\ If you are planning a wedding, look no further than the nation’s leading wedding resource (BusinessWire), “The Knot”, a publicly traded commodity (nasdaq – KNOT). The media company “The Knot” seeks to be “most comprehensive resource for couples seeking information and services to help plan their weddings and their future lives together.”(“theknot.com) It does a pretty fine job of it too – the company encompasses many websites for wedding planning, family and finance advice (“thenest.com”), shopping, and also print magazines pertaining to the subjects. My focus will be on the website “theknot.com”.
The intended audience of “theknot.com” was women who are planning traditional weddings, ages 18 – 35. The audience has grown to include older brides and also gay couples. Younger women, not of marriageable age have been known to visit “theknot.com” to get ideas for prom (eventually a site for them was created – promspot.com), or even just get a head start on planning their “perfect day”. Wedding venders and students intent on going into the wedding planning business are also known to ‘lurk’ on the site. Soliciting is forbidden except in designated areas but recently married brides will come on and sell their used wedding décor. There are brides, that once married, continue to surf the message boards and offer advice and chat with friends or make fun of brides that do not have the proper construct (in a seasoned brides eyes) of what a wedding should be.
“The Knot.com” (www.theknot.com) has become part of popular culture in large part because of women’s desire to have the perfect wedding. It is a gathering place for women planning a wedding; a place where brides can find other women from their area or who share their same tastes to vent their frustrations about planning, fiancé’s, family, wedding guests, and share their plans, or just plain show off. “The Knot” also makes it easier for busy, working women to get ideas, find vendors, and get product/service reviews fairly quickly – at the click of the mouse. Wedding vendors go there to advertise for business and lurk to see what brides are saying about them. Friends and family of brides visit the website to help in the planning or to get gift ideas. “The Knot” has become the website of choice for wedding planning. Many different tastes and aesthetics are represented on “The Knot”; if it is not there you can bet “The Knot” or the brides on “The Knot” will convince you that your concept of the perfect wedding is not good enough and that you should construct another. And you can do it all on “The Knot.com”, a comprehensive guide to planning a wedding of taste that every woman will desire.
“The Knot.com” reflects popular tastes and desires through its very existence. If there was not a desire to have perfect wedding there would be no “Knot”. The website itself is similar to bridal magazines – heavy on advertising but light on substance. Unlike the old bridal magazine though, “The Knot” has a message board where brides share ideas and reviews. “The Knot” is a great indicator of what the popular tastes are in the wedding industry due to the input of all the brides that are on the message boards each day. It is a powerful and timely reflection of our culture – what is hot and what is not, what is in and what is out. While weddings are the main focus of “The Knot” and it’s boards, and wedding planning is broken down into the minutest little details, many other issues are discussed – every topic is discussed from the trivial (new movies, housekeeping) to the meaningful (sex, politics, spousal abuse).
“With over 2 million unique members and more than 4,200 new members a day, The Knot has the largest audience — bar none — of wedding-obsessed, cash-wielding brides.” (theknot.com); with an audience like that how can “The Knot” not shape popular tastes and desires. “The Knot” knows it’s power and makes the most of it. It has made the wedding a commodity, praying on the desires of women, hailing them to conform to the ideology that a wedding is “their special day” and they must feel like a princess on that day and get whatever they want. “The Knot” makes it very easy for a bride to get caught up in spending or doing whatever it takes to have the perfect wedding. The message boards are an exercise in consumption; promoting hegemonic values dictating the taste and aesthetics of the perfect wedding. If you don’t have the perfect dress, the perfect reception location or the new trendy bauble (monogrammed cake toppers, for example) like everyone else then you feel like a wedding schlub – quit being a slacker and get with the program! Peer pressure at its worst, because although the message boards, and the fact that most everyone on the boards is a bride planning a wedding, makes it feel like you are all one peer group, you really are not. There are many different value systems and income brackets on “The Knot” but that desire for the perfect day makes it easy for all the brides to fall into one hegemonic group full of desire and consumerism, and pulls the lower income brides along with the upper income brides leading all to believe that “you deserve one perfect day no matter what the cost.”
“The Knot” with its fresh light blue and green design and it’s well organized categories and articles makes it easy for brides/consumers to navigate. It is easy on the eyes. The website does contain a lot of information and can be a bit overwhelming but the shear value of having everything to do with planning a wedding at the click of the mouse lures brides/consumers back. In addition to message boards (organized in many different categories: by locality, wedding date, wedding type, or subject – i.e. ceremony décor, vows, reception décor), “The Knot” has articles on traditions, trends, and wedding problems and nightmares. It also has a massive amount of pictures of everything to do with a wedding so brides can copy ideas. There are vender pages for brides to search our preferred local venders. To top it all off, “The Knot” has its own store, “The Knot Wedding Shop” for all kinds of wedding related items. It has taken the one stop shopping concept to a whole new level.
Promoting the ideology of the perfect wedding, the perfect marriage is how “The Knot” gets under the skin of brides. “The Knot” makes it easy for brides to get a sense of what is right and trendy in the world of weddings. The website lays out all the (hegemonic) values, traditions, etiquette, and trends of having a wedding. “The Knot” holds to the traditions but does change, shift, morph itself to include changes to new trends. It has the perfect venue – suturing weddings with the web, and the perfect dupes (sentimental brides yearning for that hegemonic value – the ultimate wedding and marriage), as well as a ready made research group or think tank on the message boards. In fact, the institute of marriage owes a lot to “The Knot” for promoting weddings and marriage; if not for websites (and magazines) of this ilk (of which “The Knot” is a big portion) then marriage would be losing popularity by now. I believe it is the desire of women (working women of all ages who can be independent but dream of that “one special day”), dreaming of that perfect wedding is part (that and the desire for children and tax breaks) of what keeps the institution of marriage moving along.
REFERENCES
THEKNOT.com. 05 MAR. 2008. The Knot Inc.
1997 – 2008 http://theknot.com/default.shtml.
BUSINESSWIRE: The Knot Inc. Acquires “The Bump” and Expands Position in the
Baby Market. Msn.com. 06 MAR. 2008. 28 Feb. 2008
<http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=BW&Date=200802
28&ID=8257710&Symbol=US:KNOT>.
Priceless – it is right next to my wedding pics!
I am not proud of my paper either. I just threw together last minute and I don’t think I went into the depth I could have on the subject. Maybe I can rewrite it – not that I want to but I will if given the chance. I think I will post it here and pick it apart while I am blogging on other things.
Jacquelyn's Space 