Listen up, social media savvy brides and grooms!  One of our recent brides, Nikki is a PR Pro for Identity and has some really good insight for anyone wanting (or needing) to weave social media into the wedding day.  Here goes:

Your wedding day should be one of the most special and memorable days of your life. In order to ensure that day is unforgettable and stands out in people’s minds forever, many brides and grooms incorporate unique elements of their personalities, such as a wedding at the zoo for animal lovers, orange and navy blue colors for Detroit Tigers fans or two college university themed cakes to symbolize rivals coming together.Now that technology is at the epicenter of many people’s personal lives, it’s not surprising that more brides and grooms are finding nontraditional ways to add tech and social media to the wedding planning and day-of activities. According to surveys by the magazine sites Brides and The Knot, tech is on the rise in the world of weddings, with 65 percent of couples now setting up special sites to manage RSVPs, stream video of the ceremony and/or reception and keep guests in the loop (you can find more similar stats in this USA Today article).Speaking from experience, adding technology and social media to your wedding poses both an opportunity and a challenge. Depending on your budget and the size of your location, it may not be possible to invite every single friend and family member to the wedding, so social media allows you to share that experience with many more people. It also allows you to digitally document every aspect of the experience, giving you another outlet to look back upon when all is said and done.Conversely, adding social media to the wedding process also creates more to-dos for the bride and/or groom. You also have to consider the guests you’re inviting and how adding technology to your wedding may be a hindrance to those who haven’t quite embraced the tech world. Additionally, you don’t want social media to be such a huge part of the planning and actual wedding that you miss out on the full experience because you’re too concerned with posting photos and updates.

So, how can you tactfully and wisely add elements of social media and technology into your wedding so that it enhances the experience for everyone involved without taking away any wedding sacredness? Here are five suggestions:

1. Utilize online photo sharing sites – There are so many opportunities to share photos leading up to and on the big day. Take advantage of sites like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest to document and share all the fun activities related to your wedding. Keep it basic by simply creating albums and sharing them with friends/family, or kick up the creativity a notch by using photo sites like Instagram (use your iPhone to add filters to photos and share them online) and Pinterest (create pinboards with online photos to organize and share different aspects of your wedding) with more unique capabilities.

One word of warning: Be conscious of how much you’re sharing through photos so you don’t drive people crazy. Don’t fill your entire Facebook and Twitter stream with wedding-related photos. And, be careful not to give away all the goods so there are elements of surprise to your wedding.

2. Incorporate video into the planning process – As long as you and your partner-in-crime are comfortable with being on camera, adding video elements to your wedding planning can create a really fun experience for you and your guests. If you have a wedding website, create a welcome video on the home page with a special message from you and your partner. If you’re blogging throughout the wedding experience or have a YouTube page, post video updates sharing details related to the planning process so guests can follow along with the progress.QR codes (a barcode that you scan with a mobile app that gives you information or takes you to a specific website/video) have really grown in popularity in the past year and can make for a distinctive addition to save-the-dates and invitations. Have the QR code on the card lead to your wedding website with more information or a video of you and your partner thanking guests for being part of the experience. To accommodate people without a smartphone, include a URL on the save-the-date or invite that will take guests to the same website (use a service like bit.ly to create a custom URL and track how many people access it).

3. Create a wedding hashtag – If you’re planning to use Twitter, create a hashtag to include in all wedding-related tweets leading up to and on the big day. The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords and topics in a tweet and to categorize messages. Be sure to clue in guests so those on Twitter can also use the hashtag. Tweeters and non-tweeters alike can follow along with the updates simply by using Twitter Search to find tweets with the wedding hashtag.

4. Live stream the ceremony – You will undoubtedly have friends and family from other parts of the world who won’t be able to travel to the wedding. Live streaming the ceremony is a fantastic way to bring the wedding to those people. If you’re willing to be more open with your wedding, live streaming can also bring the experience to people you care about but weren’t able to invite to the wedding.If you hire a videography company like Epic Motion, ask early on if they have the capabilities to live stream the ceremony. You’ll also have to find out if the reception venue has WiFi. If you only want certain people to access the live stream, you can use a site like Ustream and password protect your video. If you opt to share the stream publicly, enlist the wedding party and guests who use social media to help you share the link on social networks the day of the wedding.

5. Appoint day-of social media posters – The bride and groom should not spend their wedding day posting content on social networks. They may have some down time here and there, but this job is much better suited for guests and wedding party members who are active on social networks. Appoint people ahead of time as your chief social media posters. These people will be charged with tweeting with the hashtag and taking and sharing photos throughout the day to document the experience and share it with those who want to follow along on the Web. Think of how much fun it will be the morning after to look at all the updates and pictures from the wedding.

Those suggestions will get you well on your way to successfully integrating social media with your wedding. Have fun with adding technology to the wedding experience, but also remember to take it all in because it will be over before you know it. You won’t want to look back and wish you spent more time soaking up the entire experience than you did tweeting and posting on Facebook.

What am I missing? How else can you incorporate social media and technology into all your wedding activities?

Nikki Little is a recent bride and lover of all things social media. She’s a PR pro and social media strategist at Identity, an integrated public relations firm based in Bingham Farms, MI. You can find her blogging on her personal site and her agency’s blog. Follow Nikki on Twitter – @nikki_little.