I was thinking the other day that most of you don’t know how The Big Fat Indian Wedding works and why we do what we do.
The magazine started when I was having trouble finding inspiration for my upcoming wedding across the world in India. Sure, there were plenty of real wedding photographs, but no one discussed how Hindu/Jain/insert-religion-here weddings worked. What did you need to buy? What colors do the bride wear?
The list goes on an on. And so I started documenting my wedding and post-wedding craziness. The happiness, the shopping, the guilt, the OMG we had 60 people fly in from across the globe…just so much!
And, as of six months ago, I am working on the magazine full time. Yup full time! I wanted to take some time off from my full time job (as an online marketing and publishing leader) to pursuing the dream.
The dream of you, every bride to be, and family, a way to make wedding planning and shopping easier and less stressful.
So, how does the magazine work? Well, we are a 1.5 woman-man show. There’s me, who does the writing, curating photos, coming up with fab articles, seeking advertisers. There’s also my husband, who is a coding genius and is working on a couple very special treats to make the site better. He also ensures the site is easy to load and friendly. He’s the .5 man. After his day job, he comes home to fix any bugs and make updates to the site.
Bless his heart for being amazing!
How do you find the content?
A lot a lot of surfing on the web and talking to people on Twitter and Facebook. Have a question, never hesitate to ask!
What about making money?
We have invested some of our money to keep the magazine afloat but in reality it is thanks to the advertisers that keep the site running. Just like any other online magazine, we run a tight ship to balance what is possible and who is right to advertise.
Advertisers provide us the ability to continue operating. Just like Vogue wouldn’t be Vogue without their advertisers, the same goes for us.
* You should know that advertisers that join us aren’t just anyone. Even though we cannot guarantee 100% satisfaction with our advertisers, we do our best to pick the best in the industry.
* We do on occasion have promotional posts to feature businesses. The promotional posts are written and edited by us and are interviews with the founders of featured business. Promotional posts are ALWAYS disclosed as such to maintain transparency with you, the readers, and follow United States Federal Trade Commission laws.
* Some links we list on the site are affiliate links. That means, if you buy through the company, we make a commission. The listing of these products are chosen by us and promoted because we love them.
* We receive a lot of self-promotional emails from companies. We don’t work with many of them. Unless they can provide a useful service to you the readers and us the magazine, it is not right to promote a company who’s only self-interested in themselves. Besides, would you want a wedding planner that only cares about their reputation and not actually providing the service to get that reputation?
Long story short, we love our sponsors because they enable us to grow. But never to grow at the reader or the magazine’s expense. Quality is our priority.
Next week, I’ll touch base on how to be a great advertiser and what we look for.
As a reader, if you ever have an idea or question that you wouldn’t mind being disclosed on the blog, email or tweet us. We love to hear your thoughts!