Planning a wedding could be a lot easier if you used the Internet to do it.

His brainstorm led Gray to start the weddingChannel (http://www.weddingChannel.com), a wedding-planning Web site that opened for business last summer and since has grown to 1.5 million page views a month.

"We've built a lot of information into it so other people don't have to waste so much time," said Gray, who runs the private Pasadena company with partner Raj Dhaka. The company has received financial backing from Idealab, software entrepreneur Bill Gross's Internet start-up incubator.

The WeddingChannel is among dozens of Web sites, electronic mailing lists and chat rooms that have sprouted online in the past few years for "to-be-weds" and their friends and families.

It is no surprise a generation that has grown up withcomputers and spends as much leisure time online as watching TV should turn to the Internet when it is time to tie the knot, wedding industry cognoscenti say.

"An increasing number of people are using the Internet as people in the past used the Yellow Pages," said host Suzanne Kresse of the nationally syndicated radio talk show "The Wedding Lady" and a frequent bridal convention speaker.

"It's become the accepted and preferred way to look for information," Kresse said. "While computers aren't the way they will be in 10 years, when we'll have living, moving Yellow Pages, those who have access to them are using them."

Whereas online wedding resources started out offering mainly advice and tips for planning the big day, many have expanded to include wedding budget programmes, honeymoon travel services, financial guides, city-specific directories of wedding vendors, and gift registries.

In April, WeddingChannel launched a registry with 2,500 items from 50 manufacturers of china, crystal, silver and otherhousehold items. The Web site will add non-traditional items such as camping gear to the registry over the next few months, Gray said.

Another recent addition is a personal home page called Our Wedding, where brides and grooms can tell the world, or just their guests if they use a protective password, what they have planned for the ceremony, reception, honeymoon and what gifts they would like.

In the first two weeks they were available, 1,300 people built Our Wedding pages and several hundred listed gift selections in the registry, Gray said. Other wedding Web sites include Wedding Network(http://www.weddingnetwork.com), which boasts a directory of 60,000 wedding vendors and articles from Modern Bride magazine, and The Ultimate Internet Wedding Guide (http://www.ultimatewedding.com), which runs interactive mailing lists for couples and grooms-to-be.

One of the oldest and largest online wedding planners is TheKnot: Weddings for the Real World (http://www.theknot.com, a hip wedding guide initially fundedby America Online, started by four friends in 1996. TheKnot draws 250,000 individual visitors a month with a mix of advice, message boards, chat sessions, a travel auction, budget planner and, most recently, a network of wedding photographers.

"We're the voice of the post-Emily Post generation. It's not the old dusty bridal magazine," said The Knot's co-founder and vice- president, Michael Wolfson.

Wolfson is proudest of TheKnot's gown gallery, an illustrated database of 6,000 wedding dresses searchable by style, train length and 11 other criteria.

"You can find the dresses you like, save the dress list and come back to it," Wolfson exhorted.

"You can E-mail a link to your mother-in-law or best friend, have them look at it, then click on a button to find a retailer in your area that carries it."

TheKnot is using its online momentum to break into other media. "TheKnot's Complete Guide to Weddings in the Real World," the first title in a three-book series, will appear later this year and plans for amagazine and TV show are in the works, it noted.

If after all that planning a wedding doesn't lead to happily ever after, there's an online resource for that, too.

By the end of May, California residents will be able to file for divorce at Divorce Wizards http://www.divorcewizards.com), online home of a divorce mediation firm of the same name.

Unhappily marrieds will use the Divorce Yourself feature to file all the necessary paperwork for an uncontested split and pay the $500 fee with their credit card.

Divorce Wizards owner Lynne Diamond uses the information to file the petition in court but recommends that couples have their attorneys review the papers.