How to Make a Wedding Website in Canva — Step by Step
Your wedding website is one link. The average wedding has 117 guests, and most of them will open that link on a phone — half-distracted, deciding whether they can make the date work. That link has to load, read clearly, and answer their questions without anyone needing to ask you.
Canva makes that link genuinely easy to build. You can do it in an afternoon with a free account, no code, no developer.
This guide covers the five steps to get your site published, and then the three things that quietly break afterwards — the ones that send people back to search results wondering what they did wrong.
Why Canva works for a wedding website
A free Canva account is enough. You can publish up to five live websites on a free Canva domain, and your address will look like yournames.my.canva.site. Nothing to install, nothing to host, no monthly fee.
You also get the parts that usually cost money elsewhere: a mobile layout that adjusts automatically, a navigation menu, password protection, and control over whether search engines can find your site at all.
Two limits are worth knowing before you start, because neither is obvious until you hit them.
A free account leaves a footer. If you publish on the Canva Free plan, a "Designed with Canva" footer appears at the bottom of your live site, and it cannot be removed on that plan. Publishing without it requires Canva Pro.
Your own domain requires Pro. You can publish to a free Canva address or buy a domain through Canva on any plan. But connecting a domain you already own — smithandlee.com, say — is available on Canva Pro, Teams, Business, and Education only.
Neither is a reason not to use Canva. They are reasons to decide now, rather than at 11pm the night you meant to send the link.
What to have ready before you start
Gather these four things first and the build takes about thirty minutes. Skip this and it takes an evening.
- Your details, written the way they should appear. Both full names, the date, the ceremony and reception venues with full addresses, and the start times.
- Six to ten photos. Landscape orientation works better than portrait in most website templates. One strong image for the top of the page matters more than ten average ones.
- Your links. Registry pages, hotel blocks, parking or shuttle information.
- Your RSVP deadline. Usually three to four weeks before the wedding, so you can give the caterer a final count.
If your guests are travelling from overseas, the list is longer than this. We covered that separately in our wedding website checklist for guests flying to Japan.
How to make your wedding website in Canva
Step 1 — Start from a Website design, not a Link in Bio
In Canva, search for Website and start from a Website template. This matters more than it looks.
Canva will happily publish other design types as sites, but if you build from a Mobile Website or Link in Bio template, your site can only publish to a canva.link address — the custom domain options never appear. If you later decide you want your own address, you will be resizing and rebuilding.
Choose a Website template from the start and every option stays open to you.
Step 2 — Make your own copy, and keep one untouched
Open your template and create your own copy before you change anything.
Then do one thing almost nobody does: keep one untouched master copy. Rename your working file something like "Smith Lee — working" and leave the original alone.
The evening you delete the wrong text block and cannot undo your way back, that untouched copy is the difference between five minutes and starting over.
Step 3 — Replace the words, then the photos, then the colors
The order matters, and it is the opposite of what most people do.
Words first. Names, date, venue, your welcome paragraph. Do this while the design is still the designer's, because you will immediately see which headings run onto two lines. Long surnames and hyphenated names are the usual culprits. Shorten the heading, don't shrink the font.
Photos second. Drag your image directly onto the existing photo frame so it drops inside and keeps the crop. Do not drag it on top of the frame — that leaves a floating image that will sit in the wrong place on mobile.
Colors last. Once your real photos are in, half the palette decisions make themselves. Change the colors first and you will redo them the moment you swap a photo.
Step 4 — Open Settings before you press Publish
Select Publish website, then open Settings. This panel is where a wedding site is won or lost.
- Website title and favicon. The title shows in the browser tab and in search results. A square favicon of about 280×280 pixels is recommended; JPG and PNG up to 25MB are supported.
- Search engine visibility. For most weddings, turn this off. You want the people you invited to find this page, not strangers searching your names.
- Password protection. Optional, and useful if you would rather the address not travel further than your guest list.
- Resize on mobile. Leave this on. Almost every guest will arrive on a phone.
- Page descriptions. If your site has several pages, give each one its own description of roughly 150–160 characters.
Then choose your address: a free Canva domain, a domain purchased through Canva, or your own existing domain. A free Canva address costs nothing and is genuinely fine for a wedding. If you connect a domain you already own, allow time — verification can take up to 72 hours, so this is not a same-day decision.
Step 5 — Publish, then open it the way a guest will
Press Publish, then open the live URL on your own phone — the published address, not the Canva preview. The two can behave differently, and the phone is where this page actually lives.
Read it as a guest would. Can you find the date in under three seconds? Does the venue address open in a map? If you are printing the link or a QR code on anything, scan it yourself before the printer runs.
Three things that break (and how to fix them)
"I changed it, but the site still shows the old version"
This is the single most common panic, and it is not a bug.
Editing your design does not update your live site. You have to publish again. Canva keeps the published version separate from the one you are editing, so every round of changes needs a fresh publish to go live.
If you have just corrected the reception time, publish again and then reload the live URL on your phone before you tell anyone it is fixed.
"My fonts look wrong"
Two things cause this.
The first is availability: a template may use a font your account cannot access, and Canva substitutes something close, which quietly shifts your spacing.
The second is length. A template heading designed for "Emma & Jack" will not hold "Alexandra & Christopher" on one line. It wraps, the wrap breaks the layout, and the page starts to look homemade.
The fix for both is the same. Limit yourself to two fonts across the whole site, and shorten the words rather than shrinking the type. First names alone in the header, full names lower down.
"The free domain name I wanted isn't available"
Free Canva domains that were previously used by another brand cannot be reused, even if the site is long gone — a deliberate protection against phishing and impersonation.
So smithwedding.my.canva.site may simply be unavailable. Add the year, the city, or both first names: emmaandjack2027, smithlee-kyoto. Decide this before you print anything.
RSVPs: what Canva can and can't do
Most guides say Canva cannot collect RSVPs at all. That is out of date.
Canva has a Forms element you can drop straight into your website design, with up to 10 questions per form and up to 10 options per question. Responses come back to you inside Canva.
But there is a catch, and it is the one that matters for a wedding:
On Canva Websites, form responses are always anonymous. Names cannot be collected automatically.
So if you add a form asking "Will you attend?" you will receive a clean tally of yes and no — and no idea who sent them.
One more limit worth knowing before you build your invitation: a form only collects responses when people open your live Canva link. If you download the same design as an image or a PDF and send that instead, the form is just a picture — nothing comes back.
The fix is simple once you know: make the first question a required text field for their full name, and a second one for anyone they are bringing. Do that and a Canva form handles a straightforward guest list well.
If you need meal selections, plus-one management, and dietary notes tracked per household, a dedicated RSVP service linked from a clear button on your site will serve you better. Either approach works. Choosing blind does not.
If you'd rather start from a design that's already done
Building from a blank template is genuinely doable — everything above is written for exactly that. What it costs you is the evening spent deciding on type, spacing, and how much white space is too much.
Starting from a wedding template that is already designed removes those decisions. The layout, the type pairing, and the spacing are resolved, and the work becomes replacing text and photos.
Our TOKYO Urban Wedding series was built for exactly this — a quiet, modern Japanese aesthetic, made to be personalized rather than redesigned. The wedding website invitation works with a free Canva account, and every step above applies to it unchanged.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use a free Canva account?
Yes. Our templates are designed to work on a free Canva account. Note the "Designed with Canva" footer that appears on free-plan sites.
How do I edit the text?
Select any text box and type your own words. The formatting stays as designed.
Can I change the fonts?
Yes — choose any Canva font that suits your story. Two fonts across the whole site is the safe limit.
Do I need to buy a domain?
No. A free Canva address works perfectly well and costs nothing.
Can I keep the site private?
Yes. Turn off search engine visibility, and add password protection if you want tighter control over who sees it.
Publish something today, even if it is not finished. A live link you can refine beats a perfect draft nobody has seen. You can always publish again tomorrow.