JEFF FIELDER
Nspire Today! Columnist
These days, it seems like our Nspire Today! staff is always in the “planning stage” for something.
It used to be that when we printed an issue, we would then turn our attention to the following month’s magazine. However, it doesn’t work that way anymore, not only because the size of the regular, monthly issue has grown substantially over the last seven years but also because Nspire Today! is producing so many additional sections, or “special sections” as we like to call them.
To accomplish this, our staff has to begin brainstorming ideas, making plans, and setting deadlines weeks or sometimes even months before these “special sections” print.
Therefore, as we rolled into the last couple months of last year, I began looking ahead to January, February and March of this year. In addition to the regular magazine for those months, we had to start planning for the Mom & Pops special section that will publish in March as well as the Spring Sports Preview, which will be coming out in March as well.
As I looked at the month of February, I knew we would have some ads and content in that month’s issue related to Valentine’s Day. But I also noticed that February is National Weddings Month. I guess what brought this to my attention is that I read on the National Day Calendar’s website that “more than 2.4 million couples get married in the U.S. every year, and about 16 thousand of them get married on Valentine’s Day.” OK, I thought, that’s pretty staggering.
The story I was reading then went on to say that “even though the majority of weddings do take place during the summer months (specifically June, August, and September), February does own the most weddings to a single day.”
What really caught my attention, though, was that the story also mentioned that “according to the National Association of Bridal Consultants, February is also the month that most brides and grooms-to-be start doing serious wedding planning.” Hence, it makes sense that February is National Weddings Month.
I shared this interesting information with my business partner, KC, and a new idea sprouted from this conversation. We thought it would be fun to try to put together a special section for February that focuses on weddings, specifically the process of getting married, from the engagement to the wedding day itself.
Initially, our plan was to create a two-page spread in the main magazine of the February issue. We figured that would be a good way to remind people that February is National Weddings Month, and along with that, we thought we would see if some of our local businesses would like to promote their products and/or services pertaining to weddings on this two-page spread.
Julie, who handles most of the advertising for Nspire Today!, began visiting with local business owners about our plans for this two-page wedding spread. A lot of them were excited about it, which led to me coming up with another idea. I thought it might be cool to find a local couple that was planning to get married this year, and I could interview them and write a story about how they got engaged and what their plans are for their wedding arrangements and their wedding day. We could then wrap this story around the two-page spread.
What happened, though, is that the list of local businesses interested in being part of this spread kept growing – to the point where we wouldn’t have enough room in a two-page spread to include all of these businesses. Therefore, we decided to turn this spread into its own eight-page special section that would be inserted into the regular magazine. Long story short, this eight-page special section eventually ballooned into a whopping 16-page special section.
Looking back, it’s cool to see how this special section evolved so quickly and so much. It’s also cool to see the finished product in print, especially after so many people put a lot of time and hard work into it.
This special wedding section is titled “Tying the Knot,” a title that KC came up with. This section includes feature stories on a few couples who recently got engaged and who are now planning their wedding for later this year. These stories share how they met as well as some details of the proposal, what they want their wedding day to look like, and what their lives might look like after they tie the knot. I really enjoyed interviewing these couples – obviously there were happy vibes galore – and learning about what brought them together and why their bond is so special.
More than once, these stories caused me to reflect on my own journey of getting married – from meeting my wife, Julie, somewhat out of the blue on a chilly Saturday evening and then dating and falling in love with her over the next nine months. I proposed to her on Christmas Eve in 2002. The short version of how that went down is that …
You can read Jeff Fielder’s entire column in the February 2025 issue of Nspire Today! magazine. A one-year subscription (12 issues) is only $20. You may sign up for a subscription by sending $20 to Nspire Today!, P.O. Box 454, Scottsbluff, NE 69363, or you may pay with a credit card by calling 308-220-8907.
The current issue of Nspire Today! magazine is available at locations listed below.
