Mammoth wedding-planning platforms the Knot and Pinterest both have announced plans to stop promoting wedding venues that romanticize former slave plantations, according to a report in BuzzFeed News.
This move will likely prompt both venues and planners/suppliers to review their own online presence to ensure they are not running afoul of these new policies.
“The Knot Worldwide, which owns the Knot and WeddingWire, is currently working on new guidelines to ensure wedding vendors on their websites don’t use language that glorifies, celebrates, or romanticizes Southern plantation history, chief marketing officer Dhanusha Sivajee told BuzzFeed News.
Although plantations will still be able to list themselves as venues, Sivajee said the new guidelines are meant to ensure that wedding vendors aren’t referring to a history that includes slavery using language such as “elegant" or “charming.”
“We want to make sure we’re serving all our couples and that they don’t feel in any way discriminated against,” she said.
Noting that the new language guidelines would apply to all wedding venues that list on the Knot websites, not just venues that market themselves as plantations, Sivajee added, "You can imagine there could be former plantations that maybe have changed their names to manors or farms."
A Pinterest spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company will restrict plantation wedding content on its website, and is working on de-indexing Google searches for plantation weddings on Pinterest”… Buzzfeed News
