New Media Newsletter
Observations On A Social Media Wedding
by Jake Potter on 04/13/2012
Planning a wedding can be daunting. Still, there’s nothing quite like the joy of being able to share that happiness with friends and family. My fiancée and I are planning nuptials this year, and – given the line of work I am in – it’s going to be a decidedly social media-friendly affair.
A few casual observations I have made in planning a social media wedding:
Do vendors who say “yes” to social media have an advantage?
In some cases, such as our wedding photographer, we felt even more confident in our picks after getting to know them through social media. On the flip side, we did eliminate some options after browsing their Facebook Pages or tweetstreams.
Weddings are highly visual – and highly competitive. The most successful vendors likely understand the need for monitoring and a great outreach policy across social media, no different from building mailing lists or hitting trade shows.
There is also a great opportunity to build your brand. What separates you from the pack? Highlight those unique qualities. Going back to the previous example of our wedding photographer, he clearly had great personal relationships with a number of past clients, including a mutual friend. That simplified our decision quite a bit.
Social “pinning” dos and don’ts.
How did couples plan weddings before Pinterest? By candlelight and on parchment, no doubt. Pinterest was taking off when Lauren and I got engaged, and it seemed like all of our followers had wedding pinboards. (Judging by how much of my main feed was consumed by bouquets and reception décor, the wedding industry in the Triangle must be raking in the dough.)
Lauren’s wedding pinboard is a eclectic mixture of bridesmaid’s dresses, photos of Carrie Underwood’s hairstyles and fine jewelry. She says it has been extremely helpful in finding the things she wanted – and planning out how everything will go together in the broader sense.
I have had a little more luck on TheFancy, a great alternative to the female-dominated Pinterest. One thing I like about TheFancy: many of the pinned items include links allowing for purchases.
Why we’re using a hashtag.
Our wedding hashtag is #letsgetmarried. (Yes, like the song.) We realized that a large percentage of our attendees are active on Twitter, so it seemed fitting to give folks a “digital guestbook” of sorts for people to sign.
I’m not sure what we’ll do with the tweets – perhaps we will collect them into a scrapbook – but I’m looking forward to seeing if my best man can fit his speech into 140 character fragments.
Have you planned a social media-friendly wedding or similar event? I would love to hear your experiences and thoughts in the comments box below.
Jodi H. said...
I wish they had Pinterest when I was planning my wedding! Great idea on collecting the Tweets for a scrapbook later on.
May 16, 2012
Page Crawford Fehling said...
V interesting article Jake… on many different levels!
May 17, 2012
Jake Potter said...
@Jodi: It’s unbelievably useful. I’ll probably do a follow-up post once the scrapbook is complete!
@Page: Thanks! We’re just trying to push the “social” in social gathering!
May 22, 2012