The weirdly entertaining history behind wedding hashtags #Wedding trends#affiliate#social media#wedding hashtag Updated Feb 4 2021 (Posted Apr 10 2017) Guest post by Rachael Dickson This post features offbeat affiliates, meaning that if you buy something featured, you'll be financially supporting this site's mission of bringing awesomeness to readers everywhere. Wedding Hashtag Card from SpadeStationery I really, truly love puns to the bottom of my being. They're one of my favorite things. Because of this, I love the heck out of wedding hashtags and would love to have one for my wedding. In fact, the idea of getting to come up with a wedding hashtag about taking my partner's last name is so entertaining to me, that it's actually a point in favor of taking his name. But… my partner John? Not so much. The following conversation has actually happened: Me: "If anyone ever calls me 'Mrs. John LastName' I will divorce you on the spot." John: "If anyone uses a hashtag for our wedding, I will divorce you on the spot." Related Post Post your Instagram hashtag at your wedding reception Bobbie and Mario knew a ton of their guests would be using Instagram at their wedding, so they posted a little sign letting everyone know... Read more We were both kidding, but also were pretty serious about our strong objections to both things. So. There you go. I suppose we're not having a wedding hashtag. But as a classic overthinker, I wanted to learn everything about them anyway. The origins of hashtags The symbol itself, formally known as the Octothorpe, but also called a number sign or pound sign, dates back to ancient Roman times. A New Yorker article called, "The Ancient Roots of Punctuation" states that the story of the hashtag begins sometime around the fourteenth century with the introduction of the Latin abbreviation "lb," which eventually became mutated into the abstract #. The specific use of the symbol in a recognizable "hashtag" way is a lot older than you might think. A Lifewire article on the topic noted, "The metadata tags have been actually been around for quite some time, first being used in 1988 on a platform known as Internet Relay Chat or IRC. They were used much then as they are today, for grouping messages, images, content, and video into categories. The purpose of course, is so users can simply search hashtags and get all the relevant content associated with them." According to Lifewire, a resident of San Diego started using the hashtag #sandiegofire on Twitter (which launched July 15, 2006) to inform people about the ongoing wildfires in August 2007; other articles indicate that the first suggestion of # as a tracking tool to Twitter came from Chris Messina. This blog post by Stowe Boyd is believed to be the first one to actually coin the term "hashtag." I'll admit that I mostly use them sarcastically. You can now use hashtags to track or group posts on a common theme on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. I'll admit that I mostly use them sarcastically (as in my commonly used #blessed), but I do actually use them on my personal Instagram to track my ongoing photo chronicling of my nail polish collection via #naileditproject. Hashtag cookie cutter from Bakerlogy Here comes the wedding hashtag Buzzfeed attempted to track down the first people to use a wedding hashtag, and concluded from researching old twitter posts from June 2008 that it was a man named Jon Bohlinger. A few more mentions were made of the trend in 2008, then it started taking off more in 2009. A Pinterest spokesperson told them that there was a more than 800% increase in pins featuring "wedding hashtag" on their site between July 2014 and July 2015. I used this blog as an excuse to reach out to Ariel, the publisher of Offbeat Bride. She said she first started really seeing wedding hashtags back in 2013, first with Twitter, and then with Instagram. If you can't come up with your own brilliant hashtag, there are a million wedding hashtag generators out there now (according to weddinghashtagwall I could use #RachaelLovesJohn, #AdventuresofRJ, or my fave, #DicksonandLorenzenMerger, or ooo since we're both lawyers we could be #DicksonLorenzenLLP (BUT I WON'T BECAUSE JOHN IS A GRUMP). Someone even started a business creating custom wedding hashtags for couples… rumor has it they're really clever. Offbeat Bride has a fantastic article talking about ways to come up with more unique hashtags that incorporate those awesome puns I was talking about earlier. They really are a pretty powerful tool at this point for keeping track of photos and social media memories and for bringing a theme together. Several websites exist now to track hashtags and provide you with various analytics on them. I just used keyhole.co to search #weddinghashtag and got the following results for the past two weeks: 69 posts with 55 users using it, reaching 160 unique users. If you're keen on conglomerating your posts leading up to your wedding and all your guests' posts and pictures in one place, using a hashtag and a service like this would help you pull from all the various websites your guests might post on. Happy hashtagging, all of you marrying non-grumps! Related Post We're your free wedding hashtag generator. #Go! Wedding hashtags: they're not just for hipsters. Having your own hashtag is one of the easiest ways to not only collect extra photos from your guests, but also to share… Read More Rachael Dickson Rachael Dickson is a trademark examining attorney for the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She enjoys acting with the mostly Shakespearean, Northern Virginia-based troupe known as The Britches and Hose. PREVIOUS All the wedding signs you never even knew you needed NEXT An homage to San Francisco with Chinese traditions (like lion dancers!) Show/Hide comments [ 7 ] Sorry about inventing this. Reply Haha, no need to apologize! I love your invention! Reply My daughter is marrying a man with the last name of Stoner. Her hashtag on the invites said #LetsBeStoners. Needless to say, some of the older generation was not impressed! 🙂 Reply This delights me SO MUCH. I actually used to contract as an attorney for a medical cannabis company, so I've really heard every stoner or weed related joke out there- multiple times! Reply Your daughter and her fiance rock! That is too hilarious. Reply Ah, I remember IRC! Back before hashtags were 'socialized'. Who knew it would lead to this? I tried for weeks to come up with something punny for our hashtag (what wasn't already used) before I gave up and capitalized on the fact that our initials and B and S. 🙂 Thanks for posting this- I'll be curious to see if wedding hashtags morph into something else in the coming years. Reply One other word history missing: the symbol is also known as a hash! Hence the name hashtag (i.e. a tag beside a hash mark). Maybe it was just too obvious to write? Reply Join the conversation Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Sign me up for your offbeat awesomeness newsletter! No-drama comment policy Part of what makes the Offbeat Empire different is our commitment to civil, constructive commenting. Make sure you're familiar with our no-drama comment policy. 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My daughter is marrying a man with the last name of Stoner. Her hashtag on the invites said #LetsBeStoners. Needless to say, some of the older generation was not impressed! 🙂 Reply
This delights me SO MUCH. I actually used to contract as an attorney for a medical cannabis company, so I've really heard every stoner or weed related joke out there- multiple times! Reply
Ah, I remember IRC! Back before hashtags were 'socialized'. Who knew it would lead to this? I tried for weeks to come up with something punny for our hashtag (what wasn't already used) before I gave up and capitalized on the fact that our initials and B and S. 🙂 Thanks for posting this- I'll be curious to see if wedding hashtags morph into something else in the coming years. Reply
One other word history missing: the symbol is also known as a hash! Hence the name hashtag (i.e. a tag beside a hash mark). Maybe it was just too obvious to write? Reply