Wacky Wedding Road Trip, Powered By Ford

HotRodHoney

Recently I picked up an edition of MY Ford magazine (a magazine Ford owners receive after the purchase of their new vehicle) and read a most peculiar love story. Initially, it followed the standard format: boy meets girl, they fall in love, they decide to get married. But then things took a turn for the unique. Read more…

Roxy n Me

Chris Hodges and Jamie Case of San Francisco decided to get married. They sat down and began to plan out the big day, figuring out what was most important to them. They had also decided that they wanted their wedding to be about the importance of their commitment to each other rather than the festivities of it. But due to the economy, they wouldn’t be able to have the wedding they’d always envisioned, nor did they feel it was reasonable for their 100+ guests to spend so much money to travel out to attend.

That was when they thought back to an idea they joked about years ago: why not take the wedding to the guests instead? This six-week wedding road trip would consist of them visiting all their friends and family members that they would have invited to their nuptials, only enabling the couple to spend quality one-on-one time with them as opposed to the small-talk moments of a typical wedding. (And to appease their slightly disappointed parents, they agreed to end their trip in San Francisco and with a small ceremony and dinner on the beach).

Scott Monty the head of social media for Ford Motor Company, got wind of their story and comped them a 2010 Ford Fusion to take their road trip in–all they had to do was fly down to Los Angeles and pick it up, and the car was theirs. Jamie refers to the moment of meeting the Fusion, whom they decided to name “Roxy Fusion” as instant car love.

In fact, so enamored was the couple of their new Ford and of the company’s generosity in helping them take their wedding on the road, wife and husband both legally changed their surname to “Ford.” We’ve all known brand-loyalty diehards, but this takes it to a whole new level!

An interesting story indeed; I admit I was a bit skeptical at first but when I looked into it further, it looks to be very true and they even have a blog, “The Wedding Road Trip“.

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Posted at 3:12 am in Ford, Fusion, Road Trips, Stephanie Porteus

Comments

JoeCool6972
Apr 11, 2010 at 7:43 am

Cool story.

scottmonty
Apr 9, 2010 at 12:53 pm

That’s exactly what happened – they had already established a presence (a credible and influential one, at that) before they reached out to us. We hear from so many people to say, “Give me a car and I’ll blog/tweet/Facebook about it.” Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

We look for people that have a plan, an existing outlet or influence in their individual space, and for special projects like this, and degree of uniqueness that makes it remarkable. Clearly the last point was a strong one here – you picked up on it 9 months after it was complete, because it’s still a great story.

We had no idea that Chris & Jamie would change their names – that was something they decided to do only after the entire trip was over.

Scott Monty
Global Digital Communications
Ford Motor Company

SuzyBruisy
Apr 5, 2010 at 8:57 am

Lol. You’d think after 6 weeks of “wedding” stuck in a car together they’d be about ready for the divorce.

HotRodHoney
Apr 5, 2010 at 8:44 am

Thanks! No, I’m not sure how Ford heard about it, but if I was to guess I’d say their head of social media marketing dept (Scott Monty, who has his own blog) found theirs- because it looks like they had their blog before it’s focus was their wedding road trip. Just a guess though.

Bick66
Apr 5, 2010 at 7:51 am

I love it! Great story, thanks for sharing. How cool would it be to have one of the big 3 comp you a new car!? An awesome road trip in stead of a stressful wedding surely sounds like a good idea to me. Hmmm, maybe I could change my last name to Chevrolet, it would be fitting since I already have a bowtie tattooed on the left shoulder. Did they say how Ford heard about their plan in the first place?

highspeedhijinks
Apr 5, 2010 at 7:12 am

This story makes me wanna say yikes on multiple levels