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This Person Who Started A Wedding Hashtag Business Is Disgustingly Millennial

by Dec 01, 2016
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This Person Who Started A Wedding Hashtag Business Is Disgustingly Millennial

There’s always that awkwardness when you pause and look around wondering, “Wait, is this a joke?” You stand there, and you keep wondering. “No, seriously, guys – tell me, is this a joke?”

No one is likely to respond because 1) you’re not actually verbalizing it, and 2) it’s not a fucking joke.

When I read the headline, “There Is Now a Business for Custom Wedding Hashtags,” that all-too-familiar feeling washed over my body. I know people pay for a lot of dumb shit when it comes to weddings because weddings turn people into crazy people. Ice sculptures, lavish entrances, whatever it may be – if you can think of it, you can probably find someone who will extort you with an up-charge for your wedding day in hopes that you’re too overwhelmed to do a full audit of the charges.

And it turns out that the dumb shit you pay for doesn’t even have to be physical anymore as evidenced by this aforementioned wedding hashtag business. I want to think that this business is a joke, but The Cut’s write-up of it truly leaves nothing to the imagination which assures me that this is, in fact, a fucking thing.

Per The Cut:

Marielle Wakim, a Chicago native who’s now the arts and culture editor at Los Angeles magazine, has found a previously unclaimed niche of the bridal business: She recently launched Happily Ever Hashtagged to create custom wedding hashtags for a price. While automatic generators already exist (and that’s not even counting W Hotels’ $3,000 wedding social-media enforcer), Wakim’s personalized service appears to be the first of its kind.

There’s no ceiling on how unbearable this is about to become. Of course, this is the first of its kind – because anyone in their right mind wouldn’t think, “I should create a business solely based on my ability to come up with wedding hashtags.” Why, you ask? Because you’d get laughed out of the damn Shark Tank, that’s why. To quote every Shark in the history of Shark Tank, “There’s nothing proprietary about this business.”

I could legitimately sit on my couch in a pair of joggers rattling off hashtags for my newly engaged friends to no end, but I’m not going to charge them for it because I’m not a disastrous asshole.

After attending nearly 20 weddings over the past couple of years and being the go-to person asked to create hashtags for several of her friends, she realized this was something she could monetize. “This is either the best idea or the dumbest idea I’ve ever had,” Wakim jokes.

“Oh my God,” one of the bridesmaid’s said, “You’re the best at coming up with wedding hashtags!” And then it began.

“Congratulations on getting engaged,” she would say. “I’ll totally think of a wedding hashtag for you… I’m kind of the best at it.”

Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit. Marielle, allow me to give you some clarity – this is the dumbest idea you’ve ever had. In two months time, you’re going to secretly Google yourself and think, “Shit, I’m going to forever be known as the wedding hashtag girl.”

Each client submits their names, the tone of the hashtag they want — “Funny, Sentimental, Simple, Clever, Anything is fine because I’m desperate” — and a survey that lets her know a little bit more about them. Her rates are $40 for a single hashtag and $85 for a set of three that the couple can choose from; Wakim also provides hashtags for other occasions, like wedding showers and bachelorette parties. She says her clients so far have all been millennials.

“Anything is fine because I’m desperate” is so Marielle and so quirky. Love it. Just kidding, I hate it.

I need to see this client list. I want to call each of them up individually and grill them like Jack Byrnes grills Gaylord Focker. I want to ask them why they’re paying $30+ a pop for legitimately little to no work. Like, do you just Venmo this chick and she shoots you a text with one $40 hashtag that you have to use? And furthermore, the biggest assholes in this situation aren’t the wedding clients or even Marielle – they’re the people using hashtags for their wedding showers.

And of course the only clients she has are millennials. It’s because we’re all assholes who would rather spend $16 on a craft cocktail topped in fart froth rather than drink whiskey neat like they used to. I don’t see any 45-year-old dudes on their second marriage thinking to themselves, “We should call up that wedding hashtag chick.” Shit like that is why you get divorced in the first place.

When it comes to her creative process, Wakim credits magazine work — especially writing punny headlines — with preparing her for the job. “Generally where I start is with rhymes and idioms and seeing if there’s an idiom that already exists with their last name, or if their last name rhymes with something that can play with a fun idiom or a phrase,” she explains. Some notable examples include #MollyPicksUpTheTempo for the wedding of Molly Goldbach and Chad Tempo and #VanAndWife for Paige Thomas and Chad Van Norman.

Ahem, did I read that correctly? Creative process? What does that consist of? Putting your hand on your chin, looking up for five seconds, and typing it into a note on your iPhone?

Never mind the fact that the given hashtags aren’t very inspired. The most hilarious part of this entire write-up is the fact that both examples of the clients who used Marielle’s services are named “Chad,” the name with one of the worst reputations in the history of names next to Adolf and Fidel.

As for the sorts of hashtags in demand, “people are always looking for funny or clever,” Wakim says. “The No. 1 thing people ask me is, ‘Can you help me think of a clever hashtag?’” This makes sense: After all, it communicates a laid-back playfulness, as if the whole elaborate wedding came together with hardly any effort at all. Even if you did pay for the hashtag.

Oh, really? The number one thing people ask your wedding hashtag business is to help them think of a clever hashtag? No! Really? Man, that’s crazy. Who would’ve thought that a wedding hashtag business would receive inquiries asking for wedding hashtags. What a world we live in.

But just when I thought this couldn’t be filled with any more millennial garbage, the quote, “it communicates a laid-back playfulness, as if the whole elaborate wedding came together with hardly any effort at all. Even if you did pay for the hashtag” happened. And that, my friends, is the most millennial quote of them all.

[via The Cut]

Image via Shutterstock

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