P:P from Start To Finish: A summary by P:P bride, Jordan Kent-Baas
Project: Priceless--The Free Wedding Experiment was started in October 2010. My fiancé, Brian Baas, proposed to me on October 11th, and on October 15th, we started a blog (http://www.projectpriceless.blogspot.com), promoting an experiment we called Project: Priceless—the Free Wedding Experiment. The goal of the experiment: to see if social media could be used to produce a wedding, free-of-charge, for us. We would trade, borrow, and received donated items to create a wedding for about 150 guests. Using social media to spread the word, we would seek to spend no more than $10 on any one item in the wedding, with the possible exception of the wedding dress. Within the first few weeks of the project’s inception, local and international businesses, primarily independent artisans, began offering their goods and services to assist us with the wedding. We added another element to the project, offering to promote via word-of-blog all donors with special kudos given to commercial donors.
Over the course of the next ten months, Project: Priceless succeeded in:
-accruing approximately 65,000 hits on the blog,
-receiving over 150 offers of items, services, and volunteer time,
-producing the entire wedding for nearly nothing,
-receiving coverage in over a dozen major news dailies from Canadian coast to coast,
-receiving coverage on several radio shows across the nation,
-receiving coverage on countless blogs near and far.
Everything from the venue to the cake to the writing of the vows was offered (we even had a wedding tattoo created, as seen in the photos); the only purchases made by us were the licences, a few supplies (ie poster boards) and my dress; all told, about 550.00 and thanks to doing an online garage sale and receiving a small gift of cash, only about 200.00 of the costs were out-of-actual-pocket. We had the capacity for 200 guests at the wedding, had a final RSVP list of about 140, and everything was spectacular. We even had enough offers and duplications that we began referring offers on to other budgeting brides.
We blogged the entire way through: our foibles, our troubles, our laughs, and our successes, though there’s easily another volume’s worth of untold stories that we ran out of time to share, or couldn’t share during the project due to politics. We wrote a strongly-worded rebuttal post when a couple of internet trolls began libellous threads about us on the internet (and this post was quite successful in shutting down the nay-sayers). We made tough decisions, like turning down 3 of the 4 venues offered, and all 10 of the dresses offered. About half of our items and services were offered by commercial sources, and the other half were offered by individual, everyday people—almost entirely all strangers.
Ten months, we worked on this insane wedding, and it became something far beyond what we’d originally expected. Where we’d first thought we might get a few silk flowers and an old tuxedo, we ended up with beautiful and heartwarming offers from around the world. Well over half of those offering items stayed in touch with us throughout the course of the project, emailing and tweeting often to encourage and get in on the latest news. This wedding became something more than just ‘our wedding’…it became everyone’s wedding.
The day itself was tweeted live by friends and by some local popular bloggers that we invited specifically as on-site media coverage for the day. Over 300 tweets went out between the ceremony and reception, and we showed these on a big screen, live, using a Twitter display program. Three photographers captured our day, with a ceremony and reception now full, not only with friends and family, but also with vendors and near-strangers that had become our friends over the last few months. We stood at the front of the room and held each other as I played a slideshow for Brian that I had put together: about forty different reasons why I love him, each one held up on a sign by a different stranger, blogger, tweeter, or fan—and most participants had chipped in for this project via social media outlets.
Post-wedding, we have been blogging about the day, broken down into segments. We are considering options in terms of continuing to network budgeting brides with local talent; we are also planning on beginning a second chapter, as a sister blog, called Project: Priceless—The Nest, detailing life as newlyweds who are beginning to redecorate our place, learn how to cook, take dance lessons, and try not to kill each other.
We have a loyal following and with our new forays into food, décor, and adventure, it will continue to expand exponentially. So many people are already invested and tied into our project that a book seems like a natural next step to document the first leg of our journey. And of course, talk of a book is in the air.
