Muddy Waters on The Knot Boards

Written Dec. 18, and not posted until Feb. 13 for reasons you'll understand below!

Planet Sick of Wedding Planning. Population: Me.

Avoid using the woman we did for invites if you'll ever need wedding invitations down the road. Ask me for her name so that you can steer clear! I'm not going to include it here because she'll probably find this post and threaten me like she did after I posted questions and a complaint about her services on The Knot boards. Apparently, those boards are actually a big deal and are crawling with wedding vendors checking out what is said about them. Craaazyyy, although, I suppose understandable. Unexpected all the same.

There were quite a few errors on the proof that I, the perfectionist editor, felt should have been caught before sending us a "final" version. It is a beautiful invite, but I'd like to see the text centered, typos corrected, etc when it arrives as a "final." Another proof costs money with our vendor. Brides who have ordered from other places tell me their proof arrived in perfect or near-perfect form. So I posted casually (it's a message board!) using words like "crappy" and "shady." Adequate words of that sort. She treated the post like it was written in the Tribune and started quoting it as slander. Ummm? Just when you thing the Web is safe kids, some friend or favorite customer of the person you wrote about lets them know and makes your life hell. Over wedding invitations. I stand by my "shady" comment.

If you're a bride-to-be now or in the future, don't post anything on those boards unless it's totally neutral. Apparently, it's not actually an anonymous community. For a lot of local and small vendors, it's a serious marketing tool. They'll track you down...