I stood there in front of a desk not unlike most any other you’d find in a typical New York workspace, except that on this particular occasion, I was inside The Knot, the largest wedding media company in the world. I watched the cursor dart from point to point and folder to folder. In front of me was Rebecca Crumley, the weddings photo director, explaining the ins and outs of upcoming trends, shifts in the industry, and a myriad of keen observations that were mentioned so casually you’d barely notice, were it not simply for the fact that there were so many of them. All the while a single question kept ringing in my head. “Does anyone know more about weddings than Rebecca Crumley?”
The Knot headquarters occupies the fifth floor of a building located at the southernmost edge of SoHo, almost bordering Chinatown. Purposefully adorned with a spartan decor, it is a large loft space that is quiet, yet effused with a sense of activity and purpose, as evidenced by the layouts on the walls, the stacks of papers scattered about, and a general sense that people are simply up to things. When I was there, I could see syncopated pop of flashes firing from a photoshoot just around the corner.
In my mind, someone in Rebecca’s position is supposed to be unapproachable and intimidating. Distant. And maybe even a little bit scary. She is none of these things. In fact, she is ridiculously accessible. When I, no doubt one of God-knows-how-many photographers, email her, she responds almost instantly every single time. As if it the Internet were wired straight into her brain. She has a warm laugh that is both comforting and calming, and her caramel-colored hair coupled with girl-next-door looks, make her as approachable as she is accessible. It’s hard not to like her.
Before working at The Knot, she graduated with a degree in photography, and she hales from Richmond, Virginia, where her family still lives. She is a curator, bringing together a diverse and disparate landscape of wedding culture and trends from across the country into the focused, digestible vision we know as The Knot.
At first blush, it might seem a surprising contention that Rebecca is the most knowledgeable wedding insider. She is so kind and unassuming that it is the last thing you think of when you speak with her. Usually, what comes to mind are the rockstar planners or wedding celebrities. Maybe an industry mover. You think of names like Preston Bailey, David Tutera, and Colin Cowie. And I can almost picture Rebecca’s face reading all of this. She is, no doubt, too modest to agree. But it’s not a far stretch in my mind. She has the unique position of being able to see the industry from a 10,000 foot view as the representative of a broad and deep brand, while still having direct access to the trenches.
Being in New York, I asked her over Thai food where she would get married if she were to do so in the City. She paused briefly to consider it. What became clear to me as she rummaged through some seven years of mental storage is that she wasn’t just thinking about lists of locations and places. She was retrieving visuals for each venue, evidenced when she talked about their look and feel. Then it hit me. She had that exact same information for every major region in America. That’s no mean feat.
Rebecca houses a visual inventory in her mind of venues and locations across the country, most of which she’s never even been to. Where I, for example, maintain narrowly-focused information about great nooks for a shoot, angles with nice lighting, or trends among upper-middle to high income couples in New York based on a few hundred weddings, her knowledge is substantially broader. She receives submissions from photographers and couples from coast to coast. She can cite trends in the photography world and trace their point of origin. She is aware not just of who’s who, but who is up to what and where.
A top planner’s job is to stay on top of industry trends and to know what’s around the bend, but their demographic is heavily skewed both geographically and financially. Rebecca, on the other hand, receives information about weddings of all sizes, budgets, religions, and ethnicities with details about planners, florists, bands, videographers, and stylists. To boot, it is not only her job to cull this information, but to do so in the context of new trends about colors, styles, and activities. That amount of information is breathtaking.
Physically, this information is stored through a remarkable system of color coding, file management, and naming conventions at The Knot, allowing Rebecca to access and sift through all of it. She is organized if nothing else. But for all this, what stands out is just how down to earth she is. She is a person who enjoys walking to work from her apartment in Williamsburg to the office in the Knot when the weather permits, a walk of about 3 miles. She had just finished a half-marathon the day I met with her. And she simply cares about and enjoys her job in a way that is truly personal. You’ll find her judging competitions, providing portfolio reviews, and keeping abreast of industry developments, and she loves working with photographers. She even shoots a couple weddings herself each year. She is exactly what I’d hope someone her position would be – open and frank with deep knowledge and the kindness to share it with those who ask.
If you’ve wondered what it takes to appear in the Knot, speaking with her made two things clear to me. First, the company cares a lot about what goes into the magazine, taking substantial time and effort to select weddings that provide valuable information to their brides. And second, a lot of photographers shoot themselves in the foot, taking and submitting the wrong images for review. A few points she mentioned as we talked:
1. You want to think like bride and not a photographer
Submitting 40 images with 35 shots of the couple does the reader no good. The goal is to show the types of details someone planning their wedding would be interested in and not images that show off the skill of the photographer.
2. Each photo has to have something to say.
It should be apparent why they were submitted. That means clean backgrounds and well-taken images of interesting aspects of the wedding, and, especially the details. It also means photographers should take the time to really make the pictures perfect. Get rid of the crease in the linens or the distracting leaf dipping into the shot. Having both horizontal and vertical images can make layout easier to work with.
3. The pictures should work together.
They won’t be shown individually, so pay attention to palette, consistency, and the overall feel of all the images as they’d appear in a layout.
You can see the submission guidelines for The Knot at
www.theknotinc.com/weddingsubmit.
I also found a great article from Jasmine Star. Be sure to check it out!
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