Just because she’s posting pictures of wedding shoes, doesn’t mean the person on the other end of that Facebook identity is a bride
Social media has created a whole new platform for brides and grooms to share ideas with other couples as they plan their weddings. It can be a great way for couples to brainstorm with other brides and grooms – especially those who choose to DIY everything – without driving their family and friends crazy with 24/7 wedding talk.
But some pages focus more on sharing the drama of their wedding planning, rather than the actual mechanics of it. Like a big bridal group therapy session. It's a "safe space" where brides can vent about useless bridesmaids, horrible future in-laws, and vendors who insulted them instead of booking their weddings.
The problem is that nowhere on social media is actually a "safe space" for anything. Anything you post, in any forum, may come back to bite you. Even if you read what you posted later on, and decide to delete it because it might have been just a bit over-the-top, your post may live in infamy if somebody took a screenshot before you took it down.
There's very little vetting of who becomes a member of these wedding and bridal groups, even when they're moderated. They're not background-checking you when they approve your membership. They may check your Facebook page to see if there is any indication that you are, in fact, a bride. Most won't even waste that much time creeping you – they'll just check to make sure you're not a troll with a fake page.
“We do check profiles to see if we see a couple in any photos, a ring, an 'engaged' status in the relationship box. Sometimes people are added into the group by other members, and they may be a maid of honor or best man etc, so we may have to go look at the person who added them for these things,” says Eve Rogers, a moderator on the very popular Facebook chat group I’m Engaged! What Now?, and a professional wedding photographer.
Photographer Eve Rogers is a moderator on one of the most popular wedding chat groups on Facebook - I’m Engaged! What Now?
“Naturally, everyone should be careful, and with a group like ours that has almost 11,000 members, and grows by more than 100 every day. There's no way to keep tabs on every single person. There's no telling what kind of person ANYONE could be, engaged or not! It's always smart to think twice about anything posted on social media - even in private groups,” Rogers says.
Why would anybody bother to fake their way onto a wedding Facebook group? Because not only are there identity thieves in this world, there are also crazy people out there who join because they can lurk and likely get every nitty-gritty detail of a bride’s wedding plans.
In the course of discussing their wedding details, and sharing pictures of their invitations, and links to their wedding websites, brides regularly provide identity thieves with enough information to steal their identities, as well as that of some of your loved ones. A little digging will reveal your wedding date, your birthdate, your mother’s maiden name, your grandmother’s maiden name, your home address, your place of birth, and on and on. Some wedding websites have entire histories of the bride and groom’s lives, and most couples do not bother to password protect that information, even when it’s an easy option for their page.
One bride I consulted with last year told me she was planning an elopement in the Caribbean because she HAD to cancel her "dream wedding" at home after a social media disaster. She'd posted several photos of herself at her first gown fitting in a wedding Facebook group, asking the other brides to give her their opinions about the fact her gown didn't fit properly when it had been custom-made for her. Seems harmless enough, right? If you don't mind getting some negative feedback, too.
But in this bride's case, it was a total nightmare. The groom's ex-girlfriend got her hands on the pictures, and created really unflattering memes. She shared them all over social media. Not only was the surprise-factor of her dress completely destroyed, but the bride was humiliated because, in the pictures, the dress wouldn't zip. That fact alone gave the twisted ex-girlfriend even more ammunition. The bride told me one caption read "It doesn't fit her because it was meant for me!" and another read "Now we know why he's marrying her – she's obviously pregnant!" She wasn't.
With a lot of effort, she ultimately had all the pictures removed by reporting them. But the screenshots will always exist, somewhere. And pretty much all her friends and family saw them. She still wanted to get married, but not in THAT dress, and not with a bunch of guests whispering about what happened. I didn't blame her.
That's obviously an extreme example, but it's easy to see how something even worse could happen if you share too much information about your wedding with strangers. Even in a "room" that's supposed to be all brides, your information is not safe. Brides who post their wedding dates, venue details, and ceremony times must not realize that they're basically announcing to anybody who wants to know when, exactly, all their friends and family will be out of their houses, at the same time. Destination wedding brides are even worse, making it simple for anyone to figure out when you and all of your friends' and family's homes will be empty for multiple days, while they attend the wedding.
Bridal chat groups provide a really excellent opportunity to swap tips on making centerpieces, names of reputable vendors, and warnings about venues that should be avoided. But when you put your personal business out there – even if it's just the specific details of your wedding plans or venting about your "lazy" bridesmaids – you're opening yourself up a world of hurt if that information falls into the wrong hands.
Until next time, happy wedding planning from Sandy Malone Weddings!