I read an excellent article the other day that really signifies a sign o’ the times. Nowadays it truly seems like we are all digitally connected. It seems like everybody and their brother has a blog, smart phone, and blistered fingers from too much texting! And now this digital influence is creeping into other aspects outside of everyday life, like wedding planning. More specifically, recent research reveals that more and more brides-to-be are turning to social media for their wedding planning and communication activities.
The research is from the recently-conducted Mashable.com Social and Tech Wedding Survey, and the results are quite interesting to say the least. For example, more than 8% of newly-engaged brides-to-be went and updated their Facebook relationship status pretty much immediately after saying ‘yes’ to the Big Question, and a whopping 31% updated their status within several hours afterward!
Pinterest is definitely a social media platform that is increasingly influential when it comes to planning a wedding. Many brides-to-be like to create their own Pinterest boards to share images with friends and family. And over 50% of the survey respondents utilized Pinterest and Facebook to share ideas with vendors on things such as the overall wedding décor, theme, wedding cake, and of course the dress. Many brides-to-be also use these platforms to solicit feedback on their ideas, as well as to seek out other people’s unique ideas.
Using social media for wedding status updates is also a practice that is clearly on the rise. Twitter of course is likely the primary platform for this, but I’m sure Facebook is used in this capacity as well. More than half of the women surveyed consistently used these platforms to provide status updates during the months and weeks leading up to their wedding. Even friends and family of the happy couple are increasingly using social media for status updates like RSVPs and sharing photos.
There are some other interesting insights from the survey as well. Nearly 80% of the brides-to-be surveyed did research on various wedding blog or websites as they planned for their big day. Additionally, 77% became fans of at least one wedding brand on Facebook, 78% bought at least one wedding magazine, and over 60% downloaded at least one wedding planning app (boy do I feel old!). Additionally, Facebook is being used more and more to set up / schedule wedding related events. For example, 33% used Facebook to set up the bachelorette party, 20% used it to set up the bridal shower, and 10% used it to set up the engagement party.
To read the full results and insights from the research, including a very cool infographic, click here. The article also briefly discusses how the emerging role of social media is changing the traditional rules of wedding etiquette, which is another interesting angle on the subject. The bottom line is that every aspect of life is becoming more and more digitalized, and wedding planning and communication is certainly no exception. And this makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Social media helps increase the speed of information transfer and communication, and makes it much easier to solicit and share ideas and status updates. So I say, why not use social media as much as humanly possible when planning for a wedding? What do you think?
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