Modern Bride magazine article

It's slated for the February issue right now, and you can bet Paul and I will be reaching for the newsstands when we get word it's in. I'm talking about the Modern Bride article I was interviewed for the past few days. It started out as an email inquiry from a journalist named Brooke Showell, who was writing an article for Modern Bride about the issue of borrowing other brides' ideas. She wondered, since this blog is so detailed and transparent, if I was worried about other soon-to-be-marrieds seeing my ideas and copying me. I told her, basically, that that's kind of the point; that I'd be more than happy to help other brides or grooms copy my ideas (and if they don't want to make the items themselves, of course, I'm here to help on that front, too!). My email response to her query is as follows:

Hi, Brooke!

So glad you found our wedding blog! I hope it is good reading...

One of the reasons we did post such detail was so other people could borrow the ideas if they wanted to. I find that in the blogosphere, the more territorial you are about ideas or such, the less it works. The blogosphere is all about transparency and sharing and conversing with people. So if a bride finds something I did and wants to use it for her own, I'd be happy and kind of touched to hear she did. No permission
necessary. I think that's kind of an unwritten rule among bloggers.

The only things I didn't post pre-wedding were surprises for the guests. I didn't tell too many people what Paul's and my first dance was going to be (Disco Inferno faded into I've Got a Crush on You) or that we were going to be releasing monarch butterflies. I didn't post surprises on the blog (but am working on getting all that up on the blog now, after the honeymoon) because I knew that several attendees were reading the blog regularly and I wanted to maintain that certain small level of
secrecy until the Big Day to them.

That being said, I just posted the entire playlist for the whole reception with the idea that someone may not have to do the 7 months of work I did to find, gather, and put into order the music for their "iPod wedding." I was looking for something like that list of songs when I was working on the playlists, so I hope someone does copy it if they like some of our selections. That being said, just because of music rights
laws and such, I can't actually GIVE them the music; but it's a start.

Also, I have to say, some of it is kind of self-serving. I'm trying to build up my Frames By Dana business, and I've added quite a few products in working through the wedding details. If someone wants to copy my guest books, for instance, but doesn't want to go through the work of making them themselves, they can contract me to do it for them. This is an angle I haven't made exactly obvious yet on the blog (frankly, because I didn't have a lot of time for that business while I was planning the wedding and it takes some FramesByDana.com
development), but I will now that it's all done.

Please let me know if you need anything else! I'm happy to chat about this with you! And please also let me know when your article will be published.

I hope my point of view helped.

--Dana Gillin

She asked then if she could call me to talk further. So we set up a time for yesterday afternoon and she gave me a ring and asked me some more questions. I told her about the idea I "stole" from Brett and Sara's wedding 2 months before mine -- to make the program a fan, which comes in handy on a hot summer day. TG for my brother's earlier wedding! Brooke seems like a wicked nice person -- truly interested and realizes how lucky she is to be writing about such a fun subject! She said the article is currently slated for publication in February's issue of Modern Bride, but we'll see how that goes. I know, having worked in the mag biz, how you sometimes have to push out articles for the sake of space or breaking news or something, so I'll keep you blog readers posted on the progress.

Who knows if I'll actually get quoted, but even being found by a journalist in the space and asked a few questions about the blog was a huge hoot! Thanks for the thrill, Brooke!

Now Paul's calling me his new influencer... I think he's kinda proud of me. :-D