.WEDDING is becoming the go-to domain extension for wedding websites

Remember when going to a wedding meant sending paper invitations back-and-forth and checking off things like dinner preference and the name of your guest? Now most weddings have a dedicated wedding website to collect RSVPs and to serve as a central location for all the wedding details.

I’ve been to enough weddings recently to know that wedding domains are getting wacky when people try to stick to .COM. In a lot of cases, wedding domains end up becoming insanely long and hard to remember.

Enter .WEDDING.

This is one of the few new gTLDs out there that really makes a lot of sense to me. It is incredibly clear what you’re going to find on a website ending with the extension, something related to a wedding, duh.

And now, thanks to a new partnership with one of the top wedding websites in the world – The Knot, .WEDDING is quickly becoming the go-to domain extension for wedding websites. When a couple signs-up for The Knot they go through the process of setting up a custom website for their wedding…initially it starts with something less personal like this:

theknot-1

See that big “Personalize Your Domain” button? When you click it, a new window pops up that allows you to register a new domain name specifically for your wedding website directly through The Knot. You’ll also notice that the default domain choice is .WEDDING:

dot-wedding-the-knot

This partnership definitely feels like it would drive some pretty nice growth for the .WEDDING TLD so I decided to take a look at registration growth so far this year. As I expected, .WEDDING has seen really solid growth this year up from about 18,000 at the beginning of the year to over 25,000 at the end of July, and with a retail price of $19.99 (same as .COM on The Knot) it seems to be driving some pretty nice revenue growth as well.

dot-wedding-reg-growth

I can see moves like this driving habit changes. Let’s be honest, your average person doesn’t know much about new gTLDs so in many cases, it takes smart strategic partnerships like these to raise awareness. Given that The Knot is one of the top wedding websites out there, this is the ideal partnership for .WEDDING to really grow awareness and use.

As more and more people move away from paper invitations to personalized wedding websites, more people will become aware of .WEDDING, and not just the people getting married, but their guests as well. Now if only this was around when we got married! What I think is also important to remember is that the .WEDDING website can easily move to a destination for people to look at photos and videos from the wedding for years to come.

Rather than sending DVD’s or links to Dropbox folders full of photos, a .WEDDING website is the perfect place to commemorate your wedding, and it’s pretty easy for friends and family to find. Come to think of it…we should do that – now to find out who bought Linton.wedding?

Another interesting use case for .WEDDING is companies in the Wedding services space. From wedding planners and apparel companies, to catering and photographers, it’s no secret that weddings involve a lot of different companies, each specializing in something different. There are a ton of companies in the wedding space that are already branding on .WEDDING, one example that caught my eye was a wedding planning company called Wishtree Weddings, branding on, not surprisingly, Wishtree.wedding.

wish-tree-weddings

Have you come across a .WEDDING domain yet yourself, or used one for your own wedding? If so feel free to share it in the comment section below!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton