When Courtney McKenzie's boyfriend of two years got down on one knee on the beach in her hometown of Palm Beach, Florida, she thought they'd have a huge wedding.
"He has a big family and I have an even bigger family," McKenzie, 27, told Cosmopolitan.com. "We sat down to make the guest list and it was 250 people. But then we thought, 'What's true to us?' and we decided we just wanted it to be a lot of fun."
Chelsey Boatwright Photography
The two had always been into adventure sports, so instead of the big traditional wedding, they went with an elopement-honeymoon combo in Thailand. "We figured we'd tweet, Instagram, put out a podcast ... all sorts of social media stuff to tie in our family and friends," said McKenzie.
But then the marketing professional had another idea: Get companies to sponsor their 11-day trip in exchange for logos on just about everything and hashtags in their social media. "We will be hashtagging, tweeting and instagramming our way through Thailand to our over 30,000 combined social media followers and we want to include some of our favorite brands on our adventure," she wrote on their website. She also plans to sew sponsor's logos onto everything from her wedding dress to her honeymoon bikini and her husband's tux.
The goal, she said, is not to pay for any of the trip, and to donate a percentage of the money to charities like The Boys and Girls Club and Big Brother, Big Sister. So far they have three major sponsors, but are only about halfway to their $30,000 goal.
Reactions from their family and friends have been mostly positive, and an initial announcement on Facebook got more than 40,000 likes, but since then the Internet hasn't been kind.
"I've gotten a lot of emails saying, 'This is so tacky,' 'How can you put a logo on your wedding dress?' 'Your daughter will never be able to wear your dress,'" she said. "It stings a bit. But we feel good about doing it. And it'll be a fun story to tell our kids."
McKenzie has now gotten more positive feedback than negative, and her new goal is to launch a platform to help other brides pay for their weddings with sponsorship. With the average wedding costing over $25,000, who wouldn't slap on a logo to have it paid for?
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From Cosmopolitan.com. Visit Amazon Beauty Ceneter here
Chelsey Boatwright Photography
