Here Comes the Bride, and Her Sponsors
By Julia Chaplin
When Natasha Allen recalls her wedding, in a historic village outside Cincinnati last fall, she breathlessly describes arriving in a horse- drawn carriage, the way her satin gown trailed through the autumn leaves — and the table at the reception with her sponsors' brochures laid out.
"Of course, we placed the table a pinch off to the side, so it wouldn't be obtrusive," Ms. Allen said in a honey-sweet voice suggestive of an overconsumption of bridal magazines.
Ms. Allen, 22, a financial broker in Cincinnati, convinced 15 local businesses to supply free goods and services — a $250 wedding gown from Bridal Discount Warehouse, a $200 cake from Patricia's Weddings and Custom Cakes, and $400 matching bands plus an engagement ring from Mr. Bill's Family Jewels — in exchange for advertising at what was once the most intimate and commercial-free of occasions.
No, there weren't ad banners across the altar as if at a Britney Spears concert. Still, the merchandise was touted, subtly, to guests. Ms. Allen drew up a contract guaranteeing her sponsors a five-tiered "presence" at her nuptials: their names were listed in the invitations, they were thanked in the programs and on the couple's Web site, 4-by-6-inch placards were placed beside their products, and brochures were displayed on a table. Needless to say, they were all invited to the wedding.
"I tell people if they want to have their wedding sponsored, they have to be thick skinned and treat it like a business endeavor," said Ms. Allen, who used tricks she learned in sales training classes required for her job to solicit services.
As weddings become increasingly expensive, and some couples feel pressure to live up to the lavish spreads in bridal magazines, they are considering the rather drastic measure of seeking sponsors on their path to holy matrimony. Weddings are a $70 billion annual business, up 230 percent from 1982, according to a Bride's magazine study this year. Fewer parents can afford all the bills, and young couples are increasingly paying a share.
Traditional wedding authorities say it strikes them as utterly crass, but sponsorship seems to make obvious sense to some members of a younger generation, who recognize the commercialization of nearly every aspect of modern life.
"I look at Martha Stewart's wedding magazine all the time and see photo spreads of other people's weddings right next to advertisements," said Sybil Smith, 24, a technology associate in Tallahassee, Fla., who is recruiting sponsors for her wedding next June. "It's a modern reality. Why should it be different for me?"
The idea of the sponsored wedding can be traced to Tom Anderson, an entrepreneur living outside Philadelphia, who was trying to raise money for a fledgling animation company last year at the same time he was planning his wedding.
"It occurred to me that a startup company and a startup couple both need launch money," Mr. Anderson said. He put together a detailed sales package, donned a suit and hit the streets, approaching 80 local businesses over several months. Eventually, he convinced 24 to foot almost the entire $30,000 bill for his wedding to Sabrina Root, including the use of a castle in Glenside, Pa., and a white stretch limousine. "I made them realize that for a couple hundred dollars they were putting in for their product, they were going to get a ton of exposure," Mr. Anderson said. "It was incredibly easy."
The couple's story made a national news wire, which led to an appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," setting off a chain reaction with many other couples soliciting sponsors.
What's in it for the businesses who supply their goods and services free or at a discount? A young, captive demographic, whose attention is increasingly difficult to win in a media- saturated world.
"On the radio in Cincinnati it seems like every other 30 seconds there's another ad for some jeweler offering a 75 percent discount," said Bill Wickemeier, who supplied the rings for Ms. Allen's wedding. "There's too many. But at a wedding you can reach a whole new group of people, at a time and place when they don't have their guard up against advertising. Now, I'm not just going to give away free jewelry to anyone who walks through my door, but I might sponsor another wedding if the couple were from a different area of town and had a different group of friends."
Not surprisingly, traditional wedding authorities disapprove. Theirs is a world of conventions and longstanding etiquette, where debates over skin-baring gowns or different bouquet shades take on the gravity of a United Nations peace conference. "We give it a firm thumbs down," said Sally Kilbridge, the managing editor of Bride's, likening the practice to giving a dinner party with a representative from the beef council pitching steak to the guests. "It's a party that you are inviting people to, and there shouldn't be any strings attached."
Carley Roney, a co-founder of theknot.com, a Web site for wedding services, agreed. "It's like selling a videotape of your birth to a local TV station," she said. "The names of the family that raised you should be on the back of the invitations, not the names of local companies that gave you four boutonnieres."
But Ms. Roney admits that it may be a sign of the times for a generation that has been raised with omnipresent awareness of brand identities. "It does seem like younger people feel like brands owe them," she said. "And while I'm appalled by this trend, I'm always surprised at how marketing-savvy they are."
Jenna Messmear, a homemaker in her early 20's from Warren, Ohio, who claims to have contacted over 200 businesses since she began seeking sponsorship last July for a ceremony to renew her vows, says she has had some luck but has also endured harsh criticism. One bridal shop owner wrote in an e-mail to her: "Poor taste is available at any price and you just put an all-time low on a wedding. May I suggest that you go to the library and get an etiquette book and read a little?"
Ms. Allen, defending those who go the sponsorship route, said, "If anything is immoral, it's spending $30,000 on a wedding and putting themselves into debt."
A 26-year-old woman who works at a leading accounting company in Manhattan and attends business school at night began the process of selling her wedding three weeks ago. "I thought it would be interesting to see if I could implement the marketing techniques I've learned in business school to form a strategic alliance," she said.
She researched her favorite companies and sent them letters offering "complete creative freedom" as sponsors, pointing out that she and her future husband had an "attractive list" of friends from business school and dot-coms who are "likely to be married in the next five years."
She was crestfallen when Vera Wang rejected her request for a free bridal gown. "I've always loved Vera Wang dresses and so do all my friends," the bride-to-be said, requesting anonymity out of fear that prospective employers might disapprove. "It seemed odd that they wouldn't be interested in sponsoring me, because I'm exactly their target market."
"It's like when I was in college, I used the Apple computers that had been donated by the company to our training lab," she said. "So of course, as soon as I graduated that's what I ended up buying. That same brand-loyalty principle applies to weddings."
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Carl
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