reclaiming wife

Submit A Wedding Graduate Post

Welcome To The Other Side!

So you’re married now. Congratulations!!!! And you want to write a Wedding Graduate post (or submit a Vintage Wedding)? Even better.

Here is how it works: any reader can write a graduate post (and we secretly hope everyone will). You don’t have to have a certain kind of wedding, or have a certain kind of budget, or have a particular style, or be a regular commenter. You just have to have a story that you want to share. And we really think that everyone has a story that they should share. For more on this, see the Feministing Post She Should Write. In this case she is you, and we think you should write because we think you have a story to tell.

Here Is How We Pick Wedding Graduate Posts:

We get more posts submitted than we can run, which hurts us a little in our souls. That also means that we think you should write your post for you, not for everyone else (which is probably how you should do all writing). First and foremost, hopefully writing about your wedding helps you get how you felt on paper before you forget it all and only remember what the pictures look like.

Once we get a wedding graduate post, it gets looked over by APW Associate Editor Maddie. She picks posts based on a whole lot of different editorial criteria—interesting stories, diverse weddings, things that are pretty, things that fit with the rest of our editorial calendar. Also, it often takes a few months to get a post live on the site, and that’s normal. None of this has anything to do with how awesome your wedding is, or how awesome you are, or how much we value you as a member of the APW community. We like you. Very much. In fact, we wish we’d been at your wedding. If and when your wedding is going to go live on the site, you’ll get an email from the APW team letting you know.

Here Is How Writing A Wedding Graduate Post Works:

We give you a whole list of suggested prompts, and you answer the ones you feel like answering in short-essay format. Please do not include the questions in your final post!

If you’re trying to figure out how to tell your story, this should help you get started:

  • Write a letter to your pre-wedding self. If you could go back in time and tell your wedding planning self a few things, what would they be? (Pay it forward…)
  • What did you learn during the process of planning your wedding and getting married?
  • How did your wedding day feel? When you think back on it, what stands out to you?
  • What mattered? What didn’t?
  • What was surprising?
  • What was hard?
  • And if there were style or aesthetic bits you loved, I give you permission to weave them in without feeling shallow! The pretty! Bam!

And finally, try to focus on writing the story that you most need to tell… for you. Stop worrying about what other people want to hear, and just write what you want to say.

Next

Fill out the form below. Answer our questions, and then cut and paste the text of your essay into the form.

Pictures

You can upload your pictures in a zip file, or give us a direct link to a Flickr account with 30 or fewer of your favorite wedding pictures. These pictures should focus on the emotion of the day, and the things that were important to you, not just the wedding stuff. Please get permission from your photographer (if you had one) and the people in the pictures first. We don’t publish photos with watermarks (i.e., the photographer’s name written on it), but we do give photographers plenty of well deserved credit.

Finally: Vintage Weddings

If you want to submit a Vintage Wedding, feel free to do so on this form, designating ‘Vintage Wedding.’ If you want to share your parents’ or grandparents’ story, you can either write it up as it has been told to you, OR you can have a parent write it up. We will also need some vintage-y photos to go with it. Here is the catch: You have to, must, with no exceptions, ASK your parents (or grandparents, or living relatives) if this is alright. In other words you need to obtain their permission to be ON THE INTERNET.

But wait! Before you submit a post, please make sure you’ve read our disclaimer! Thanks.

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We recommend that you write your answers in a document, and copy paste them into the form. That way if invisible web monkeys decide to eat them, you won’t cry. You’re welcome. (Stupid web monkeys.) – APW Team

(Starred fields are mandatory)

Pictures on this page by: Katherine O’Brien Photography, One Love Photo, Emily Takes Photos