Stalking: the new wedding craze

When Sally Reed gets married in March, she reckons she will see a few unfamiliar faces watching her take her vows - her stalkers.

But these stalkers aren't dangerous. They are fellow brides-to-be who chat online.

The women know so many details of one another's weddings that "it wouldn't surprise me if people turned up", said the 27-year-old Rotorua resident.

The brides met at www.nzweddingplanner.co.nz, a site with a forum where women discuss their big day. Often, they develop friendships and sometimes even invite one another to their wedding ceremonies, jokingly referring to one another as "stalkers".

"Even if you don't get a formal invite, you get invited to stalk, to look," said Tabitha Bland, a Wanganui newlywed. Several of the strangers she met in the forum became good friends.

The "stalking" comes as New Zealand enters its wedding season. January, February and March account for two-fifths of the country's marriages each year.

Some women use the forum to issue open invitations to other intending brides.

"I would like to extend an invitation to stalk our ceremony to your heart's content," one woman wrote. "The only condition is to introduce yourself to me if we haven't met in person already and not be all shy in the background."

Another woman posted what she wrote was a "stalker invite" for her wedding in Hamilton.

"In a kind of weird way, it's almost like you really know them," said Ms Bland, who was married in February. "They're sharing a pretty incredible part of their lives with you."

Ms Bland, 31, invited two women she met online to watch her get married. They had previously met face to face at a luncheon. Later, Ms Bland was a guest at the marriage of an online friend.

Trish Martin of Hamilton said she planned to invite three online friends to her wedding in February, only one of whom she had met face to face.

"It's costing us a bundle per head but two of them are good friends of mine now."

And if she wasn't obliged to give a headcount for the ceremony, she would extend an open invite to all the brides-to-be who use the site.

"They're honest and they're open," she said. "And they don't get sick of talking weddings."

An internet-safety group expressed no reservations about the site.

"Online communities form in what to outsiders might seem odd places," said Liz Butterfield, director of NetSafe. "But they have established what they think is a closed community forum and the interactions between the women seem mostly harmless."

Privacy and behaviour guidelines are well outlined on the site, she added.

Most of the 3500 people who use the site are women aged between 22 and 37, said Kelvin Cox, who launched the site on Valentine's Day in 2001.

Forum conversations start up with cries for help such as "Help, I hate my wedding dress!" Other topics which get a mention include "Hairdresser worries", and - inevitably - "Interfering MIL2B" (mother-in-law to be).

TYING THE KNOT

* Last year there were 21,420 marriages registered in New Zealand.

* More than one third of those - 7710 - was a remarriage for at least one partner.

* Median age of men marrying for the first time: 29.5 years. Of women: 27.7 years.

* Median age of all men marrying (including remarriages): 31.9 years. For women: 29.8 years.

* 600 of the women who married last year were teenagers. In 1971, there were 8700 teen brides.