Does NYT Still Count? Yes, When It's Your Wedding

Daphne Sashin and Etan Horowitz
Photo Credit: Roberto Gonzalez

As of today, Glinder & Glinder Will Fight for Your Wedding Announcement -- an amusing video about a fake law firm soliciting business from couples whose wedding announcements have been rejected by The New York Times Style Section -- has captured 3,000 views on YouTube. Created by the Kasper Hauser Comedy Troupe to promote sales of their book, Weddings of the Times -- itself a fake collection of New York Times wedding announcements -- the video also parodies the personal injury lawyer advertising on TV, always with a backdrop of law books.

In the interest of disclosure I’ll admit that the wedding announcements are usually the first thing I read when I pick up the Times on Sunday – unless there’s a really compelling front page story about people whose weddings will never make the Style Section because they are dealing with the consequences of credit scams, foreclosure, serious illness or a host of other maladies providing us with real perspective on what's important in life.

Is it any surprise that when David Brooks wrote Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, he began by talking about the Times wedding announcements? He observed that having gone to the right schools and having parents who were well educated were hallmarks of those whose announcements made it in.

I should also disclose that when Dennis and I got married in 2000, I didn’t feel I could truly enjoy our reception until I got a call from Vox Reprints. Ours was a Saturday night wedding, and when the man at the other end of the line asked if I wanted to purchase reprints of our wedding announcement, this was confirmation that our wedding would be reported in the Times the next morning.

As a communications professional, I know there’s no guarantee even the best of pitches will translate into a published story. But researching the rules and following them helps. As noted on the Times’ website, “couples posing for pictures should arrange themselves with their eyebrows on exactly the same level and with heads fairly close together.”

We met with a professional photographer several months before the wedding. Though he had his own ideas of how to pose Dennis and me, I politely but firmly explained that the sole purpose of the photo was for submission to the Times. Having the photo comply with their requirements would not guarantee publication. But non-compliance would virtually guarantee rejection.

The Times likes to know how the couple met. I thought the story of a well-educated widow and widower being introduced face-to-face in the gym – particularly at a time when online dating was coming into its own – might grab the attention of gatekeepers on the lookout for countertrends. In a gesture that seems quaint in retrospect, I sent the photo and information packet via Fedex.

The fact that our announcement and photo made it into print on a day when hundreds of others were rejected may have been more of a numbers game than anything else. Our wedding was late March, and I postulated a few things:
- Pre-Passover and Pre-Easter advertising might yield a thicker Style Section with more space for wedding announcements;
- Fewer people get married in March than June or October and that might mean fewer couples competing for space;
- Flooded with submissions from young couples marrying for the first time, the need for variety might open up space for the middle-aged couple remarrying.

We live in a time when it often seems like Facebook is the venue of choice for announcing one’s wedding and displaying entire wedding albums. The Facebook profile pic of any woman married within the past 12 months is likely to show her in a veil. A few weeks ago, I also saw the details of a wedding unfold over Twitter – with rapid-fire Twitpics of the happy couple and their bridal party.

Still, when my daughter, Daphne, and her husband, Etan, got married in November, I made sure to share the link to their announcement in The New York Times via Twitter, and also post the link on my Facebook page – but only after I was sure the happy news and the photo made it into the Sunday paper. Sometimes there’s just no substitute for hard copy, and I think that’s what the video tells us.

Readers: Do you have any tips on getting a wedding into The New York Times? Experience dealing with Times fact-checkers? Please use the Comment section to share.

Links:
Glinder & Glinder Will Fight for Your Wedding
How to Submit a Wedding Announcement to The New York Times