In this, the year 2019, two wildly popular wedding planning sites have vowed to adjust their policies surrounding the promotion of former slave plantations as wedding venues, a thing they needed to be told to do rather than just, you know, knowing they probably shouldn’t allow that to be a thing. Buzzfeed News reports that Pinterest and The Knot Worldwide—the latter includes both The Knot and WeddingWire—each decided on the change after the civil rights organization Color Of Change put pressure on the sites to, in the common parlance, knock it the fuck off.
Representatives for the two companies told BuzzFeed about the proposed changes. The Knot’s plan involves “new guidelines to ensure wedding vendors on their websites don’t use language that glorifies, celebrates, or romanticizes Southern plantation history;” Chief Marketing Officer Dhanusha Sivajee told the outlet that plantations would still be eligible for placement among the wedding venue listings, but the guidelines would “ensure that wedding vendors aren’t referring to a history that includes slavery using language such as “elegant” or “charming.”
So, good note.
As for Pinterest:
A Pinterest spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company will restrict plantation wedding content on its website, and is working on de-indexing Google searches for plantation weddings on Pinterest. Though users can still search for it, they’ll see an advisory that some of that content may violate Pinterest’s policies.
“Weddings should be a symbol of love and unity. Plantations represent none of those things,” the Pinterest spokesperson wrote in an email. “We are working to limit the distribution of this content and accounts across our platform, and continue to not accept advertisements for them.”
For further details on how this civil rights organization convinced two corporations that romanticizing slavery is bad, see Buzzfeed’s reporting.
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70 Comments
And cue the awful takes in three, two, one…
“Okay,” I can hear you asking, “but it’s still okay if it’s a dog wedding at a dalmatian plantation, right?”
Or what if I’m marrying two soups at the Souplantation?
Wouldn’t the dog equivalent be a puppy mill?
Dalmatian blackface is not cool though, even when escaping cockney wankers.
Is it awful that I was more shocked that Buzzfeed reported this than the actually content? I mean, they didn’t even put it in a list or even try to make it click bait. What’s with all those words, and the lack of pics?
Buzzfeed’s news division has been covering/breaking serious things for awhile now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed_News#Notable_stories
“38 Wedding Venues You Can’t Find on Pinterest and 46 Unrelated Tweets for Some Reason”
I got married and Pittsburgh and I don’t endorse the earth-destroying, nearly defunct steel industry. Why can’t someone get married on a plantation that no longer uses slave labor or produces cotton?
Because the city of Pittsburgh is a large place that contains many non-steel plants, while the entire purpose of a plantation was to exploit slave labor. Maybe you could work a bit harder on your wild false dichotomies?
“while the entire purpose of a plantation was to exploit slave labor.”
Was. Interesting word.
I mean, feel free to have a wedding at a plantation, but those were slave labor camps. Call it a plantation that was used to exploit slave labor, but you’re having a wedding at a former slave labor camp.
If you have your wedding anywhere in the USA, that has history before 1865, odds are high that slave labor occurred there.Better tell Santa he’s having brunch at a slave labor camp!
https://www.mountvernon.org/plan-your-visit/calendar/events/brunch-with-santa-at-the-mount-vernon-inn/
Not really, just a basic past indicative verb.
It’s also an incorrect statement. The entire purpose of a plantation was to mass produce a cash crop. This purpose was achieved by exploiting slave labor.
Yeah this is more or less what I was going to say.
Maybe you could work a bit harder on your wild false dichotomies?Ok, replace “steel industry” with “Ben Roethlisberger”. Better?Also, allow me to direct to the original poster’s comment:And cue the awful takes in three, two, one…
Well, one of Roethlisberger’s assaults happened in Georgia, but I don’t think it was on a plantation.
Pretty much all of the land in this country was stolen from my people, so maybe just no more weddings.
Those geographical locations have been #cancelled, forever.
I hope you’re not serious, but just in case: did you get married inside a steel mill? Your analogy would only work if the protest was against advertising weddings anywhere in Atlanta.
I’m not serious (though I did get married in Pittsburgh). You asked for awful takes. I gave one.
There’s a difference between getting married at a place that is a nice house and happens to have once had slaves working on the property and a place that is marketed specifically as an antebellum fantasy.
“Why can’t someone get married in Auschwitz?” That’s the kind of question asked by someone who has – more than once – had to explain how they are totally not racist. At some point, it might be wise to just decide that you aren’t smart enough to understand the “subtleties” of race relations – which aren’t really all that subtle – and just do what the non-racists do without commenting on it.
Because you are responsible for the sins of the alt-right’s great-grandfathers, whitey!
“Look, the one black person I know might get offended, but it’s not like I was going to invite them anyway! It’s a celebration of Southern pride! The resiliency of the South in the face of things that did not involve slavery, but were instead an aggression by the North that once again did not involve slavery.”
SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING FREE SPEECH ALSO SJW SOMETHING SOMETHING ALSO FEMINISTS!!!!!!!!
“I just wanted this to be about my one special day. My family is from the South and I’ve always identified with Scarlett from Gone With the Wind. I just don’t see why it was so wrong to ask everyone to dress in period attire and my black friend from work to dress as a house slave. I just wanted everything to match the theme so my day would be magical!”
Yes, the awful takes from adults who realizes this is a hilariously stupid decision and does nothing for anybody.
I hope the word elegant doesn’t jump out of the shadows and mug anyone while we saunter away from this stupid story.
Can I get married in Anne Frank’s house?
We’re gonna have a destination wedding in Manzanar! Guests have to stay over!
…or rent out the Auschwitz Museum for a bar mitzvah.
You know Auschwitz has a twitter account now, so that joke is far less absurd than it should be.You can do twitter. Or you can do gravitas. But you have to pick one.
I visited that house a number of years ago, and while I was inside, I farted. I meant no disrespect towards the house or Anne or their combined historical legacy, of course, but sometimes things/farts happen. Just an odd place to get to fart, is all.
I mean, presumably Anne and her family farted in that house a whole bunch, too.And think about how much farting has happened over the centuries in, like, the Vatican. Nothing is sacred!
I’m in good company. I wanted to go visit/fart in Rembrandt’s house in Amsterdam, too, but I was young and couldn’t affart it. Er, afford it.
As an art lover I’m glad you didn’t, um… follow through.
I didn’t say I was gonna go take a dump on The Night Watch. Just a light crop dusting through his study, mayhap.
If you see this person in your local art gallery please report him to security.
It wasn’t the fart that bothered everybody. It was you laughing and apologizing for gassing everybody that set them off.
Napkin math: There have been over 4 billion farts in the Vatican in the last thousand years.
Pope John Paul II was there for about 28 years, so you know he had a disproportionate share of those stinkers.
If I was the Pope, I would yell “Holy shit!” every time I took a dump, and then cackle at my own cleverness.
“That joke never fails. Just like me.”
Talk about poopal infallibility!
YOU DID IT WRONG.
Still better than “Gatsby” weddings
I must wonder, did the person who first dream up that concept actually finish the book?
I remember my sister confidently stating that ‘The Great Gatsby’ was a love story. To this day, I still wonder what book she actually read.
Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively got married at a plantation.
I had no idea that they love slavery and hate black people.
This is precisely why my wedding will be in Paris with a “Reign of Terror” theme.
Will you have your wedding on an octidi evening or nonidi morning in the month of Germinal?
I know it’s cliche, but to me there’s nothing more romantic than a Prairial wedding in Paris.
My wife and I really like Asian art and culture. The problem was we couldn’t decide between a Chinese or Japanese theme, so we just opted for a “Rape of Nanking” destination wedding!
This is really stupid.
This is why I plan to have my wedding amongst the perfectly preserved corpses of Pompeii.
I am like totally jelly right now!
Better Jelly than ash
I hope they don’t depend on revenue from Paul Deen fans.
This seems sort of like a misplaced argument. The real argument is whether or not plantations should be open at all as these “beautiful tourist” destinations vs being closed down entirely or open as museums to slavery.
I am unclear on the purpose of a plantation wedding. Are those the only pretty estates down there, or is it more explicitly a “Just like the good ol’ days” thing?
Honestly, the amount of weddings that happen at those places are primarily just normal weddings done in a pretty estate. There are very, very few people who go all out in the “good ol’ days” thing like you said. I think most folks just like them for being a big pretty country estate and the estates themselves have often turned them into wedding venues so they easily have what’s needed.
Legitimate question here. Is the objection against holding some kind of Dixie fantasy wedding at the plantations or just simply using them as wedding venues at all? And if the latter, where do we draw the line on thr use of historic structures that may have unsavory pasts? For example, plenty of structures in Germany built during the Third Reich are still in regular use. Examples include the Olympics stadiums in Berlin and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Thingstaett in Heidelberg, and the Luftwaffe HQ in Munich. The parade grounds in Nurnberg made famous in the Triumph of the Will regularly host sporting events- the high school of the former US Army base located here even used it as their football stadium.
The complaint here was specifically targeted at marketing of these venues as “romantic” or “quaint”. I gather the actual weddings can vary widely in their level of ante-bellum fetishization.
There hasn’t been decades of historical revision, white-washing, and denial around Nazi shit in Germany. Plantation aesthetics in particular are about romanticizing a period and lifestyle built on the backs of slavery, and deeply tied in with the Lost Cause mythos that reframes the Confederacy as noble victims instead of rebels dead set on perpetrating atrocity.
A lot of people like to say that slavery ended over 150 years ago like it’s a settled issue when it’s really an open wound that’s been continually picked at for over a century.
But there’s nothing wrong with my upcoming plantain wedding, right? I love plantains. Actually just one specific plantain.
If you want to experience the pain, fear and humiliation of chattel slavery on The Knot, just post in the forums that you’re going to get your save the dates printed rather than hire a calligrapher.Seriously, those guys are fucking nuts.
I’d rather see some nuance. If the place has actual historical significance, is owned by a trust or other preservation organization rather than descendants of the original owners, does not pander to neo-Confederates in their marketing, has invested in exhibits acknowledging the lives and contributions of the enslaved and has attempted to make amends by providing benefits for local descendants of the enslaved, then it’s fine to have a wedding there or visit.