We couldn’t believe that the New York Times picked up our announcement! It was printed the morning after the wedding.
How did we do it? As the Italians say with a shrug, “Boh!” (Who knows!) We emailed our information about six weeks before it was due and were surprised to receive a call from someone at the paper the week before the wedding. She opened with, “First, I want to congratulate you on your upcoming nuptials. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I want to congratulate you on being chosen by The New York Times.”
She confirmed every detail of our lives by speaking to us, our families, our bosses and even the editors at literary magazines where I said I’d been published. When she asked me for details on the literary magazines, she said, “You can’t be a poet if you aren’t published.”
This was serious business.
I had thought that only people like the characters on Sex and the City would be “chosen.” As a civilian, I was inspired to submit our announcement because my dear friend Rasheea Williams, now Rasheea Hall, had submitted in 2005. Her lovely wedding announcement can be read here. I later learned that our friends Rick and Lisa had also been in the famous Styles section after their gorgeous wedding in Richmond, Va.
We weren’t 100% sure that the announcement would run, so we tried not to tell everyone that someone from the Times had called. The evening after the wedding, my husband (I love an excuse to write that) saw a Google alert for his name and The New York Times pop up on his Iphone.
Most newspaper announcement require payment to print announcements. We only submitted to newspapers that would run the announcement for free, The New York Times and the Italian Tribune. Sorry, Star Ledger.
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