On New Wedding Sites:
Proposal Videos, Blogs
And Updates on the Ring

By RACHEL DODES

Jogging in Atlanta a year ago, Chris Tuff tripped and fell. As his girlfriend, Julie Augustyniak, tried to help him up, Mr. Tuff, already on bended knee, pulled a diamond ring from his gym shorts.

“Julie, I love you more than anything in the world,” he said. Unbeknownst to Ms. Augustyniak, a cameraman lurking in a parked car nearby zoomed in and recorded her running into the street, screaming. She eventually calmed down enough to say yes — on camera. (See the proposal video.)

In case you missed this scene, you can now watch it on the couple’s wedding Web site www.doublemintwedding.com². At the bottom of their home page is a poll asking guests whether posting the engagement video online is a) very cute, b) cheesy, c) classic, or d) Chris’s idea.

Wedding Web sites — also known as “Wed sites” — were originally conceived as a convenient way for couples to notify guests of wedding events, provide directions and link to gift registries. Now they are turning into elaborate hubs of matrimonial exhibitionism, with confessional stories, courtship videos, and blow-by-blow accounts of the preparations.

In the “News and Updates” section on her Web site, bride-to-be Monika Razpotnik griped that making her own centerpieces was “a disaster,” finding a band was “a nightmare,” and looking for a dress was “a total disappointment.”

“I am usually not in the best mood, so I tell everybody to look at the Web site to see why,” says Ms. Razpotnik, a singer in a wedding band, who is inviting 600 people to her October nuptials in Oakville, Ontario. One voyeur wrote Ms. Razpotnik an email saying that after reading the bridal blog, she’s too scared to get married.

Marisa Stones, manager at a financial-services company in Bermuda, used her wedding blog to keep friends and family members up to date on her engagement ring: “The ring has a three-stone setting. The middle stone is a princess-cut diamond, .74 carats, clarity of VS1, and color E,” wrote Mrs. Stones. “The side stones are amazing sapphires that weigh about half a carat altogether.”

Also included on the site: video clips of a theatrical performance of the song “One” from “A Chorus Line” in which the bride and groom perform, and a tune performed by a traditional Scottish pipe band. The bride, in her wedding dress, dances the Highland Fling with several young dancers in kilts.

Wedding sites “used to be very ‘Just the facts, ma’am,’ ” says David Liu, chief executive of TheKnot.com³, an online purveyor of wedding products that started offering free wedding Web pages in 1999. These days, couples are opting for fancier “premium” Web sites, where they can pay around $70 a year for features like vanity URLs, music, video footage and blogs to track couples’ thoughts and feelings leading up to the big day.

Etiquette writer Peggy Post, the great-granddaughter-in-law of Emily Post, says that, for better or for worse, revealing personal information on Web pages is now part of our culture. But when it comes to wedding sites, she draws the line at long-winded descriptions of dates leading up to the proposal: “It is similar to sending an e-blast on the process of giving birth,” she says. “Show me the child, not the process.”

(read the Wall Street Journal Article here)