Weddingbee Blog

This might seem like an odd thing for someone who writes for a popular public blog to say: but I am a very private person.

We Mary Janes take our privacy very seriously. If you were to Google Mr. Mary Jane’s first and last names, you’d find zero results. No Facebook, no Classmates.com, no Linked-In, nothing. Impressive, no? (He does have a unique name, so he is the only one.) When he does find something, he emails the company and firmly requests that they remove his name and info. I’m not quite that diligent, but I do try to keep my personal information’s availability to a minimum. In fact, I almost didn’t become a bee because I was uncertain about publicly posting photos of my face. (I don’t do that on my personal blog.)

I’m sure there are readers among you who have figured out my first name, possibly last. Maybe you’ve found my personal blog. Maybe you know my wedding date. Maybe you know a lot more. (Please don’t post any dirt you may have on me in the comments. This isn’t a challenge or a request to know how much you know - I’m just making a statement.)

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By now you’re wondering: how is this post wedding-related? Well, first of all, in case you haven’t noticed, our wedding’s pretty private. The picnic isn’t, but it’s not our party, it’s a party graciously being thrown for us. One thing Mr. Mary Jane has been especially concerned about is the photo we attached to our invitations. He really does not want an engagement- or wedding announcement published to any local or regional newspapers, and this photo would be perfect to use for such a thing. So we took a drastic measure: we ran each of the 4×4 photos through our printer, back-side-up. On them we wrote the following statement:

Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. This photograph is not to be reproduced or published without explicit permission. Permission may only be obtained by calling (555) 555-1234.

The [actual] phone number redirects to me. I am the photographer (er, my dad is, with my camera), so I can do that. The ink ran a little bit after printing, so Mr. Mary Jane took the initiative to burn it in with a hairdryer. Now that’s devotion to privacy. Will it work? Time will tell. Newspapers around here are pretty lax about that sort of thing. But we do snicker at the thought of a sneaky aunt or grandma trying unsuccessfully to have our picture published.

While Mr. Mary Jane’s been stressing about the photo, my main concern has been the invitation itself. I have blurred a lot of the information before sharing it on the internet. But the actual invitation suites contain:

• Our first and last names.
• Mr. MJ’s parents’ whole names and address (and directions to get there).
• Our city of residence.
• What we do.
• Where we work.
• Where we go to school.
• The dates of our wedding and the picnic.
• And much more.

Obviously we want our guests to have this information. But what about anyone else?

As a rule, Mr. Mary Jane and I shred every piece of mail that has our names on it. Any envelope, any bill, any ad for 0% balance transfers, any pizza coupon. If it’s a package, we tear the label off and shred that. And when we finished working on our invitations, I shredded all of the left-over cards, mock-ups, and any other scrap that had any of our information on it. We’re not just paranoid: check out this list. It’s a little old, but it says that in 2007 Grand Forks is the 8th most common city for identity theft in the country. And to make matters worse, three of the top ten cities are in North Dakota. Seems pretty crazy, considering that the state of North Dakota has less total population than many medium U.S. cities (such as Baltimore or El Paso).

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I’m not going to kid myself and naively assume that our guests will be hanging on to our invitations forever. I certainly don’t do this. But I do try to treat anyone else’s information with the same respect that I treat ours. When a baby shower, bachelorette party, or wedding has passed, I shred the contents. I shred the envelope it came in too. Do I think for one minute that all of our guests will do the same? Nope. And there’s not anything we can do about it. I briefly considered adding a little statement basically saying “If you’re not going to keep it, shred or burn it,” but decided it sounded a little too Mission-Impossible-ly. (Trust me though: implementing a self-destruct option did cross my mind!!)

Of course the invitations do not contain our phone number, our social security numbers or any passwords, etc. But the less information of ours floating around in a landfill or recycling center, the better. This is just something we have to let go. Just like the photo: there’s a good chance the newspaper (if one is approached) won’t even glance at the back of the photo. We’ve considered calling the newspapers and asking them personally not to publish us, but as of yet we have not done so. Like the shredding: we just have to let it go.

Are you concerned about your personal information’s availability to others? What do you do with others’ invitations (and other paper products) once the event has passed?