In light of recent events, we at Arkansas Bride magazine feel it is important to remind our loyal readers and advertisers, and the new brides just now finding us as they begin their wedding journey, that we do not support nor promote wedding vendors who partake in dishonest and unethical practices.
We strive to produce a magazine twice a year that is filled with hundreds of vendors for Arkansas brides to choose from, but what I don’t think many people realize is that there are more vendors in Arkansas that we don’t list or feature in photos.
This is partly because, after 20 years of being the magazine that Arkansas brides rely on to plan their weddings, we’ve heard a lot of bad things about certain vendors’ customer service practices, lack of quality in services provided, and we’ve heard about major scams, or worse. It’s these vendors who we try and weed out of our resources –of course, always trying to verify complaints’ accuracy before judiciously taking them out of our databases. (It’s also partly because some of our lists are advertiser-only or we’re still creating new categories that don’t yet exist in the magazine or on our website).
Recently, there has been news of venues closing on brides without any notice. For instance, brides finding out just months before their weddings that their venues have closed for good—their deposits and rental fees gone. We’ve heard about photographers skipping town with brides’ money or never giving brides their photos. And, as most of you have heard by now, we’ve fallen victim to a photographer submitting photos to us that weren’t theirs to submit.
It is because of situations like these that we have to stop using and featuring those vendors permanently.
To photographers and vendors: We’ve set our standards high for our brides and only expose them to those of you who are striving to do things the right way. We owe it to you and to them to only feature the work of reputable businesses, and to only partner with and support those vendors/advertisers who operate ethically and treat their brides right.
To our brides: For those of you who want us to feature your photos in our magazine or on our blog, we recommend using those photographers with whom we have established a trusting, professional relationship— those whose photos you see within our pages each issue and on the blog regularly. We’ve worked hard to build these relationships and are proud of the work these photographer do. We caution you from using photographers who have been dishonest, because we can’t publish those photos anymore–ever.
To new photographers: Just because you’re new doesn’t mean we don’t trust you. We are always building new contacts with the new photographers popping up in Arkansas. There are so many talented folks in the state, shooting beautiful images. We may not have featured them yet, but we can’t wait to.
Same goes with new wedding vendors; let’s get to know each other!
In closing, I ask all of our brides and vendors to continue to keep us in the know about vendors who have mistreated you or operated unethically in any way. We promise to look into it and help however we can.
And to all our wonderful brides, advertisers and wedding vendor friends, we so appreciate you. Thanks for reading and letting us be a part of your wedding experiences. It’s the best part of the job.
Onward and upward,
Lindsay Irvin, editor
Lindsay@ArkansasBride.com
