2009 Reader Survey results

Last month I invited y'all to tell me a bit about yourselves via my first ever Reader Survey. Close to 2000 of you took the time to answer my questions — THANK YOU! The exercise was truly enlightening on many levels, and I figured I'd take the time to share some of the results with you all…

Gender & Age
Perhaps unsurprisingly, 98% of you are women. Offbeat dudes: I salute you! Age-wise, half of you are between 24-27, although my readers range from 16 to 60. Bonus points to the reader who identified themselves as 23.75 years old. Way to be precise!

Location
Most of you are urban, with 70% reporting they live in large or small cities. 76% of you are from the US, 8% from Canada, 5% from Australia, and 5% from the UK. Breaking down that vast majority that's in the US, it looks like a fourth of you are West Coast and the rest of you are scattered across the country with bubbles in NY, MA, and TX.

Identities
While over half of you are actively planning your weddings, a surprising number of you are hoping to become engaged (14%) or already married (13%). 5% of you identify as gay, lesbian, transgendered or otherwise queer. (On a related subject, I got feedback from several readers who feel offbeat bride is, as one respondent put it, “too much over the top on Gay subjects.” As someone who has a gay mother AND mother-in-law, lesbian weddings are deeply important to me and y'all can expect I'll continue to be “over the top” in my coverage.)

What you want more of
I asked y'all what you wanted more of, and everyone seems to want more wedding porn and bride profiles. I'm working on it! I also got a lot of feedback that people want more content relevant to their specific region. Just to let you all know that, while I'm very clear that OBB is NOT a wedding directory, I am exploring options for how I could integrate regional vendor listings.

For folks outside the US, y'all wanted more international content. Given that over three-fourths of my readers are in America, I'm American, and my book was published by an American publisher, I'm afraid that I can't promise that the site is ever going to become hugely international — although I've always featured weddings in Canada, the UK, Australia and even South Africa, and will continue to do so.

I also got a lot of feedback that y'all want more content for grooms and more DIY coverage, both of which I'm definitely going to work to integrate!

Social Networking & Media
So, I work in social media so this part was really interesting to me. You guys looove Facebook, with 87% of you using the site, as compared to only 50% of you using MySpace and 15% using Twitter. (For what it's worth Offbeat Bride is on Facebook, although it's mostly just an RSS feed.) 54% of you are members of the Offbeat Bride's social network on Ning.com (the OBT), and about 60% of you blog in one capacity or another.

Why do you read Offbeat Bride?
90% said it was the inspiration! 80% are obsessed with the photos, but only 45% come here for the writing. (HA!) 45% find it reassuring and 35% said Offbeat Bride makes them feel confident. I also got lots of great write in comments:

• If I didn't read OBB, the wedding industry would have eaten my soul already.
• I just like looking at/hearing about people. Lots of people. Lots of different kinds of people. Weddings are somewhere that a person's personality can really shine through, and I am a big fan of people's personalities.
• It makes me feel less guilty about considering to marry
• It's refreshingly non-judgemental. It's okay to be totally and completely offbeat, but it's also okay to be mostly traditional and maybe just a teensy bit offbeat.
• It feels so good to see people like me respected, validated, represented, and in love.

Offbeat Advertising
The vast majority of you said the ads on the site don't bother you and that you respect the advertisers who are listed here, and a third of you went so far as to say you usually like the products featured. There was a lot of feedback about how so few of the ads are regionally relevant and lemme just say I hear ya! I really wish I had more advertisers who were selling products online so that they would be relevant to everyone. That said, if you fall in love with an out of town wedding photographer you see here, know that most of 'em would love to travel to your wedding.

I was surprised by how many people told me that they don't see the ads because they use an ad blocker or an RSS reader. I thought that I'd made my advertising policy and practice pretty clear, but just to clear up any confusion: Offbeat ads are posted as blog posts (there's a whole category of 'em), so those of you who read via RSS or use ad blockers are absolutely seeing each and every single one. While ads posts are very clearly identified as such on the website (look for the “Advertisement” in the title or the text at the top that tells you YO, THIS IS AN AD!), thanks to y'all's feedback, I did realize that ads are NOT marked as such via RSS, so I'll be making changes to my RSS output to remedy that.

Budgets
I suspected, but now I know for real: the vast majority of Offbeat Brides are throwing budget weddings! Although 10% of you declined to answer (I totally respect that), 60% of you told me your wedding budget was less than $10,000 — less than half the cost of the average American wedding. Only 3% of you are planning weddings over $30k. Elsewhere in the survey, I got feedback from a few folks who wished Offbeat Bride was less focused on budget weddings, but given the fact that the majority of my readers are on tight budgets, I don't foresee much change in my focus.

Feedback
Holy moly, y'all had a LOT to say, ranging from the impossibly sweet all the way to caustically negative. A few trends on the negative side were:

• OBT frustrations (I tried to address some of these issues by writing this faq)
• Issues with offbeat homogeneity/trends (which inspired me to write this)
• People wishing the site was more focused on their specific needs, ie region, style, budget, sexual orientation, etc. (I try to make Offbeat Bride as varied as I can, but there's simply no way I can make it the perfect website for everyone. I thank you all in advance for your forgiveness.)

But it wasn't all bad. Some of you wrote amazing little missives, a few of which I wanted to share:

• I don't think you quite knew what you were getting into when you started this! This is the greatest online community. Whether or not we're talking weddings, you have cultivated an environment that supports… well, support! Positive thinking and educated, sincere opinions and advice abound!
• Keep up the good work! I'm a woman marrying a man, but for some reason, I find the transgender weddings featured most inspirational.
• Love it! You're inspirational to people who aren't even dating anyone at the moment – I see it as a blog about being brave and being yourself. Thank you!
• Thank you for helping us offbeat and even not-so-offbeat brides feel at home. I have learned so much from your site and from your book. It has helped me to feel comfortable with my out-of-the box thinking and to even be ok with my in-the-box thinking.
• When I found obb, I felt kind of alone in an ‘offbeat life'. Your words inspire me to become the best version of myself, and to smile despite what other's may think along the way. Since finding your blog I've grown more confident. Please consider writing a book about your offbeat life. An offbeat woman/girls' guide to living life and pursuing happiness. It would rock. This is the book I want very much to read.

…Aww, you guys! Seriously, some of the sweet comments made me tear up. It's such an honor to write for such lovely people. Snarfle.

I still have a lot of mulling over to do about the survey in terms of what does it all mean about the future of Offbeat Bride … but thanks to each and every one of you who took the time to answer my questions!