Tips on profile submission, or: How to make the Offbeat Intern love you forever

Written on June 26, 2011 by Cody Whitefoord

Now that I’ve officially passed the torch to Catherine (aka Superwoman), I have time to write more non-profile posts! That’s exciting and all, but I do kinda miss reading about all y’alls kick-ass weddings. So my first, non-intern, non-profile post is gonna be about… profiles!

Seriously, though, after being the intern for seven or so months, I know that I’d totally do my profile differently. First, it was a fucking novel — I’d shorten it, and also take out discussion of certain, ahem, family and friends. Secondly, I’d redo my pics to have less pics of random guests and no collage pics.

So, for all you out there who haven’t yet submitted, learn from my wisdom and get all the tips and tricks to make the offbeat intern love you foreva.

First things first, the basics. And the basics start with your photos.

The truth (for better or worse) is that our first pass at the profiles is to look at the photos. Make ‘em good!

• Your flickr photos must must must be public, bloggable, sharable, and in a set of about 50. Head here if you can’t figure out how to set your flickr settings correctly. If you’re not sure, log out of flickr and then go to your set. You should be able to see all the photos and, when looking at a single photo, be able to click the arrow next to Twitter/Facebook icons and see “Grab HTML/BBC code.”
• Your flickr photos must must must be public, bloggable, sharable, and in a set of about 50. Sorry, it just really needed to be said again.
• Make sure there are a lot of good photos of you and your partner and at least a couple horizontally oriented photos of you two.
• Include a good amount of photos from the ceremony AND the reception if you had one. If you talk about it, we want to see it!
• If you talk about details in your submission, include photos of those details. And if you have really awesome photos of a detail, make sure to talk about it.
• We know that you love all your guests, but we, uh, don’t really know them. So if you’re choosing between pics of guests just being there and you, go with you. That said, if your guests are doing something cool or something you talk about (photobooth, dressed as Storm Troopers, etc), hell yes to those photos!

Ok, on to the basics of the profile itself.

• Please write in complete sentences and spell check. Pretty please with cherry on top?
• Draft your submission before you submit it. We get a lot of emails saying, “Just one thing I forgot…”
• Aisle is spelled with an “A.” (This is totally my pet peeve!)
• Tell us about readings you used, cool DIY projects, how you handled common issues such as guest list size, including (or not including) kids, how you compromised and why and how you incorporated you and your partner’s interests, hobbies, and essential selves into the wedding. (And more!)
• If you’re Offbeat Lite — Rock it!
• Your pictures should match your description of your wedding. If your profile is super “offbeat,” your pics should be, too. If your pics err more on the Offbeat Lite side, tell us about any special details and why you did what you did. Because having your wedding your way is really the most offbeat thing of all.

What NOT to say

• Don’t speak ill of family and friends. Ariel has had years and years of experience in this department and the bottom line is this: they will see it, they will get upset, and we will cut it because of that.
• Don’t put words in your guests mouth. Specifically, don’t say they “love the wedding” or said it was “the best wedding ever.” We totally already know the wedding was amazing and everyone thought it kicked ass. There’s no need to talk about it.
• Don’t say that your wedding was offbeat, because “we did stuff our way.” Because, well, duh. Tell us HOW you did stuff your way.
• No last names. We don’t use them, so there no point in adding them in.

Vendors are super important! They pay the bills.

• If you had a photographer, include their info! This is super important!
• Include ALL of your vendors — photographer, food, cake, dress, coordinator, make-up, hair, jewelry, musician, belly dancer, cake topper maker, “photobooth” sign maker, etc. Often people ask about things in the comments and the vendor’s info ends up buried three pages deep — which doesn’t do most of us any good.
• And, for those who want to indulge my super analness, in the vendors section, list your vendors like this:
  
  

  What-it-is: link name
  i.e.
  Dress: Wai-Ching http://www.wai-ching.com

Also, and I can’t stress this enough, don’t give up on us right away! If we don’t feature you immediately, it doesn’t mean we won’t!

We try for editorial diversity — by region (regions of the US, Canada, and Global) as well as different styles of weddings. Also, there are A LOT of weddings (200+ as of right now) to wade through and we just may not have looked at yours yet. (Although we recently implemented a new spiffy system that should help! Hooray!)

If you do decide to submit your wedding elsewhere, please let us know as we may not be able feature it after that. If, on the sad, off-chance, your marriage doesn’t last and we haven’t featured you yet, let us know so we can save all of us a lot of headache. (Yes, it’s happened. Several times, in fact.)

Happy submitting!
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