In preparation for their wedding this Sunday, Dina Stonberg and Richard Pickett of Wallingford mailed save-the-date refrigerator magnets, invitations, and a newsletter explaining how to access their Web site.

Anybody spending in the vicinity of $20,000 on a reception and asking guests to travel will give plenty of notice. Saving the date with a magnet showing the bride and groom as kids is simply an extension, though maybe an illogical one.

But wedding Web sites, those are a bit newer on the list of absolute musts.

We're talking about sites that detail not only the time and place of the ceremony, but the couple's bios for the benefit of the bride's Aunt Gladys, who hasn't met the groom.

Guests log on to read how the couple met ("... and the rest is history"), where he proposed, how surprised she was, and, of course, where they've registered for flatware.

Out-of-towners can make hotel reservations and find lists of museums, nail salons, and the couple's favorite eateries. And with features such as "guest manager," the couple can easily compute how many want the Chilean sea bass.

Fear not, Internet neophytes: This can be as easy as typing and mailing in photos.

At one end of the financial scale, TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com, advertiser-friendly portals, offer these Web sites for the amazingly low price of absolutely free.

Dozens of online services, such as http://www.virtuallymarried.com/ and http://www.weddwebb.com/, will customize a site and host it online at a flat rate of $70 or $80 for a specific period of time - say, 18 months to two years.

(Seriously, that long. Couples start planning early, and they want pictures posted after the wedding and the honeymoon.)

And at the top of the price ladder are "handmade" sites by Web designers whose prices can float high into the hundreds.

Of course, you can do it yourself, too.

Pickett, a 34-year-old computer software engineer, designed the site for himself and Stonberg, 30, using a Netscape program. And as Comcast High-Speed Internet customers, they got the Web space free.

"Truthfully," Stonberg said, "it was a great way for Rich to get involved in the wedding. 'Cause there are so few things that you can leave up to them."

This could catch on with the guys. Locker rooms would swell with fiances boasting about whose Web site had the best flash, animation, music.

Stonberg is a Boston area native, and about 100 of the guests are coming from out of town. "So we put a lot of links to things to do in the city" on the site, she said.

And because "even my grandmother is on the Web all day," Stonberg doesn't think guests will find the site daunting.

She added links to places where she and Pickett registered, which made that aspect of the wedding less awkward for both givers and receivers.

Still, their Web site is modest compared with the mega-site (10-plus pages, 150-picture slide show) for Pooja Verma and Rohan D'Souza's Hindu-Catholic wedding at Drexelbrook Mansion on July 4.

You are cordially invited to take a look: http://www.rohanandpooja.virtuallymarried.com/.

With three days of pre-wedding festivities (hand painting, formal family greetings) and guests coming from Punjab and Mangalore in India, the couple had plenty to communicate before the wedding.

Even now, the site is up and active. Relatives are reviewing pictures and ordering copies, friends are posting feedback on the guest-book page, and soon a video of the ceremony will be posted online.

"Virtuallymarried could have hosted the ceremony live for us, but the connection in India wasn't good," the new bride said. "Besides, our 4 p.m. ceremony would have been at 2 a.m. in India."

She and D'Souza are Internet savvy, but both were swamped.

"We tried to do the Web site ourselves," she said. "But we had our jobs, and getting ready for a wedding is not a joke. I was in the thick of things at work."

Where is all this headed?

Within a year, predicts Tamara Baker of Celebrateourlives.com, wedding Web sites will be considered as necessary as frosting on the cake.

And the business can only grow, says Edgar Pitts of Weddwebb.com. He's expanding to family Web sites, so new couples can show off their houses, dogs and babies.

In January, Rob Hirscheimer of Virtuallymarried.com plans to unveil Myevent.com to offer Web sites for silver-wedding anniversaries, family reunions, and - what else? - bar and bat mitzvahs.

What can we say, except "Mazel tov"?