How our wedding was 'almost' famous

So some of you may be familiar with the show, Get Married.  I found my way to the blogging world through this show for they have a Blogger Brides area on their web site where brides can come and create a simple profile and blog about their weddings, questions, etc.  I eventually became a featured blogger over there and 'met' A Chocolate Lover's Confessions...she led me over to start my own personal blog.  Thanks, girl!  I love it out here in the blogosphere!

Anyway, through Get Married, back in February, 2009, I heard about a contest hosted by Jean M products.  They are an invitation company but also sell many other wedding related items and products.  Well, they were hosting a contest that they hold once a year to find a bride that will receive a bunch of prizes.  The prizes for the year that I found out about it were:

1)  A personal consultation with Jean to design your Save the Dates and invitations.  (They fly you out to their headquarters in Minnesota for this consultation)
2)  About $4,000 worth of Jean M wedding products to adorn your big day (favor boxes, ribbons, toasting flutes, favors, vases, etc)
3)  Having photos from your wedding used in the next year's catalogue.
4)  Having your wedding featured on the Get Married tv show.
5)  A one week honeymoon in your choice of either the Bahamas, Hawaii, or Mexico.

All you had to do to enter was create a short video using any cell phone camera, video camera, web cam, etc telling Jean M why they should select you to be their bride.  They wanted you to tell them about your wedding and tell them what makes you unique and personal and why you should be chosen.

Easy enough - you all know from my little surprise I showed you here that I am totally capable of creating a video like this in under 4 minutes.  So I browsed through their past year's web site entries to look at the videos that were submitted then for some inspiration.  Funny thing was, I only found about 10 videos or so...strange.

Anyway, this was what I came up with and submitted:




Now this wasn't the end of the contest...for the rules state that once the video is submitted, they post it to a web site where you then direct your friends, family, anyone you can to go 'VOTE' for your video.  The top 20 videos with the most votes would then move on to the judges round where a winner would be selected.

Well, our video (above) was the very first entry and thanks to facebook and e-mail I had like 100 votes a day coming in within the first two weeks!  We had a great head start.  And a few of the next videos submitted after ours basically copied my style and idea...so I knew we had a good shot with creativity.  And of course our venue was way unique and cool so how could that not get us some extra points, right?

Cut to about 1 1/2 months into the contest...I get a phone call from a woman at Jean M telling me they are making some 'changes' to the contest.  Apparently, they only received 7 video entries which was not much at all...they were expecting hundreds.  They also said they had been contacted by many brides saying they just didn't have the time while planning a wedding to come up with a video but really wanted to enter the contest.

So Jean M decided (as was their right per the rules) that they were going to switch the contest back to the way it had been done in previous years so that all you needed to do to enter was submit a one page application and photo of you and your groom.  They posted all the entries on their Facebook page and then when the contest ended a month or two later they had about 800 entries total.  However, instead of voting to see who the top 20 would be, Jean M chose 20 entries from the submissions themselves.

This really sucked...especially since we had received 3500 votes by the time they changed the contest over!  And all of our family and friends who had been voting every single day were pretty upset.  It seemed pretty irritating that they were willing to listen to these brides who didn't think their contest and prize was worth the effort of creating a simple short video.  Hell, some of the entries submitted were basically power point presentations with narration to them!  On the phone, they told us they absolutely loved our video and totally enjoyed watching it over and over again.  And so what was the consolation for this change after all our hard work?  They took the 7 videos who had entered and automatically placed them in the top 20 list.

Ok, I could totally live with that as I felt like we were a shoe in at this point!  I mean, how the heck could you possibly pick a one page written application and photo as being more creative than the video we submitted?  Or any of the other 6 people submitted?

I was wrong...when the day came to announce the winner, they selected a couple who wanted an 'Old Hollywood' style glamour at their wedding with classic shades of ivory and black and red...a la Frank Sinatra or Norah Jones.  Seriously?

Mr Fix It was totally pissed off...I was kind of disappointed...but looking back on it, I am *SO* glad we didn't win.  For if we had won the contest, I wouldn't be going on the dream honeymoon to Australia and Bali for 2 weeks that we have planned.  And I wouldn't have been able to incorporate the super fun and custom invitations I absolutely adore!  And I wouldn't have had all the cutesy details and favor boxes and other things that I have been planning and purchasing for the past year.  My wedding is in fact, my wedding now...not Jean M's.  And as much as I would have loved to have won the freebies and get featured on a tv show, in the end, I realized things worked out exactly as they were meant to be :)

Have you ever entered any contests or giveaways?  Did you win or get let down about anything?