Introducing For The First Time~ "Vows, Toasts and Letters!"

I needed to start writing again, and the crux of a creative crisis is certainly not the worst place to do that. The worst place to do that is actually in a blog for a wedding media LLC I operate, given both the writing interests and style I threaten to bring to it. But I’m not motivated to write anything else, so write what you know.

The idea for a blog came up in a conversation I had years ago with Jake, esteemed podcast guest and soon to be co-contributor to BoF through this blog, our vow consultation services and even film shoots on the East Coast. He brought it up as a means of improving our SEO so that we would show up in Google searches more prominently through the algorithm as we fill our page with mindless repetitions of keywords like “wedding”, “videographer”, “bride” and so on. Jake works largely as a freelance copywriter and so would naturally understand that blogs and copywriting are just marketing ploys to edge out the competition in catching the Great Eye of Google, improving our business reach. It is technically a really good idea. Especially in the wedding industry. Especially for a wedding videographer who works at weddings with brides and grooms to make gorgeous wedding videos for said brides and grooms.

But the reality is, and I should, but I do not care about search engines or optimizing my space within an algorithm or gaming a system, cheating in a way that overrides any person’s actual ability in that which they are marketing or advertising. I have the faintest idea of what that acronym means, of how it works, and I get just enough of it to be horribly, dreadfully, scarily bored by it. I go to sleep at night in between sharp gasps as I clutch my blanket staring at the closet door, thinking I just heard Search Engine Optimization trying to open the door. I wake up sweating thinking about how to maximize my unsolicited web traffic. But we have to do it, we simply do!

The problem with suggesting ideas to me isn’t the arrogant notion that you have to make it seem like it was my idea (nothing is ever my idea), but rather that you have to intersect the idea with my creative egotism and he did not sell me to the idea until we discussed all the things we could write that would let me spread my creative wings.

It’s taken years to get to this point for a litany of personal reasons, the strange way time accelerates as you get older, and just because I lacked the ideological through line to think I could create a coherent oeuvre of work. Luckily, doing Runaway Flower Dog, returning this Thursday or Friday, allowed me to flesh out the why of it all. Why my blog? Why would someone come to read my words in the industry? I’ve never charged more than $2,000 for my allegedly "unique and visionary filmmaking”, I do not have the best relationships with other vendors and the industry, I do not keep a catalogue of which subspecies of flowers and weeds are in vogue each season. And yes, in none of that do I paint a positive portrait of myself, but I have a unique perspective as an outsider, bon vivant (as well as Jake) and refined research skills to create content that is engaging, luminary and challenges preconceived notions of what we have to accept as normal in the wedding industry, not only as a multi-billion dollar industry, but as an institution in and of itself. But mostly jokes and stories.

Some of the content I hope to start releasing soon include

- A Dear Abby Advice Column where social chameleons Jake and I give sincere answers to whatever dating or marriage trouble you may have.
- Wedding History passages where I take specific rituals, traditions or practices and discuss the history and cultures that produced those.
- News analysis as it pertains to what is going on in the news and weddings, big events and trends and my inescapable anti-corporate bias that paints my mouthpiece.
- Influencer interviews w/ prominent figures in the industry, researchers, sex workers (it’ll make sense), activists, globe-trotters, and even my own brides and grooms.
- Culture reviews~ There are too many wedding podcasts and shows and they’re all very strange to hear and some are stranger than others, but some are genuinely a delight and worth pointing out, as well as those that are low-key suspicious. Also TV reviews of shows like 90 Day Fiance or The Bachelor or anything of that nature, which I’ve been getting into.
- Poetry/Short Story series.
- Much much more, for sure. I have never found myself at a lack of words in my life and the combined brainpower of Jack and I when he inevitably is brought on will create excellent and well-written content.

So, for now, I am merely announcing this blog, that it exists, and some of the things it intends to write, with the understanding that its identity is ever fluid and always bound to grow and shift between voices and things it deems worth talking about. We will try to begin with two entries a week and slowly add on more as time frees up and my work falls into a neater flow.

Until then, thank you for reading! I’ve always appreciated you, my brides and friends, especially those of you who care about my work and my thoughts and that means a lot and you’ll be well remembered when this all reaches its tipping point, according to Malcolm Gladwell, and becomes as successful as those blogs that are just advertisements for a new kind of foxtail plant or camera lens, which are fine. But, I’d rather waste my own time trying to be a proper writer and getting attention for that, specifically.