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Together forever, with a Web site to prove it |
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Written by asap
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Monday, 24 July 2006 |
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Brandon Rusk and Andi Martinez live together in Denver. But when they decided to get married, they wanted to live together on the Internet as well.
And so AndiAndBrandon.com was born. It has details about their relationship and wedding, right down to the story of their union. Once the knot is tied, they said, it will become a chronicle of their happy lives.
“I think we’re pretty proud of what we have,” Rusk said. “I think the point almost is that we want people to see it.”
At a time in which personal value may be measured online -- as people obsessively Google themselves or tally friends on MySpace -- its perhaps inevitable that love requires digital consummation.
The sites are easy to find: Attach just about any two common names, slap a dot-com on the end and you’ve got an adoring couple in the mood to share. They offer up sappy declarations of love, giddy retellings of how they met and, of course, oodles of baby pictures.
“You know how people force people to see baby pictures?” said northern Virginia resident Ken Fischer, who shares SueAndKen.com with his wife, Sue. “I figured this way, if they’re really interested, I don’t have to force them. They just look.”
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BEYOND THE WEDDING
The Fischers also offer favorite recipes and poetry, and videos of their son just seconds after birth. But like many sites, theirs began life as a wedding announcement.
Wedding sites are becoming increasingly popular, according to Sasha Souza, a wedding planner in Napa, Calif. They first originated as ways for couples to better organize destination weddings, providing guests with travel information and registry details.
But soon enough, the idea caught on with everyone.
“It’s one of those things,” Souza said. “People inherently want to talk about their wedding. People want to talk about it, they want to share every last detail of it.”
Couples are now sharing in spades, according to companies that design custom wedding sites. Business doubles every year at WeddingWindow.com, according to President Amy Ruocco. It’s also brisk at eWedding.com, according to President Matthew Kelly.
Most couples ditch their sites after the wedding is over, Ruocco and Kelly said. But for those who keep them, it becomes a lovey-dovey hub, frequently filled with Hallmark-esque lines like JohnAndKate.coms’ “You are the greatest gift I could ever hope or dream for and your heart inspires me daily.”
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WHO LOVES YOU, BABY?
Not everyone gazes lovingly back.
“There’s a repellant quality to it,” said author Sasha Cagen, “because you’re so happy together in your little bubble, so right, just go, you don’t need the rest of us.”
Cagen is the author of “Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics,” which became a rallying point for satisfied singles. To her, these Web sites are like outposts from “the tyranny of coupledom,” a condition she describes as couples celebrating their relationship over all others.
She’s not anti-relationship, she said, but she’s certainly anti-that.
But some couples said they have a less romantic, self-involved reason for launching their sites. They’re just satiating nagging family and friends.
That’s why Jillian Workinger and her boyfriend John Williams started JillAndJohn.com. The Smyrna, Ga., couple is having a baby, and are trying to cope with everyone’s curiosity.
“It was a way for them to keep track of the goings on without us having to make 50 phone calls after every doctor’s appointment or after anything new happened, like the baby kicked,” Workinger said.
Couples said they’re surprised at how closely friends and family follow their lives. The sites become little love beacons, sending out assurances that all is well.
If they don’t update often enough, some said, people get worried.
“Our grandmas get concerned if we go to long without posting,” said Denver resident Josh Pigford, who shares AshleyAndJosh.com with his wife, Ashley. “I know for a fact that my grandmother checks the site every single day to see if we’ve posted anything.”
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SENDING A MESSAGE
Online lovefests aren’t just for straight couples, of course. Take DavidAndPatrick.com, home of David Gibson and Patrick Wright of Oklahoma City, which has pictures of their non-legally-binding wedding at an Oklahoma Unitarian Church.
Gibson said their site is just like any other, keeping friends and family updated on their doings. But as a gay couple in a state not always welcoming to different lifestyles, he said, he also launched it to set an example.
“I don’t intend to convert the religious right, and I don’t expect to,” he said. “But it’s there in case somebody stumbles across it. I would hope they see something that is very comfortable, familiar, healthy, happy and whatnot.”
Other couples try hard not to be too sentimental.
Rusk and Martinez, of AndiAndBrandon.com, said they noticed how tacky some couples sites are, and made sure theirs better reflected their goofiness. On one page, after relaying the story of how they lost touch, reconnected and fell in love, they posted a picture of Rusk on the toilet, with an epithet written next to it.
At KevinAndJo.com, Hapeville, Ga., residents Kevin and Jo Hodges kept a diary from the perspective of their dog, Mr. Banks. They even set up an e-mail address for him, which Kevin said gets a surprising amount of mail from friends and strangers asking what’s happening at the Hodges household.
Kevin always writes back -- as the dog.
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asap contributor Jason Feifer is a freelance writer.
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