Life

Planning your wedding? Don’t forget the hashtag.

More brides turn to Twitter and apps to commemorate their special day
Fatima Arkin
i love images/Getty

Since Richelle Little joined Twitter last year, every major event in her life has been influenced by the microblogging site: She met her best friend at a local outing organized through Twitter; she found her job as a public relations professional by networking on Twitter; and now, with her wedding months away, Little plans to commemorate her big day, in a similar fashion: with a hashtag on Twitter.

“It was a natural fit,” says the 24-year-old from Kingston, Ont.

For the moment, Little is using the hashtag, #morganwedding2013, to update her followers on wedding-related happenings ranging from the serious – “Minister booked.” – to the more lighthearted – “My biggest fear is looking as awkward as Bella Swan does when I walk down the aisle,” referring to the human-turned-vampire from the Twilight saga.

But, what she’s really looking forward to, is everyone else using the hashtag on her big day. “I’m definitely going to have my phone with me,” she says. “I want to be able to go on Twitter and see what people close to me are saying. I can also go back afterwards and relive the memories from their point of view.”

Little isn’t the only one turning to social media to help commemorate her special day. In the last few months, Danielle Andrews Sunkel, co-founder of The Wedding Planners Institute of Canada (WPIC), has noticed a growing number of brides and grooms incorporating Twitter and apps into their wedding.

Most of them, she says, tend to be Millennials: tech-savvy and young, usually under the age of 30.

“They’re so used to using their smartphones for every single little thing,” she says. “We’ve had brides insist on having pockets in the wedding dress so they can carry their phones.”

Even though Sunkel is sought out for her wedding advice, she still has a hard time getting some brides to listen to her, at least when their iPhones are at stake.

“Once, I decided to take the phone away from a bride and she said, ‘absolutely not!’”

One reason brides and grooms cling to their phones is to use photo sharing apps like Wedding Party and Wedding Snap, which launched last April and, Sunkel says, seems to be taking off really quickly.

Partly fuelled by the Instagram craze, more and more people are downloading these apps, which automatically collect photos taken at the wedding and upload them to a website or online album.

These apps can be found on Pinterest, an online pin board that has quickly become the go-to place for wedding enthusiasts.

“Pinterest is just absolutely crazy huge right now,” says Sunkel. “There are so many girls who have wedding boards that aren’t even engaged yet, don’t have a boyfriend yet, never mind the ones who are engaged.”

But brides-to-be, beware. Not all apps are concocted with your best interests at heart. Earlier this year, Crash Corsage, touted as the world’s first app for wedding crashing, received a fair bit of media attention from the likes of Time Magazine and the Discovery Channel. The app combs through popular – and open – wedding websites, like The Knot, identifies nearby celebrations and provides users with the necessary information–think dress code and background information on the couple–needed to pass for a real guest.

It gets worse: The app also encourages crashers to compete against each other for points, which are awarded for completing tasks like sleeping with a bridesmaid or giving a toast.

But there is a silver lining: Crash Corsage is not currently available for download, and it’s uncertain when, or if, it will be. Inquiries into a potential launch date, which was slated for last May, were not answered. Only the following email response was given: Crash Corsage “is currently awaiting a wedding season filled with all-you-can-eat shrimp and champagne fuelled limbo contests.”

Still, the fact that there are people willing and eager to use this app  is enough of a concern for WPIC’s Sunkel.

“Weddings are a celebration of people’s love,” she says. “You shouldn’t play games with that.”