Connecting guests before the wedding

Planning a wedding? A new web app lets the bride and groom-to-be create a social website that connects guests with each other before the big day.

Called Weduary, the web app provides a simple way of creating a modern-looking wedding website, and allows the couple to invite guests using Facebook.

The site tells guests which of their Facebook friends will also be attending and points out people at the event who may have common interests and mutual friends.

If a guest is attending alone, the Flirt section of the site shows other singles who will be there.

'We're giving people a cheat sheet on who to meet at these big wedding events,' said Brit Morin, CEO of Brit & Co., the digital lifestyle brand behind Weduary.

In addition to connecting guests, the site provides details about the date and time of the wedding, hotel information, and a link to the couple's registry.

Each guest also gets their own profile.

'It says which hotel they're staying at, when they are arriving to the event, their favorite story of the bride and groom and what their cell phone is,' she explained.

Information on the site can be useful to help guests to co-ordinate travel plans, pitch in on registry gifts, or split accommodations.

Morin said that she came up with the idea while planning her own wedding last year.

'Not only were a lot of the templates, themes and web designs a little bit dated, but we also didn't find anything that was social in nature,' she said, adding that couples are increasing opting for non-traditional wedding registries.

'We've seen a lot of websites catering towards inventive registries like donation registries, or registries to fund the purchase of the first house, or their honeymoon,' she explained.

Morin believes the wedding industry is ripe for innovation. Her company is also working on an iPhone app that will harness real-time communication between other guests at weddings.

Other popular wedding websites include TheKnot.com, and WeddingWire, which provide free wedding website building tools, but without the social component.

An app called SocialTables connects with Facebook to let guests see other guests attending the event and allows hosts to create seating arrangements, but it is not exclusively targeted to weddings.

About 70 percent of brides create a personal wedding website, according to a survey conducted last year by websites TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com.