Hashtag Service Helps Brides Create Customized Social Media Tags for Their Weddings

It's called "Happily Ever Hashtagged." What's next?

ByABC News
December 5, 2016, 3:37 PM

— -- It's a common struggle: Your thumbs are stuck hovering over smartphones trying to come up with a witty hashtag to help organize photos for a big event.

Well, think no more thanks to a new service that helps create hashtags for any event, including weddings, bachelor and bachelorette parties, office parties and even birthdays.

It's the brainchild of Los Angeles magazine arts and culture editor, Marielle Wakim. She created Happily Ever #Hashtagged last month, offering a witty and clever hashtag for $40.

"My goal is not to give someone a hashtag anybody could think of off the top of their head," Wakim, 29, told ABC News.

The editor created what she calls her "premiere concierge service" after attending 19 weddings over two years and noticing the lack of options. Each bride wanted help coming up with a creative hashtag to capture wedding photos on social media.

"Clearly there's a need. People are not able to come up with something," Wakim said of what inspired her. "So I decided to give it a try in terms of monetizing it."

So far, so good. She's had 60 orders to date and her most popular has been the three wedding hashtags package, which retails for $85.

Wakim said it takes her at least an hour, and at most "days" to come up with original hashtags, such as #MollyPicksUpTheTempo for a bride named Molly Goldbach who married Chad Tempo.

"I spend a large amount of time trying to come up with something witty and clever," she said. "I spend a good solid hour on punning, thinking of idioms or rhymes or wordplay."

"It can take a couple days to come up with something I think is worthwhile," Wakim continued. "You’re going to land on a bunch that aren’t quite right when they’re written down or they look weird or inappropriate."

One bride, Dana Hill, was pleased with the hashtag Wakim created for her nuptials: #ForeverlyHills. It's a play on Beverly Hills. Duh.

"I was surprised. I thought it fit perfectly," Hill told ABC News. "My husband and I are [Certified Public Accountants]. We're not the most creative types."

Hill, 29, who lives in Naperville, Illinois, said she incorporated the customized hashtag into her country chic wedding by putting the hashtag on her wedding website. It was also featured at her reception on signage and cocktail napkins.

The bride said it was worth the investment.

"We wanted an isolated place for us to go back and a million years later look at photos," Hill said. "To my knowledge, no one else is using it."

And that's the point for Wakim -- to create novel hashtags no one else will use.

"A hashtag -- if nothing else -- is a sorting mechanism to help you not only see all of your photos pretty immediately," Wakim said, "but also avoid having to scroll past 20,000 photos on #SmithWedding2017."