Do you think it’s tacky to have your wedding financed by sponsors and social media? Courtney McKenzie and her fiancé Jamil, doesn’t seem to think so, and that’s exactly what they are doing.
When her boyfriend got down on his knees and proposed to her on Palm Beach, Florida after two years of dating, Courtney McKenzie thought that she would have a lavish wedding. Courtney told Cosmopolitan.com, “He has a big family and I have an even bigger family. We sat down to make the guest list and it was 250 people. But then we thought, ‘What’s true to us?’ and we decided we just wanted it to be a lot of fun.”
The pair had always been into thrilling sports, so to break away from the traditional types of weddings, they made a decision to go with an elopement-honeymoon combo in Thailand. “We figured we’d tweet, Instagram, put out a podcast … all sorts of social media stuff to tie in our family and friends,” said McKenzie.
But then the marketing professional thought of another brilliant idea. She thought to get companies to sponsor they 11-day trip, and in return they will place logos of their brand on pretty much everything, and also hastagging them in their social media. On their website, McKenzie wrote, “We will be hashtagging, tweeting and instagramming our way through Thailand to our over 30,000 combined social media followers and we want to include some of our favorite brands on our adventure.” She even came up with the idea of having sponsor’s logos on her wedding dress, honeymoon bikinis and her hubby’s tuxedo.
According to McKenzie, the main goal is not to pay for the trip and to also do good by donating some of the money to charities like, The Boys and Girls Club and Big Brother, Big Sister. Even though they have with them three major sponsors, they have still got halfway to go towards their $30,000 goal.
Since their decision to do this was made, thankfully family and friends have been supportive. A Facebook post about it even got them 40,000 likes! But as expected the internet has been far from kind about it. “I’ve gotten a lot of emails saying, ‘This is so tacky,’ ‘How can you put a logo on your wedding dress?’ ‘Your daughter will never be able to wear your dress,'” said McKenzie of the negative feedbacks. “It stings a bit. But we feel good about doing it. And it’ll be a fun story to tell our kids.”
But since then, she has received more positive responses as opposed to negative one. Her new plan is to launch a platform that can help brides everywhere to pay for their dream wedding through sponsorship. Let’s face it, weddings cost a lot of money, it’s a lucrative industry and with an average wedding costing over $25,000, who would mind putting a logo on their wedding dress if it meant forking out less than they could.
