumpling, you can get five for a dollar. At mad dog domains, you can get domains for less than 9 dollars a year. I own about 10 which isn’t a lot for the field I’m in but it’s probably more than the average person owns. Blogs, portfolios, random words that I thought were funny – yep, I have it all. And I’ve probably own roughly 20 other domain names over the year though they all lapsed once I decide that I wasn’t doing anything with them. They might not seem expensive at first but, like those dumplings, eat too much and you’ll pay for it later.
So the first thing I looked up was our two first names with an and between them .com. Of course both were taken for weddings that happened in 07 or 08. My firstname+hers.com was taken though hers+mine.com is available. I thought about using a hyphen but only one of those works and, honestly, that’s not the most visibly appealing way to do a domain. Hyphens, when used in this way, looks like a minus sign and, in that regard, probably work best for a divorce rather than a wedding. Could I have used .net rather than .com? Sure but I don’t trust that people will remember .net rather than .com in case they lose the invitation. Usability, my friends, is very important when it comes to web development and even more important when it comes to weddings. Do you really want to try to blow the mind of your computer illiterate family members? Because, as amazing as it might seem, they still exist. And people still lose pieces of paper. The best is to keep it simple.
So why not myfirstname plus herfirstname dot com. Well, for some reason, I don’t find it appealing audibly. Not that our names are weird or anything – they’re quite normal. But when you put them together, the domain seems less about marriage and more about someone who was given a female middle name because their parents really wanted them to be a girl. It doesn’t scream “these two people are getting married” which is what I wanted. An and in between makes sense because there are two people getting married. That’s how a wedding domain name should be, right?
Okay, so I might sound vain but I think it’s important to view a wedding as less than single event and more as a series of events that culminate in the writing of a bunch of thank you notes while sitting around in your underwear. A domain name should reflect this series of events. So it was a struggle. I gave my fiancee many choices (she nixed most of them but I think the one that made us sound like spanish matadors would have been pretty awesome) and we finally came up with one. And, yes, I’ll be using a sub domain but I think it’ll work okay. The domain will actually say what the website is really about. It’s not clever, witty, or extravagant but it’ll work. And, even better, it can be used in the future for other family weddings (if I decide to keep renewing it year after year). So what did we decide on?
It’s going to include her last name with wedding.com attached at the end. And why her last name? Cuz it’s gonna be my last name. Being an Engaged Groom means you’re breaking tradition and if you’re breaking tradition, why not break it in more ways than one?
I’ll explain more about that tomorrow.