Vila Etelka: a bilingual website for weddings, ceremonies, and celebrations

1. 1Problem #1

   After the domain switch, every old URL answered with a 404

   Google still indexed /index.html, /svadby.html, /historia.html, /galeria.php, and the whole English /en/*.html branch, and third-party sites linked to them. Their ranking signal was quietly leaking away.

   Our solution

   We did not guess the URL inventory — we pulled it from the Wayback CDX index for the domain and cross-checked it against the old navigation. We shipped 19 permanent redirects, including the non-obvious mappings: /karta.html, the wine list, now points to /gastronomia, and /en/list.html to /en/gastronomia.

   Technologies and implementation

   Wayback CDX inventory + permanent redirects in next.config

2. 2Problem #2

   The bilingual setup had to be correct for search engines, not just for the visitor

   The villa hosts foreign guests, so English cannot be a watered-down echo of the Slovak. At the same time a search engine has to know which version of a page is Slovak and which is English — otherwise the two compete with each other and an English-language searcher is served the Slovak page.

   Our solution

   Each language has its own localized route — Slovak canonical and unprefixed, English under /en. Every page declares its language from the active locale, carries a canonical and reciprocal hreflang for SK / EN / x-default, and is listed in the sitemap. The English copy is a full human translation, not a machine rendering of the Slovak.

   Technologies and implementation

   next-intl, localized routes, hreflang and canonical

3. 3Problem #3

   The venue is not a hotel, and that could not be left ambiguous

   The villa is rented as a whole and has no rooms of its own — guests stay in a neighbouring hotel fifty metres from the gate. It has no kitchen of its own either and works with a caterer, and it does not host funeral receptions. The old site blurred those boundaries: it mixed the impression of a hotel with that of an event venue, which attracted enquiries the villa cannot serve.

   Our solution

   We built the page structure around what the villa actually offers: Ceremonies — Weddings — Celebrations — Gastronomy, with copy that promises nothing extra and names the neighbouring accommodation and the catering model outright. In the structured data we deliberately used EventVenue and LocalBusiness rather than Hotel or LodgingBusiness, so that search engines do not file the villa under lodging.

   Technologies and implementation

   Information architecture + JSON-LD EventVenue and LocalBusiness

4. 4Problem #4

   The content changed five times, and shipping a code release for every wording change made no sense

   Every wave of feedback touched dozens of places at once — in both languages. If the copy lived inside the components, each changed sentence would mean a code edit, a build, and a deploy, plus the risk of overwriting a neighbouring block along the way.

   Our solution

   We lifted the content out of the code and into Sanity — eighteen singleton documents, one per page and language, plus site settings. Each revision wave therefore went in as a content patch applied field by field: no rebuild, no deploy, and no risk of disturbing the neighbouring blocks. That is exactly how the four wedding spaces with capacities of 66 / 66 / 34 / 48 entered the site. It also leaves the site ready to be managed without a developer whenever that is needed.

   Technologies and implementation

   Sanity singleton schema + field-level content patches

5. 5Problem #5

   Revisions in several waves changed even the basic facts about the venue

   One call established that the villa is not itself a “historic summer resort” — it is merely located in one — and that the partnership with the neighbouring hotel had ended, so the hotel name, email, and phone had to disappear from every page. The next day the “al fresco” capacity was corrected from 66 to 48. On a later call the first hero photograph was dropped, because its windows no longer match the venue and mislead guests; the “V tichu” line was cut; vocals and harp left the music offering while violin and saxophone joined it; and the contact page was to gain a line with the IČO and DIČ registration numbers.

   Our solution

   We rewrote the phrasing across the whole site, purged the hotel name, email, and phone number from every page, and restructured the weddings page into four spaces with capacities of 66 / 66 / 34 / 48, later 48 for “al fresco”. The wine list disappeared and a new ceremony page took its slot; the “Svadba All Inclusive” popup was removed from the home page; gastronomy was rewritten around the catering model; and on a direct instruction we dropped the phrase “dôstojné spomienky”. The first hero photograph was replaced by a real image of the villa, vocals and harp gave way to violin and saxophone in the music offering, and the contact page gained a line for Vila Etelka s. r. o. with its IČO and DIČ registration numbers.

   Technologies and implementation

   Content revision + patch scripts against live Sanity

Similar problems in your business? We will help you solve them with modern tech stack.

• Home
• About
• Weddings
• Ceremonies
• Celebrations
• Gastronomy
• Gallery
• Contact
• Cookie policy

1. 01

   Hero and three numbers

   Above a photograph of the garden sits the kicker “V historickom letovisku · Modra — Harmónia”, then the boutique stamp, and immediately after the hero the three facts couples ask about first: ~30 minutes from Bratislava, 50 m to guest accommodation, 66 guests in the garden marquee.

2. 02

   The offering trio: ceremonies · weddings · celebrations

   Instead of a service list, three equal cards that split the enquiry right on the home page. The ceremony card states what the villa actually supplies: the ceremony table, chairs, sound, and coordination.

3. 03

   Four wedding spaces with capacities

   Open-air “al fresco” for 48 guests, the garden marquee for 66, the romantic arcade for 34, and the Oblúková sála for 48. Both the order and the numbers came from the client; the copy for the first two spaces is his own, word for word.

4. 04

   Gastronomy without an in-house kitchen

   The page states openly that the villa has no kitchen of its own and works with a professional catering company. It separately explains that guests often bring their own pastries — the villa provides refrigeration capacity and service staff.

5. 05

   A gallery in natural proportions

   79 photographs in a CSS-column masonry where each cell takes its aspect ratio from the real image dimensions in Sanity — portraits stay portrait. The lightbox has a focus trap, Esc to close, and arrow-key navigation.

6. 06

   Contact and enquiry

   The Harmónia 3003 address in Modra, the phone +421 948 008 308, info@vilaetelka.sk, a map, and a “Napíšte nám” form with the date and event type. A separate line lists Vila Etelka s. r. o. with its IČO and DIČ registration numbers.

• Frontend and design system

  App Router, server components, and a custom editorial design system in globals.css instead of a utility mix. Three typefaces with clearly separated roles and restrained scroll reveals.

  • Hand-written globals.css
  • Marcellus · Newsreader italic · Hanken Grotesk
  • prefers-reduced-motion respected
  • Next.js 16
  • React 19
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind CSS v4
  • framer-motion 12

• Content and languages

  Sanity as the single source of content: eighteen singleton documents, one per page and language, plus site settings. Components read the CMS with a literal fallback, so the site never renders empty. Slovak is canonical; English is a proper translation, not a machine version.

  • 18 singleton documents
  • Every text and photo is a field
  • SK as default locale, EN prefixed
  • Sanity 6
  • next-sanity 13
  • next-intl 4
  • @sanity/image-url

• Enquiries and deployment

  The contact-page form sends a branded email through Resend, with the visitor in the replyTo field — replying from the inbox answers the couple directly. Validation runs on both the client and the server. Deployment is automatic: previews on branches, production from main.

  • Server-side validation and input escaping
  • replyTo set to the visitor
  • Preview and production deploys
  • Resend 6
  • Vercel
  • GitLab CI/CD

• SEO, AI, and compliance

  Structured data typed as EventVenue and LocalBusiness — deliberately not Hotel or LodgingBusiness, because the villa provides no lodging. Canonical and reciprocal hreflang on every page, a sixteen-URL sitemap, an llms.txt for AI answers, and a GDPR consent banner.

  • JSON-LD EventVenue + LocalBusiness
  • Hreflang SK / EN / x-default
  • Cookie banner with three categories
  • JSON-LD
  • hreflang
  • robots.txt & sitemap.xml
  • llms.txt
  • Cookie consent

Modern tech stack = fast website + easy maintenance + long-term support

1. Day 1 — 21 June

   The complete first release

   1 day

   In a single day we built the design system in globals.css, the Sanity schema, and all eight pages in Slovak and English. A design review of every page at 1440 and 390 px ran the same day; one outcome was fixing the amenities grid on the home page, where three items sat in a four-column grid and left an empty cell.

2. Day 2–11

   Deployment, CMS, and a language pass

   10 days

   We deployed to Vercel, opened the studio to the client, and polished the UI. On 1 July the whole site went through a Slovak language pass — grammar, Czech-isms, wrong collocations, name declension, and quotation typography; the same fixes were applied to the live CMS content.

3. 15–16 July

   The first major wave of client revisions

   2 days

   The call produced two governing changes: the villa is not a “historic summer resort”, it is only located in one; and the partnership with the neighbouring hotel had ended, so its name, email, and phone had to disappear. We restructured the weddings page into four spaces with capacities of 66 / 66 / 34 / 48, and the phrase “dôstojné spomienky” was dropped from the celebrations page. The next day we corrected the “al fresco” capacity from 66 to 48.

4. 31 July

   The second call and handover

   1 day

   The client had the first large hero photograph removed, because its windows no longer match the venue and mislead guests, and dropped the “V tichu” line, since the place is not marketed as quiet. The music offering lost vocals and harp and gained violin and saxophone. The contact page gained a line for Vila Etelka s. r. o. with its IČO and DIČ, the form got the plain heading “Napíšte nám”, and the date placeholder lost the year. That was the handover, after 13 working days.

5. After handover

   Domain, form, SEO migration, and cookies

   5 days

   We moved the domain to Vercel without touching the client mail records — MX, SPF, and subdomains stayed intact and were verified afterwards. We wired enquiry delivery through Resend and tested it four times, including against the live domain. Finally came the SEO migration with 19 redirects, robots, sitemap, structured data and llms.txt, the GDPR cookie banner, and a mobile hero fix where the kicker was overlapping the logo.