What would it take to make you tie the knot?

Free pizza wedding catering? A complimentary honeymoon? Or would you race other hopeful couples across London in full wedding attire for the chance of a paid-for wedding?

Those are just a few of the incentives dangled in front of would be brides and grooms to create a PR splash in exchange for companies to pick up the not insubstantial bill for their big day. And by ‘not insubstantial’ I mean substantial.

According to a survey of more than 2,800 couples conducted by Hitched, the UK’s no.1 digital wedding planner, the average total cost of a wedding in 2019 was £31,974.

#INSICKNESSANDINHEALTH

If that doesn’t cause you to choke on your wedding vows, try this from Hotels.com, who offered the honeymoon of a lifetime to couples prepared to give them a plug during their actual wedding vows. The couples simply had to ask a wedding guest to film their vows during their wedding ceremony. The newly-weds would then upload the video to Twitter or Instagram tagging #HotelsSponConVows.

The promotion was activated via ad-spots in a U.S TV adaptation of ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ on Hulu. How lovely.

LET THEM EAT JAFFA CAKES

With just a few weeks to go before their big day, Tristan and Maria still had no wedding cake. After putting out a post mentioning their love of McVitie’s little orange jam filled sponge cakes, the company offered to construct a huge three tier cake from around 1000 Jaffa Cakes, designed by Paul Courtney, who created Prince William’s ‘Groom Cake’ for his 2011 royal wedding to Kate Middleton.

THE BRIDE WORE PEPPERONI

This PR stunt features a unique pizza themed bridal competition from pizza brand Chicago Town, where the ‘lucky’ winner gets a bridal package including a pepperoni wedding dress, a bouquet of dough balls, a honeymoon in Chicago and a six-tier pizza wedding cake. (Yeah, and the wedding car was a sausage rolls…)

A MARRIAGE MADE IN BURGER KING

Joel and Ashley were childhood sweethearts from Illinois, USA. They’d known each other since kindergarten, been together since fifth grade and planned to get married in July. What made this a perfect opportunity for a Burger King PR splash? Simply the fact that Joel’s surname was Burger, and Ashley’s was King.

Burger King swallowed the bill for the entire wedding – presumably after asking to scrutinize the couple’s birth certificates.

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE?

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