Southern California Brides : Heading to the Altar by Way of Cyberspace : A Hermosa Beach couple has nothing but praise for the Net as an efficient way to organize the big event.
When Brenda and Kerry Cotter were engaged last year, they didn’t announce it in the local newspaper or tie up the phone by calling every one of their relatives. They sat down at their computer and created their own Web site for their wedding.
In fact, the Hermosa Beach couple used the Internet to plan much of their July wedding in Santa Monica. They used online gift registries, budget planners and etiquette advice available on many Web sites.
They’re not alone. More and more brides- and grooms-to-be are using the Internet to plan their weddings. For couples like the Cotters, this nontraditional aspect to a very traditional event wasn’t much of a stretch.
“It was a natural approach for us, since we use the Internet for everything,” says Brenda, a 30-year-old investor relations representative. “We’ve used it to look for a home, we use it a lot for e-commerce, buying things for our home. We don’t have time to drive around.”
Her husband, a 35-year-old investment banker, adds, “When we started planning the wedding, we started checking it out, seeing how it could and could not help.”
Saving time on errands and phone calls is what attracts most users; the Cotters figure their use of the Web helped them slice 30% off the time they spent planning their wedding and reception. Using e-mail instead of telephone calls saved them a bundle on phone bills.
“I had read about some wedding planning sites in a magazine,” Brenda explains, “and I checked out about six to see which were the easiest [to navigate]. I liked the Knot (https://www.theknot.com), because it was so organized. And there are nice people on the other side of the server. I had a consultant sending me e-mails that I could check when it was convenient--I wasn’t getting phone calls all the time.”
The Cotters had more to plan than just a wedding. They were married July 30 in a small ceremony, followed by a cake and champagne reception for 30 people.
They deferred their honeymoon, and a week after the marriage invited 70 friends and family to an Oregon resort for a week of events including a “blessing ceremony” and another reception.
But a wedding, no matter how small, doesn’t happen by itself. Anyone who has been involved with producing such an event knows that it becomes an almost full-time job with seemingly endless details, lists and errands.
Although the Internet helped the Cotters cut down on tasks, it didn’t completely serve their needs. They discovered that even today’s technology can’t compensate for human forgetfulness. Kerry says that despite sending detailed e-mails about travel plans, he was still peppered with questions: “People would ask me, ‘OK, what time is the reception? What town do I fly into? How do I get there?’ ”
When it came to setting up a registry, the Cotters were thrilled with the one at the Knot, which offered more than the usual suspects at a department store.
Among the items are everything from pots and pans, kitchen appliances and sheets to Nintendo Wheel of Fortune, cars and mortgages. The Cotters’ registry included a deluxe Scrabble game, wine, steaks and a subscription to Travel & Leisure magazine.
“Since we already had our home for a year and a half, we had almost everything,” says Brenda, “so there were things we could register for that we wouldn’t think of buying for ourselves.”
Adds Kerry, “It’s priced competitively. We wouldn’t have registered there if we thought they were overpriced.” They also had an online registry at Bloomingdale’s (https://www.bloomingdales.com) but had to go into a store to choose the gifts. Any wedding guest without a computer could order via telephone on both registry sites.
The Cotters wanted to keep an eye on their spending (weddings have a habit of going seriously over projected costs), so they used the Knot’s budget planner and timeline.
Says Brenda, “We needed a timeline of when things were due, such as deposits and final payments. If you don’t have your final payment in for things, they’re not going to call to remind you, [and] you just lose your deposit. That was very valuable to us.”
When it comes to clothes, Brenda discovered that the Internet can only go so far in helping choose a dress--ultimately it has to be tried on. Web sites serve mostly as research into styles and cost. She checked out a Spanish designer’s Web site (https://www.pronovias.com) after seeing a dress in a bridal magazine and even used the site to find a local store where she tried it on.
“They had all the styles on the site, and you could see every dress,” she says. “I was very happy with the resolution, and I could print out the pictures, and they looked great.”
Although she liked the dress when she tried it on, Brenda said she didn’t want to wait the two months for it to be shipped. She ultimately found a gown at a Costa Mesa resale shop.
There was still more shopping to do. For their Santa Monica reception, Brenda ordered paper lanterns, embroidered napkins and favor boxes online from Martha by Mail (https://www.marthabymail.com), the Web version of her catalog.
For the Oregon gathering, she says, “our deejay was up there, so I e-mailed him our music list. He didn’t have some of it, so I ordered a lot of CDs through Amazon.com and had them sent directly to him.”
She also ordered “Bridal Buttons” (with “I’m the Bride” and “I’m the Groom” written on them) and a “Kiss the Bride” apron from https://www.tshirt-trousseau.com.
Although Brenda felt pretty confidentabout wedding etiquette (having been a bridesmaid nine times), Kerry consulted the Knot’s etiquette guide for a wedding he was in shortly before his own. “I wanted to know what the groomsmen were supposed to do,” he explains, “what our responsibility was. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.”
When it came to communication, both admit that e-mail was a faster and cheaper way of providing information to friends and relatives than phone calls.
They also communicated via their own Web site. They could have set one up on the Knot, but they had already established a site on the Family Connection (https://www.thefamily.com), dedicated to family values, genealogy and making family connections. (It’s part of the Osmond Network.)
“We announced our engagement on our Web page,” says Kerry, “and then we used it to let people know we were going to have this thing in Oregon, we put out information about the resort, and they started getting excited about it and some started planning vacations around going there.”
“We also used it for updates,” Brenda adds. “We downloaded a picture of Kerry and me, and it just gives you a closeness you can’t get over the phone. We e-mailed maps, information about car rental and flights.”
The couple didn’t even have to wait long for friends’ photos of their wedding. Instant gratification came via a friend who took pictures with a digital camera, then downloaded and e-mailed them. “It’s great when you want to remember the moment,” Kerry explains, “you can e-mail it really quickly, rather than meeting them and then seeing the pictures.”
Where the Internet lacked for the Cotters was in finding neighborhood vendors. What local listings they did find were either not close enough, or didn’t tell enough about the business.
So invitations, rings, flowers, photography and videography were found through channels other than the Web. The couple extensively used A Legendary Affair in Manhattan Beach (https://www.alegendaryaffair), sort of a one-stop shop for couples that offers pre-screened local vendors such as photographers, caterers and deejays.
But overall the couple found few faults with using the Internet to plan their nuptials: “Sometimes when I’d order something I’d go through the whole process and then get to checkout and it would say the service is unavailable,” says Brenda. “But that’s OK, I’d just pick up the phone. Also, the technology is not to the point where you have instant screen when you call up a Web site, you’ve got to sit there and wait. But I think that’s mostly my impatience.”