Posted byI found Offbeat Bride through Wedinator — it was linked under one of the comments of a photo posted there. Wedinator tends to bash strange wedding choices. However, after reading Offbeat Bride, I discovered a number of photos from Wedinator had appeared here first. What's your opinion on all this? Some of the comments over there can be rather closed minded. -Sarah
Ah yes. Wedinator. Well, let me say this right off the bat: Since the whole point of Wedinator is making fun of people's weddings, of course it's not really my style. But it's a great big internet, and they've got every right to their snarky little corner of it.
Now, having said that, of course I have some opinions on the matter…
So sure: Wedinator isn't my thang when it comes to tone, but that's just a matter of taste. My only actual beef with them is that they feature unsourced photos. I've brought this up with their editors, and they respond that they don't have control over it when users submit photos without a source, and that as soon as someone identifies an image, they always credit it. Thankfully, Offbeat Bride has enough readers that Wedinator commenters usually recognize OBB photos pretty quickly — as you evidently found by seeing Offbeat Bride referenced on the site!
Amusingly, every exchange I've had with the Wedinator folks always ends with a friendly, “We love Offbeat Bride!” and well, of course they do — we're a treasure trove of free content for their site!
Ultimately, I have no control what happens to photos and content once it's posted on Offbeat Bride. Of course it would be cool if everyone on the internet played nice, but the reality of the situation is that photos and stories get lifted from Offbeat Bride every day … sometimes we get mentioned as a source, and sometimes we don't.
Offbeat Bride is a gold mine for writers looking for sources. I know that there's at least one writer quietly mining the Offbeat Bride community for book material right now, and I'm frequently contacted by journalists looking for brides to talk to. Some of these journalists credit Offbeat Bride as a source in their final pieces, and some of them don't. (For the record: if you're a journalist or author using Offbeat Bride as a source of material: it's cool, but please be polite and email me to say hello!)
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I get it, though: as you point out, Wedinator is part of the Cheezburger network, founders of the ultimate lolcat website, and so of course unsourced photos are par for the course. Because really: who cares who took that photo of a tabby with the words O RLY? So there's a precedent here of them not sourcing photos. As I've mentioned to the Wedinator editors, unsourced photos of cats are one thing … unsourced photos of real people's real weddings feel like a different matter. But it's their site, and they can run it with whatever policies they'd like. It's not my job to police the internet.
Really, this is all an exercise in online etiquette, because here's the deal breaker: I don't own the images that appear on Offbeat Bride. Granted, we make a point to attribute and link all photos we feature on the site — but it's not like they're MY photos.
The copyrights for the photos on Offbeat Bride belong to the photographers, and the wedding stories belong to each bride who submits her wedding to be profiled. Offbeat Bride, like Wedinator, features a lot of user-submitted content, and really the only differences are that A) we make a point to attribute photographers and B) celebrate weddings … while they run A) unsourced work and B) snark about weddings.
Like I said at the start though: ultimately it's a great big internet out there. Wedinator's not my style, so I don't read it … I'd rather spend my time celebrating weird weddings right here.
Ariel, you are always even minded and fair. I really admire that about you!
I don’t treat anything I put on the internet as secure (including emails) but life’s too short to worry about the snarky stuff and I’m happy to celebrate the weird and wonderful here
“life’s too short to worry about the snarky stuff”
AMEN!
Class act.
what’s effed up about their response about the sourceless photos, is they don’t -have- to post them just because they were submitted. but after looking at the site, obviously they wouldn’t have much to post if they only posted photos with sources. seriously though, requiring a source for a photo would not be a difficult policy to impose.
i am very biased and judgemental, so that website bugs me a lot. the criticisms are so bland and pedestrian. look a weird cake! that lady had big hair! when wedding culture is so rife with effed up crap that really needs to be examined and/or publicly shamed, to settle in as arbiters of the obvious and mainstream is a real effing waste. it’s basically a snarky The Knot in it’s mainstremity. who needs that?
I agree. If you demand that pictures have to have sources, then your readers will do it.
The irony is I’ve found some great wedding sites (Offbeat Bride among them) from following links on snarky sites (not this one though).
I’ve gotten some brilliant ideas by Googling for ‘trashy wedding’ or even ‘bad wedding’ to find sites like the one mentioned above, picking out ideas I actually like and tracing them back to where they were originally posted, which is almost always on blogs like this encoraging the concept of doing something different.
What bothers me about sites like Wedinator is that they’re essentially making fun of innocent, private citizens. I’m all for snark, and when someone is in the public eye (like a politician or an actor), it’s par for the course, but I’ve seen photos submitted to those sites by “friends” who attended the weddings!!
Yeah, I think that’s what gets me too — no one’s going to get their feelings hurt when a picture of their cat gets LOLed. But snarking about real people’s weddings just seems mean.
Then again, “just seems mean” describes 90% of the internet … so it’s not a battle I’m going to take on!
Oh man, I have never seen this site untill now! I have managed to find something I like out of everyone of those weddings. This is literally the worst site I have ever seen. I mean, Beautiful Katamari Wedding cake is a dream of mine 🙁
Yeah, even the snark isn’t all that good. I mean, if you’re going to make a name for yourself making fun of people in a public forum, at least be funny or clever.
The paragraph under the Katamari wedding cake complimented it – in fact, they said they “bow to its greatness.”
Wedinator can be a bit harsh sometimes, but I read it a lot and most of the time they’re making fun of people’s terrible wardrobe malfunctions or unintended things happening in the background of the photos. It’s really not a judgement on your taste if they happen to poke fun at something you like.
It’s the internet, and everything on the internet is clearly intended to offend someone. The important part is that offbeat bride is awesome.
For people who want to at least ATTEMPT to source photos, there’s tineye.com It’s a reverse image search engine, up load in the link for picture, they show you where it came from. (HUGE help when you find something you must have and have no clue where it came from.)
And as much as some people are embracing offbeatness, the mainstream opinion is often to still to be cruel and nasty to anything that is different. (The show 4 weddings is a good example of this)
Thanks for this tip. I work for a TV production studio and this would be super helpful!
I had never seen Wedinator before, either, and…yawn. I mean, I had to cut myself off from Go Fug Yourself because it was snarky, but at least it was hilarious! Wediwhatevr is unfunny and lame. And then they made fun of Pushba the Adorable, so apparently they are enemies of all that is cute and interesting in this world. Yeesh. I may have to go look up pictures of that sweet family to get the Wedijunk taste out of my brain…
Maybe we should water mark OBB on our photos???
and screw all the level minded jerks out there who want to have their fake, normal, boring weddings that have no personality and just flaunt their money!!!
I have to admit, Wedinator is my guilty pleasure every once and awhile. I do bristle at the OBB weddings shown, but I don’t have to like it.
That’s the nature of the internet, and I understand that.
Some days I think that it is too bad that libel can be too hard to prove on-line.
My friend told me about wedinator, so I checked it out and saw the photos of Pushba, along with OBBs stridently defending her in the comment section. My only thought was “what were you guys even doing on wedinator? Going there to laugh at traditional wedding mishaps like seeing a prissy bride’s panties under a froufrou white dress, and then get all shocked when one of your own is featured there?” Every photo there that I’ve first seen here was defended in the comments…not so for the more traditional ones. I’m sorry to say it really made me re-think the offbeat community. Just sayin’, if you’re gonna dish it out (visiting the website counts IMO), you gotta take it too. If you need a wedding-related giggle, feel free to give them your time and business – but then don’t get offended when a picture of you or your favorite wedding appears.
I am NOT pointing fingers or anything. Just sharing my disappointing experience/thoughts there, and hoping others will either stop going there, or defend all weddings equally, no matter how traditional or offbeat. And I’m not looking for a debate here – I’m sure you could argue my little observations till you’re blue in the face, and like someone above said, life is too short for snark, so I’m not going to ARGUE over snark.
Love you take on it, Ariel.
It’s not even funny. It would be different if the snarky comments were actually funny, but they’re not. It’s just not. funny.
What I found really odd is there making fun of people’s names. Really this isn’t a personal choice they’ve made. Ha ha Mr Kumon is marrying Mrs Topper- what are we three?
great post as always Ariel! And timely for me – I was just reading wedinator and feeling a bit guilty as tho I were participating in dissing OBBs.
I think that the people managing the site are largely benign, it’s more that they don’t have much of a comment policy and and (as you said) they don’t seem to bother with any research before posting the pix (they posted one that had a broom in it where they said ‘what’s with the broom?’ – like, how could you possibly have a wdg site and not know about jumping the broom?)
On a side note, to various commenters – it’s possible to be a slightly snarky person and a nice person at the same time! There are those of us who read some of the (not *too* nasty) slightly snarky sites to have a bit of a giggle at *some* of the posts but *don’t* leave horrible comments, and then *also* read and assiduously comment on nice sites like OBB to add some positive energy to teh intarwebs 🙂
Whatever, I am so over narrow minded people. I am not up for traditional TYPICAL weddings but you don’t see me commenting on their tasteless ordinary weddings. Okay I am done : )
Part of the reason I didn’t put up all of my wedding porn on OBBT was because a friend directed me to wedinator a couple of days before we got our photos back. I understand that I can’t control what goes on over the internet but I have to deal with narrow minded jerks on a daily basis so I really don’t want one of the happiest days of my life to get dragged through the mud. That said I did notice several of the pictures posted were positive, proclaiming the awesomeness of a Star Wars wedding and others but the jokes about weight and other sensitive topics are just sick in my opinion.
I liked Wedinator for a while, mostly because the photos I saw were poofy skirted brides who didn’t know there was TP on her heel (tehehe!) or that there was a shirtless groomsman dancing the night away, or other silly things that really could happen to anybody. That was the charm! But then I saw the dark side of Wedinator. They’re very mean to everyone. The people who take their wedding a little too seriously, and also the people who have total fun with them.
They remind me of those kids in high school who would make fun of everyone, for any reason! There’s a reason I don’t talk to those kids anymore. And there’s a reason I don’t frequent Wedinator.
If you want snark, become a “knottie!” Yes, there are brides who band together & sincerely want to help, but in my experience any site proud to boast a “snarky bride” forum is bad news. Besides, I had a post and was attacked for asking for help! (I asked about the best period protection on your wedding day. I mean, you never know! I never wear white. Geez! Someone said, “what, do you always wear black then?” To which I replied “um, my sn is ‘Halloween’ yes actually!”) I ended up having to take the post down because people were being so downright… mean. (And I have a thick skin when it comes to critism!!) This was before I discovered OBB. Now this is one of the only sites I’ll visit and post on. [Thank you, Ariel, for providing such an amazing community] Basically, weddings are easy to pick on. Why? Because a couple let’s their personalities shine through & we all have different taste. Let’s continue to celebrate our differences, rather than put others down for them 🙂
I get your point and all, but as you used an uncredited cartoon from xkcd in making it, which goes against the online etiquette you have been complaining about, it’s a bit of a fail.
It’s not uncredited — the image is linked directly to the original comic, in accordance xkcd’s Creative Commons license, an issue we’ve addressed on OBB a couple times.
It would be one thing if they were making what amounted to “LOLWedding” (I can haz cake?) but the way they present the photos is not very nice…
I’ve been reading Wedinator for a while, mostly because I never thought I would be getting married.
Lately, it hasn’t been as snarky. And has actually taken to showcasing weddings. I think the response from people that these are real people at real weddings, has soften them a bit.