How Fakery in the Wedding Industry Could Affect YOU (and How to Make Sure It Doesn’t)

How fak­ery in the wed­ding indus­try could affect your big day

From buy­ing some­thing that falls apart, to get­ting a call from a designer who’s seen your wed­ding pho­tos online and claims you’ve stolen ideas… what copy­right means for you:

Fakes and copy­right — what does it mean?

Legal def­i­n­i­tions aside, for me fakes and copy­right are about the same thing: they’re a moral issue. Any designer or per­son who sees some­thing online and chooses to make an almost exact copy is steal­ing. Yes, it’s a per­sonal def­i­n­i­tion — but I see copy­right in black and white.

How fake sup­pli­ers can spoil your wedding

Are you happy buy­ing knock-offs? When you’re out shop­ping do you buy from Deben­hams or your local mar­ket? If you need a new watch do you buy in a store or watch out for a guy down the mar­ket with a suit­case full of Rolexes?

The point is that if you buy an authen­tic item; whether it’s a watch, a wed­ding dress or a hand­made invi­ta­tion, you can expect a cer­tain qual­ity. Bits won’t fall off. Your money is going to some­one hon­est. No sweat­shops are involved in the pro­duc­tion. When some­thing does go wrong, cus­tomer ser­vice will be there to help you. It’s about integrity and trust.

The expe­ri­enced sta­tionery design­ers at Olivia Samuel told me, “We had our Clas­sic Script Black & White image nicked from our site… The actual descrip­tion of the card showed it was printed, not foiled, dif­fer­ent dimen­sions and cus­tomer assem­bly required so cus­tomers were get­ting noth­ing like the image.”

Lovely Nikki from Tick­led Pink Sta­tionery gave another exam­ple of how brides could be affected by cheats: “Some­one ordered a sam­ple and then pho­tographed it and added it to their col­lec­tion. It didn’t even fit with their house style, so I’ve no idea how they’d have dealt with it if they had received an order.”

If you see some­thing online which you’d love to have for your wed­ding but just can’t afford, would you look for a sim­i­lar alter­na­tive, or the same thing at bar­gain base­ment prices? I’ve seen almost-identical copies of applique hair acces­sories on the inter­net: the orig­i­nal hand­made pieces were expen­sive, which is under­stand­able for intri­cate designs which take hours to per­fect on the draw­ing board and just as long to create.

I hear alarm bells when items like this appear on cheap reseller sites for just a few pounds or dol­lars… if I sus­pect for even a sec­ond that sweat­shops and child labor are involved in the pro­duc­tion of a wed­ding acces­sory then I won’t go near it. Would you?

Award win­ning UK designer Har­riet (of By Har­riet) told me “There are many truly tal­ented designer arti­sans sink­ing against Chi­nese import assem­blers who the cus­tomers believe are offer­ing the same types of prod­ucts. It makes it nigh on impos­si­ble for true “arti­san” mak­ers to com­pete when brides don’t know the dif­fer­ence” This con­vinces me that price has to be the best indi­ca­tor of authenticity.

Some of my friends who are wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers have their own sto­ries to tell. Lazy pho­tog­ra­phers try­ing to make a quick profit will steal oth­ers’ images for their own web­sites, giv­ing cou­ples the impres­sion they’re miles bet­ter than they really are! This is why wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy blogs are a real bless­ing for brides and grooms to see lots of their photographer’s wed­ding work.

Joanne (Joanne Gower Pho­tog­ra­phy) told me, “I have recently come across instances where pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers have had their work down­loaded from the inter­net by indi­vid­u­als who then pass this work off as their own, load­ing up onto their own web­sites and tak­ing book­ings on the back of it! Their clients are head­ing for major dis­ap­point­ment.”

My friend and wed­ding blog spon­sor Fiona Camp­bell has also had images stolen, by some­one claim­ing to be a “police offi­cer” in the US. “He stole sev­eral from me and a few other promi­nent British pho­tog­ra­phers. Some­one noticed and alerted me, thank good­ness. We then con­tacted google and got the web­site taken down and reported him to the US police. What was so hideous about it was that he was using our images to give cre­dence to his own site, which fea­tured some dis­turb­ing images of teenage girls in their under­wear. I have now had to start to water­mark my images for that rea­son, but ulti­mately if some­one wants to steal your images, they will. I think that’s why it’s really impor­tant to meet your wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher in advance.”

What about mak­ing your own? Can a bride copy a design online?

Over the last ten years I’ve seen a huge shift from cou­ples buy­ing from craft busi­nesses (sta­tionery, jew­ellery, table dec­o­ra­tions) to a love of wed­ding DIY. The more cre­ative you are as a cou­ple, the less of an issue this can be.

My views on ‘copy­ing’ for the DIY bride and groom

1. It’s fine to browse wed­ding fairs, get gen­eral ideas and then design your own invites or jew­ellery based roughly on what you’ve seen
2. It’s fine to make Pin­ter­est boards of invi­ta­tions, jew­ellery etc. as inspi­ra­tion for your wed­ding DIY if you pin images from sites which encour­age pin­ning and if you credit the design­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers wher­ever possible
3. It’s wrong to recre­ate an invi­ta­tion or piece of jew­ellery by refer­ring to an image you’ve found online.
4. It’s bor­ing to copy a design — cre­ative cou­ples enjoy wed­ding DIY because it’s a way to per­son­alise things: use your own imag­i­na­tions and work together to design some­thing brand new which rep­re­sents you as a couple!

There could poten­tially be con­se­quences for you if you are found to have copied a design you find online. I once blogged a lovely wed­ding on the Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog, where the bride told me she’d made her own sta­tionery. A friend of mine in the indus­try emailed me on the day the post was pub­lished, to let me know the bride in ques­tion had ordered a sam­ple from her and then copied the design. I removed the feature.

Another friend of mine, Zoe from Bunny Deli­cious had her wed­ding sta­tionery copied by a ‘DIY’ bride. Zoe’s style is dis­tinc­tive and instantly recog­nis­able. When the wed­ding appeared on a top UK wed­ding blog Zoe spot­ted that her designs had been copied and had to ask for the fea­ture to be removed.

Even if you have no plans for your big day to appear on a wed­ding blog, your pho­tog­ra­pher may choose to blog the day on their own web­site (and as they own the copy­right for their images, they are enti­tled to do this). There’s then a good chance that other sup­pli­ers will notice very quickly if you’ve recre­ated a design for which they own the copy­right. You may even be threat­ened with legal action.

But isn’t fak­ery and copy­right infringe­ment impos­si­ble to avoid these days?

We all use the inter­net for wed­ding inspi­ra­tion from blogs, Pin­ter­est, mag­a­zines’ web­sites and find­ing sup­pli­ers online. There are so many images online and so many designs and options avail­able that surely sim­i­lar­ity is unavoidable…

Sim­i­lar­ity is one thing. When sim­i­lar­ity becomes spooky it’s cheat­ing, copy­ing and fak­ery. Details like lay­outs, fonts, match­ing colours and iden­ti­cal mate­ri­als are key to being able to spot a copy.

An exam­ple of how bad this can be comes from my friend Julie at Ice Maiden Cakes: “Another cake maker copied my design so pre­cisely she even repli­cated an error I had made which was rec­ti­fied after I took the photo.… what really annoyed me about this par­tic­u­lar case is the fact that she entered the design in to a com­pe­ti­tion and won two prizes with it.”

More signs to warn you you’re deal­ing with a faker!

• Cheap-looking, poorly designed web­sites (real design­ers care about their brand image). Lisa from top mar­quee sup­plier County Mar­quees told me their web­site text is often copied by lazy design­ers — but she added, “One thing that hap­pens some­times which makes up for it is that peo­ple for­get to remove the links. So they end up link­ing to us from within their text. I really love that.”
• Mis­takes in web­site copy or very generic-sounding text (good design­ers write with passion)
• ebay — a con­tentious point, but while I’m sure there are gen­uine sup­pli­ers on ebay I’ve heard sto­ries of occa­sional fak­ers on there. Wed­ding dress from China, any­one? (Read the com­ments to that post!)
• Lack of response when you email or call with a query. Buy from some­one you can trust: they’ll be pre­pared to offer hon­est help and advice when you ask for it!

How to pro­tect your­self from fak­ers and copy­right cheats

1. Trust your instincts!
2. Ask to see more: sev­eral wed­ding albums from one pho­tog­ra­pher, or pho­tos of a match­ing bou­quet, but­ton­holes and cen­tre­pieces from a florist.
3. Under­stand the design process — has the item you love been blogged by the designer?
4. Ask for sam­ples. What looks fab online should look even bet­ter in real life!
5. Com­mu­ni­cate. Call, email or meet your sup­pli­ers and avoid face­less trans­ac­tions for things that mat­ter to you
6. Rep­u­ta­tion: look for online reviews and also see who your cho­sen sup­plier inter­acts with on face­book and twit­ter. Are they pro­fes­sional? Pleas­ant? An expert in their field?
7. Exper­tise is impor­tant. Blog posts explain­ing tech­niques and offer­ing tips to new cre­atives are a great indi­ca­tor of some­one with expe­ri­ence and exper­tise — what’s on your supplier’s blog?

Amanda from the award win­ning Dis­tinctly Flo­ral gave me this advice: “I have had sev­eral instances where wed­ding cou­ples have shown me my own images as taken from other web­sites; they asked if we could do sim­i­lar and in one instance refused to believe that the work was ours as it was on another web­site (we had to show them the whole wed­ding on our iPad before they believed us!). Whilst I know there are very few truly unique ideas, we take great pride and a lot of time design­ing and refin­ing our work for our clients. We, and they, want a unique and spe­cial day and hence copy­ing some­one else’s idea just isn’t on our agenda.”

Copy­right in the wed­ding indus­try — a case study

In all my research on this sub­ject, the most shock­ing tale I came across was from Natalie O’Donovan Ryan, wed­ding sta­tionery designer at 2 by 2 Cre­ative. Natalie’s story gives a real insight into how a faker works.

Inspi­ra­tion or copy­right infringement?

Do read the arti­cle and ask your­self after­wards, would you rather buy from Natalie, or from Mr X? Because per­son­ally I wouldn’t give him the time of day.

Some final words for those busi­nesses who steal designs and harm the lovely busi­nesses I love to support:

Andrew (Wed­ding Pho­tog­ra­pher Cam­bridge) com­mented that the sit­u­a­tion is “Shock­ing, but in a way these peo­ple aren’t a threat to anyone’s busi­ness — they have no imag­i­na­tion, cre­ativ­ity or orig­i­nal­ity of their own and will floun­der in the long run. Mean­while the real cre­atives will be spurred on to greater “out of the box” think­ing as was men­tioned above, and will thrive. BTW I think there’s a lot more fak­ery in the wed­ding indus­try than this, which is bad enough, but the tip of an ice­berg that is the epit­ome of design over sub­stance.”

And my favorite quote comes from Cakes by Beth — whose designs are divine, cre­ative and as fas­ci­nat­ing as they are beau­ti­ful: “When my web­site was copied, it was the push we needed to come up with some­thing bet­ter. I emailed the lady con­cerned, who agreed to change some things but denied copy­ing and wouldn’t change oth­ers, so I coined the phrase “If Mohammed won’t change, then let’s redesign the moun­tain”. It took us a while but it was so worth it!”

 I had so many replies to my orig­i­nal post on face­book about fak­ery in the wed­ding indus­try that I can’t quote every sin­gle one, but I’d like to thank every­one who shared their thoughts with me. Do read this Face­book dis­cus­sion thread for more exam­ples, and as I men­tioned at the begin­ning of the arti­cle I’d love to hear what you think if you have a minute to com­ment here!

Claire x