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My reporting on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has gone through several stages over the last decade, and is now about a very different, and more fundamental, set of issues than were at stake in my earliest stories about ICANN and Internet domains names for travel.
The details are tedious, but what is at stake is not just the control of an important global resource -- the Internet -- but the broader question of the rights of journalists and the public in a world in which the power to make decisions over such important public resources is being transferred by governments to private corporations that lack accountability or transparency.
I'm sorry that the story may seem technical, but fundamental rights are actually at stake. It's not just about travel: ICANN's handling of .aero and .travel epitomizes the larger problems with Internet governance and privatization of decision-making on public policy.
I didn't set out to write a treatise on ICANN or on how and by whom the Internet is "governed", and I didn't expect to become a participant myself in the story. My coverage of ICANN began with my attempt to report on what seemed a relatively straightforward story at the intersection of my interests in travel, the Internet, and consumer advocacy: the creation under ICANN's supervision of top-level Internet domain names (TLD's, like .com or .edu or .info) restricted to the travel industry: .aero (for air transportation) and .travel (originally proposed by the airline cartel IATA, but eventually approved for a wider range of the travel industry, although still to the exclusion of travellers).
For travellers, the issue is that while keeping top-level domains artificially scarce to enhance their value to the handful of companies given the franchise to control them, ICANN is allocating a huge proportion of this limited Internet "namespace" for the exclusive use of the industry that sells travel-related services -- and is equating that industry with the entire concept of travel.
ICANN's own consultants agreed with me that neither airlines nor the travel industry adequately represent the interests of consumers and travellers. They recommended against .travel, for this same reason, when it was first proposed in 2000, and again in 2004. ICANN overruled them
What should be a public commons is being captured by corporate interests, travel is being reduced to the purchase of services, and travellers and the rest of the public are being reduced to consumers. .aero and .travel are the first industry-specific TLD's, making travel the test case of the corporate enclosure of this virtual commons.
But that turns out to be the least of the problems I've uncovered. In trying to investigate who was really behind the .travel and .aero proposals, and to report on ICANN's consideration of their applications, I came up against a pattern of cronyism, back-room deals, and above all of secrecy and arbitrariness in both the substance and the process of making decisions -- in fundamental violation of the high-sounding commitment in ICANN's bylaws that "ICANN and its constituent bodies shall operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner and consistent with procedures designed to ensure fairness." And when I tried to complain, I discovered that ICANN is accountable to no one, and has made no provision for oversight of its decisions.
What began as an attempt to "get the story" as a journalist, and to advocate for the interests of travellers and consumers, gradually became, of unfortunate necessity, first an attempt to hold ICANN to its purported principles of transparency and then, when that was denied, an attempt to hold ICANN accountable under its purported provisions for independent oversight.
ICANN is the governing body of the Internet, but ICANN doesn't like to speak of what it does as "governing" because that might suggest that it should be held to the same standards of democracy, public accountability, etc. as a government agency, or even that its power should be transferred to some sort of actual government entity.
Unfortunately, governance of the Internet by ICANN is the poster child for the efforts of the government of the USA not just to privatize and outsource to corporations the provision of government services (delivering the mail, sweeping the streets, etc.) but to privatize governance itself -- that is, to outsource to corporations the making of policy decisions -- and to impose that model of corporatized private governance on the world, regardless of any objections by other governments or global civil society.
To point out, as I have, that ICANN is arbitrary and secretive, is to call into question whether corporations can do a better job of the process of governing than the traditional institutions of democratic government (elections, legislatures, courts, etc.). That's a heresy that religious devotees of "market forces" as divinely inspired, and believers in the inherent superiority of privatization, are constitutionally incapable of imagining, much less admitting. If they did, that would cast doubt on whether the "ICANN model" of delegating decision-making to private corporations should be extended to other areas where public policies are currently set by legislation or government regulations.
As a private California corporation, ICANN exercises government-style global power over the Internet, without admitting to being subject to any of the laws that protect the rights of the press and the public when we are dealing with actual government agencies.
In ICANN's Alice-In-Wonderland world of privatized governance, open meeting laws, freedom of information or "sunshine" laws, and laws guaranteeing administrative due process are replaced by corporate bylaws on "transparency" and "accountability". And if your rights under those bylaws are violated, as mine have been, your only possibility of redress is through -- you guessed it -- private arbitration by another corporation, not the courts.
At the most fundamental level, my dispute with ICANN over access to meetings, documents, and records has become the test case of the meaning of "due process" and "judicial review" in the context of privatized government-by-corporation. What rights, if any, do the public and the press have to access to information about the process of decision making? And what, if any, accountability do corporations have to independent oversight when they are exercising the authority to determine public policy? As privatization "progresses" from delivery of services to the decision-making functions of government, these are crucial questions for the retention of any semblance of democracy and justice.
ICANN claims to have agreed to submit to "independent" arbitration of whether they followed their own transparency bylaws in their (non)responses to my attempts to report on .travel. But it remains to be seen if I will be offered genuinely independent arbitration, or only a corporate kangaroo court designed by ICANN to ensure that the arbitrators of their choice rule in their favor or that the arbitration process is so expensive that I can't afford to risk having to pay for it if I lose -- which, of course, is what is required for corporate justice.
Under its bylaws, ICANN is supposed to have procedures in place for the arbitration, and to have chosen the arbitration corporation in advance. They haven't. Instead, they are trying to ignore their own decision making policies, pick their own arbitrator (with whom they may already have a secret side agreement they haven't yet shown me) in secret, make up the rules for the arbitration as they go along, and impose them unilaterally and retroactively.
ICANN is the poster child for those who believe in privatization and outsourcing to corporations not just of the provision of government services but of governance (government decision making) itself.
Authority to set policy for the Internet has been handed over by the USA Federal government to a private California corporation. In ICANN's corporate world, corporate bylaws have replaced laws requiring open meetings, freedom of information, and due process. And arbitration by other private corporations has replaced law enforcement and appellate justice in the world of fee-based corporate "justice".
As a private corporation, ICANN is exempt from open meetings laws, public records laws, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and other "sunshine" laws used by journalists and the public to obtain information about government policy-making activities. Journalists' and others' ability to observe and report on entities like ICANN, to which policy-making authority has been delegated, depends instead on enforcement of contracts and bylaws that guarantee access.
I have attempted to use ICANN's bylaws on transparency, and ICANN's contracts with the government of the USA promising transparency, to observe meetings and obtain documents. When my requests for access were denied, I have attempted to use ICANN's bylaws on oversight, and ICANN's contracts promising the government of the USA that ICANN would provide such an oversight mechanism, to obtain an "independent review", by a panel of arbitrators, of whether ICANN has complied with the commitments to transparency in its own rules and contracts.
In this context, my challenge as a journalist to ICANN's secrecy and failure to follow its own rules has become the test case of press freedom and democracy in the brave new world of governance by corporation. Its results should be, and I think will be, closely watched as evidence of whether any sort of justice, accountability, or transparency is possible in such a framework.
As a secondary but significant matter of concern for the rights and independence of journalists, ICANN has delegated to airlines and the travel industry the authority to determine which journalists reporting on those industries are legitimate. "Aviation media" are eligible to register .aero domain names, but only if they "promote" the industry. No critics or muckrakers need apply. SITA promised ICANN that there would be a policy-making body for .aero on which aviation media would be represented, but SITA instead has taken it upon itself to "represent" journalists, and ICANN has allowed this breach of contract. Similarly, "travel media" are allowed to register in .travel, but only if they are deemed to be legitimate by TTPC, an industry body in which they have no representation.
And ICANN itself has demonstrated the problems in allowing the subject of the reporting to decide who to allow to report on its activities, refusing to recognize me as a journalist, because of my critical and investigative reporting.
As for the specific top-level domain names that ICANN has created for the travel industry, why should anyone care that the Internet is being hijacked by commercial interests?
The issue is, in part, whether the Internet will be governed democratically or ruled by money and back-room cronyism. It's also about whether we should have top-level domain names for sectors of activity -- open to everyone with a stake in those activities -- or solely for industries and commercial interests. Will the Internet travel namespace be a virtual community of travellers, or a domain where -- as in a speech I heard a while back by the then-president of one of the largest Internet travel agencies -- "interactivity" and "participation" will be limited to the opportunity to click on the "buy" button?
Under the scheme that has been approved and allowed to be put into effect, travellers have no say in .travel or .aero policy making, and only commercial users of the Internet are permitted in .travel -- no travel journals, photos, or other personal or non-commercial uses.
The sponsors of this proposal say the best way to protect consumers is to give control to the travel industry. I don't think so. Neither did the consultants hired by ICANN to evaluate the .travel and other sTLD applications, who twice recommended against approval of .travel under industry-only sponsorship -- first in 2000 and again in 2004 -- for almost exactly this reason.
All of this, I have come to realize, is typical of how ICANN operates. ICANN has no organizational culture of respect for process or procedural rules, and no appreciation for the fact that "democracy" is a process. A benevolent despot, or an enlightened technocrat, is not a democracy, no matter how wise or popular their decisions.
ICANN has bylaws that require openness and transparency (the counterpart in the ICANN context of the Freedom of Information Act and similar laws) and that require ICANN to have specified accountability and review mechanisms (the counterpart in the ICANN context of the U.S. Administrative Procedure Act). Those provisions were included in ICANN's bylaws as a condition of the U.S. government's willingness to delegate decision-making power to ICANN, under contracts between ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce that require ICANN to operate in accordance with those bylaws. Perhaps more importantly, those provisions were included in ICANN's bylaws because of the belief that transparency, accountability, and due process will result in better decisions.
As a journalist and a believer in democracy, I think that those who wrote and approved ICANN's bylaws were right. Democracy, or the lack therefo, lies in the process, not just the results. But many ICANN insiders and observers disagree. They believe that "better" decisions (where "better" is often measured by their personal or corporate financial interest) will result if meetings are held behind closed doors, documents are kept secret, or decisions are discussed on private e-mail lists before the pro forma public meetings. Other people simply don't care about the process, and base their opinion of ICANN solely on whether they agree with the outcomes.<\p>
Even if it were correct (which I don't think it is), belief that decision-making would benefit from closed meetings or from consideration of documents and records withheld from public disclosure is, at most, an argument that might be made in favor of a proposal to amend ICANN's transparency bylaws, not a valid justification for ICANN to ignore its cureent bylaws.
In practice, as result of this attitude that only the final decision matters, ICANN can't even be said to "make up the rules as it goes along". Rather, ICANN has no rules. ICANN feels free to ignore anything it has previously said, including the general procedural rules in its bylaws and specific procedures laid out for particular decisions. The defining characteristic of the ICANN process is that all decisions are ad hoc.
In this context, anyone like me who suggests that ICANN has any duty to comply with its own (or any other) rules, or who tries to evalaute ICANN's complinace wuith the specific terms of its own rules, appears crazy. The fact that what I am doing is so unusual as to easy to characterized as "crazy" is a measure of how alien transparency, accountability, or democracy are to ICANN's behavioral norms.
As I said in 2001 in my introduction to The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace:
Travel and the Internet go hand-in-hand. That should be no surprise: the movement of information has always paralleled the movement of people, power, and money. Historically, global electronic networking actually was pioneered by the travel industry long before the Internet existed. Today, travel reservations, especially airline ticket sales, are the leading edge of e-commerce.
The Internet might seem to provide an alternative to travel, or to render it unnecessary. But the reverse has been the case. Those who predicted that the Internet would be the death of travel ... have been proven dead wrong. Travel ... is the largest seller on the Internet. The present Internet age is distinguished not just by ease of communications, but by personal mobility and opportunities for travel unprecedented in human history. And for more and more people, long distance communications and travel are part and parcel of the same style of life, business, and leisure.
E-mail, instant messaging, electronic chat rooms, Internet discussion groups and mailing lists, Internet phone calls and video conferences, and of course Internet personal advertisements and virtual match-making services haven't replaced face-to-face meetings and personal experience of distant places. Rather, Internet-fueled globalization of human and business relationships has driven the need and desire for more people to travel further more often, for business and pleasure alike.
Given this context, it's not surprising that some of the first proposals to ICANN for new top-level Internet domains were related to travel. And from the start, my Web site (including the section of my blog on Internet domain names) and my e-mail newsletter have provided in-depth investigative and consumer reporting on these proposals and their implications for travellers who use the Internet.
The problem isn't with the basic idea of travel-specific Internet domain names, which I have consistently supported.
The problem is that Internet governing body ICANN has handed over control of the Internet travel namespace to front groups for the interests of airlines and the travel "industry", to the exclusion (and the detriment) of the travelling public and "civil society" organizations and communities concerned with travel. And my attempts to investigate and report on this story have led to a major test case of the right of public access to ICANN decision-making, and of whether there is any oversight or accountability of ICANN to independent review.
The Internet was originally controlled by the government of the USA. Beginning in 1998, much of the USA government's authority to set policy and make decisions about the Internet was delegated (through a series of contracts of dubious validity), to ICANN, a California non-profit corporation created in 1998 specifically to enable the privatization of Internet governance. ICANN itself is governed (under the laws of California and the USA, ICANN's corporate charter, and its bylaws) by a Board of Directors.
(This isn't the place for a complete history of ICANN and its relationship to the Internet and the government of the USA. Unfortunately, many of the organizations, acronyms, and terminology referred to here and in my correspondence with ICANN are likely to be unfamiliar to readers who haven't been following ICANN, Internet governance, and domain name politics. If you are new to this issue, see these background articles for an introduction to ICANN's history, activities, and procedures, and some of the legal issues they raise.)
In 2000, ICANN issued a public request for proposals, for a US$50,000 non-refundable fee per application, from would-be sponsors of new top-level Internet domain names (TLD's) to be added to the existing TLD's like .com, .org, .edu, .mil (USA military), .int (international organizations), and so forth.
Two of the 44 proposals were related to travel. Both were from organizations of airlines: the Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques (SITA), a cooperative owned by member airlines (originally created to provide shared electronic communications and reservations services for its members) proposed a .air TLD for the air transportation industry, and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), proposed a .travel TLD.
Almost all of the world's airlines are members of IATA, which generally describes itself as a "trade association". It is more accurately described as a cartel, since it openly engages in the fixing of certain "industry fares", and airlines in the USA require special legal exemption from USA anti-trust law (which they have been granted by Congress) to participate in IATA "traffic conferences".
Both SITA's proposal for .air and IATA's proposal for .travel were for "sponsored" TLD's. An "unsponsored" TLD like .com is open to anyone who wants to sue it for a legal purpose. But for a "sponsored" TLD, ICANN explicitly delegates to the sponsor of the TLD the right to control who is, and who is not, allowed to register domain names in that TLD, and which domain names they are allowed to register.
The consultants hired by ICANN to evaluate the TLD applications in 2000 reported that, "The evaluation team cannot conclude, at this juncture, that IATA has demonstrated that it is or would be broadly representative of the diverse global travel industry."
Vocal objections to IATA's proposal to sponsor .travel were also raised by those travel agents who work for consumers rather than travel suppliers, and who feared that having their Internet domain names controlled by the airlines would give airlines a means to force travel agents to put airlines' interests ahead of consumers' interests -- or lose their .travel domain names.
For these reasons, IATA's application for .travel was, quite rightly, passed over by ICANN's Board of Directors when it was considered in late 2000. The airlines that make up IATA aren't representative of the diversity of the travel industry, much less of all those outside the travel "industry" with an interest in travel.
SITA's application was approved, although ICANN changed the name of the TLD from .air (as proposed by SITA) to .aero.
In its application to ICANN, which I supported, SITA promised, explicitly that .aero and its policy-making would be open to the aviation industry, its customers, and its critics alike; that it would be operated for the benefit of the entire community of entities with an interest in air transportation (not just the industry providing air transportation); and that consumer advocates, the aviation media, and unions of aviation workers would be represented in the body SITA would create to set policies for .aero (such as who would be allowed to register .aero domain names, and which names they could register).
ICANN's bylaws require it to "operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner". Instead, following approval of .aero by ICANN's Board of Directors, the rules for .aero were drafted by ICANN staff in secret meetings with SITA. These rules differ radically from the original proposal, in that only suppliers of travel services, not consumer advocates, are allowed to register .aero domain names. Consumers and travellers aren't welcome. Members of the "aviation media" can register .aero domain names, but only if they "promote" air transportation. No critics or muckrakers need apply.
SITA's chief negotiator with ICANN in those secret sessions, Rosa Delgado, told me in an interview just after the agreement was made public (which I reported at the time in my newsletter and on my Web site, and later in my comments to the public forum during ICANN's June 2003 meeting in Montréal), that ICANN's chief negotiator, Louis Touton, not only drafted most of the terms of the sponsorship agreement and forced them on SITA, but insisted on excluding some groups of stakeholders from eligibility to register .aero domains in order to be able to put them in .travel, even though Ms. Delgado and SITA "fought really hard" to argue that they were included in the .aero proposal as originally approved by ICANN's Board of Directors.
The secretly-negotiated agreement for the creation of .aero under SITA's sponsorship, with the new and narrower terms of eligibility, was made public in late 2001 under a strange procedure that allowed it to go into effect "without objection" by ICANN's Board of Directors and without any Board debate or public hearing. I formally requested that ICANN's Board of Directors reconsider this decision, but that request was denied.
At that time, ICANN's bylaws required it to have "policies and procedures for independent third-party review of Board actions alleged by an affected party to have violated the Corporation's articles of incorporation or bylaws", as I believe it did in the secret negotiations with SITA on the .aero agreement. If ICANN had actually had such an independent review body in place, I would have requested that it review the .aero agreement and the process by which it was adopted. But ICANN never appointed the independent review panel required by the bylaws then in effect. With no further appeal possible, .aero went into use in early 2002.
SITA promised ICANN that it would establish open, participatory decision-making procedures for .aero. But SITA has reneged completely on those promises, as I pointed out in my comments in the public forum during ICANN's March 2003 meeting in Rio de Janeiro, and in my 2006 comments on SITA's pending application for renewal of its agreement with ICANN to sponsor .aero. SITA has abrogated to itself the task of "representing" airline passengers, aviation workers and their unions, the aviation media, and most other stakeholders in air transportation. And policy for .aero has been determined entirely in secret.
Despite my having repeatedly and directly brought these issues to the attention of ICANN and its Board of Directors, ICANN has done nothing to enforce its contract with SITA, or to sanction SITA for noncompliance.
The initial contract delegating authority over .aero was for a 5-year term, from 17 December 2001 through 17 December 2006. SITA applied to renew the sponsorship agreement, and that renewal application is now under consideration (in secret, of course, like most ICANN decision-making) by ICANN.
I pointed out in formal comments to ICANN that the .aero agreement had been violated, and should not be renewed. In response, response, SITA claimed that no individual stakeholder has ever contacted the (unnamed) person SITA now claims to have designated to represent them in .aero decision-making. Scarcely surprising, since it is impossible to determine from SITA's Web site or any other public source who that purported representative is, or even that they exist, or what issues or proposals for .aero policies or decisions are under consideration.
On 30 June 2006, ICANN's Board of Directors decided that my comments did not "raise a substantial question about whether renewal of SITA's agreement would be in the best interest of the sponsored TLD community and the global Internet community", and voted unanimously and without debate to authorize ICANN's staff "to enter into negotiations with SITA for a renewal of the .AERO Sponsorship Agreement."
The original sponsorship contract would have required a formal review by ICANN's staff, and a further opportunity for public comment, if my comments or any others had raised such a "substantial question" -- regardless of how ICANN's Board of Directors or staff believed that question should have been answered. In the absence of any debate, it's unclear from the transcript whether the members of the Board of Directors understood that the issue properly before the Board was whether the comments raised, as a threshhold showing, a "substantial question", and not how to answer that question. Nor is there any indication of what they would have considered to constitute a "substantial question".
The delegation by ICANN to SITA of authority over .aero expired with the expiration of the original 5-year contract 17 December 2006. In June 2006, in response to my comments in the public forum on ICANN's registry continuity plans, ICANN revealed that they had secretly "granted" an amendment and extension of the agreement for SITA to sponsor .aero. But any such secret "grant", without the procedures required by the Bylaws (notice of the proposal, public comment, notice of the Board of Directors agenda, Board vote, etc.) is null and void, and should be reconsidered "de novo", according to the procedures required by the Bylaws.
In December 2008, following secret negotiations with SITA, ICANN finally posted a proposed new agreement providing for ".aero" to be transferred to a different one of SITA's several corporate incarnations, this one a Delaware (USA) corporation. The proposal was for a 10-year agreement, with a provision for presumptive renewal in perpetuity. The only public comments were in opposition to the proposal: my objection on the basis of lack of transparency of the process, and an objection to the "presumptive renewal" clause. No public support was expressed for the proposal. Nevertheless, ICANN's Board of Directors approved the new ".aero" agreement unanimously, by voice vote, at another of their telephone "meetings" (closed to the public and the press, in violation of their transparency bylaw) on 3 February 2009.
The .aero TLD remains little used, even by the airlines who backed the proposal. But ICANN's approval of "aero" set the precedent for the handover of travel-related or sector-specific sponsored TLD's to the control of industry, to the exclusion of public or civil society interests. That precedent was eventually followed with .travel, although it took several more years and required at least superficial concessions by IATA and a change of formal sponsorship of the proposal.
ICANN's public position was (and still is) that the TLD applications passed over in 2000, including IATA's application for .travel, were not "rejected" but remained pending. To answer the objections from travel agents, ICANN's consultants, and ICANN's Board of Directors as to IATA's ability to represent .travel stakeholders other than airlines, IATA began taking steps to create a new front group to sponsor .travel that would at least appear to represent a broader range of travel-related businesses.
Following a meeting 26 November 2001 at IATA headquarters in Montréal, IATA announced the formation of a Travel Partnership Corporation (TTPC), ostensibly to ensure that .travel is operated for the benefit of travellers. But it was all a sham; the only real purpose of the "partnership" was as a front for the interests of IATA, to make IATA more acceptable to ICANN. Only one of the 25 members of the .travel governing board is supposed to be a consumer representative, none were appointed to the initial board, and, as of 2006, none has yet been appointed to the board.
After I called IATA on its role in creating the Travel Partnership Corporation, IATA and TTPC shifted to working through a joint venture with the Tralliance (for "travel alliance") Corporation. In 2003-2004, when ICANN issued a request for a second round of proposals for new sponsored TLD's, the Tralliance Corp. and TTPC submitted their own new application to sponsor a .travel TLD.
Tralliance was supposedly an independent company, but its initial staff included former key staff of IATA's .travel project as well long-time cronies of key personnel at ICANN.
In February 2003, Tralliance concluded a secret deal (not disclosed in its application to ICANN for .travel, and not made public until much later, after ICANN's Board of Directors had already given the first stage of approval to its application for .travel) for a sale of Tralliance Corp. to TheGlobe.com (also known as Voiceglo.com) -- contingent on ICANN approval of its .travel application.
It's not clear what relationship TTPC and Tralliance/TheGlobe.com/Voiceglo.com have today with IATA. (They do have some sort of contract related to .travel, but it remains secret.) But the fix had been in with ICANN for years with respect to .travel.
As was described to me by Rosa Delgado, SITA's principal negotiator with ICANN for .aero, a back-room deal existed was made at least as early as 2001 by ICANN staff and their industry cronies to approve IATA's sponsorship of .travel in the next round of new top-level domains. In late 2001, Ms. Delgado told me ICANN staff (who are, by all accounts, the real decision makers) were already talking about the award of .travel to IATA as a fait accompli -- even though at that time ICANN's evaluation team had recommended against giving .travel to IATA, and IATA's application for .travel had officially been passed over and denied reconsideration by ICANN's Board of Directors.
When ICANN issued a request for a second round of proposals for more new TLD's in 2003-2004, the terms of the request were such as to favor IATA and its front groups, Tralliance and TTPC, on every point. Was that coincidence or conspiracy? Who knows, since the terms of the request for proposals were drafted in secret by ICANN staff, in consultation with we know not whom.
Tralliance and TTPC, as expected, filed a new application in March 2004 to sponsor a .travel TLD. In an elaborate shell game, the for-profit Tralliance Corp. asked that .travel be created and delegated to them, but with a tenuous (and probably powerless) relationship to the "non-profit" TTPC providing a veneer of greater legitimacy. On its face, this application was entirely independent of IATA's application for "travel", which was still officially "pending" although not approved. There was no mention in the public portion of the Tralliance/TTPC application to ICANN of the secret 2002 deal between IATA's and the TTPC, or the February 2004 deal, less than a month before their application to ICANN, between Tralliance and TTPC. (ICANN still hasn't responded to my questions as to when ICANN itself learned of these secret agreements between the ostensibly "independent" parties involved in the two .travel proposals.)
I objected to the 2004 .travel proposal, as others did, on the grounds that Tralliance and TTPC were no more representative than IATA (or any other industry body) of travellers, journalists reporting on travel, or the general public, and that the proposal included none of the provisions for openness, transparency, due process, and public participation in decision making required by ICANN's rules.
Although my request to observe their meetings (as would have been feasible, and as I was entitled to do under ICANN's bylaws requiring them to "operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner") was ignored, the consultants ICANN hired to evaluate the applications agreed with my substantive objections, at least on my first point: ICANN's consulting evaluators "were not persuaded that .travel met sufficient of the selection criteria to warrant the application proceeding":
While the applicant does a very thorough job of defining a community, we did not believe that the community is consistent in breadth with the name string .travel. Rather, the community defined is limited to the commercial providers of travel services.... Hence, the delegation of the entire sTLD namespace .travel by ICANN to this Sponsor would not result in appropriately representative policy formulation.... The application and supporting material indicate broad support from the travel industry... However, we are concerned ... that even this breadth of [industry] support is not sufficient to sustain the designation .travel, which has both commercial and non-commercial aspects.... The stated function of the TLD is to serve the global travel industry. However, the implication of the chosen namestring .travel extends well beyond commercial travel services. For example, ... the applicant indicated that individuals with an interest in travel would be excluded from registration, as would providers of travel-related products. While there is reason to consider such potential registrants as outside the of the travel services industry, they certainly fall within the general notion of "travel".... Furthermore, the public comment forum is particularly ambivalent about support for .travel, most notably because of lack of public interest representation ... and whether it is representative of that community.
ICANN kept their "independent" evaluators' report and recommendation against awarding .travel to Tralliance/TTPC secret for more than a year. Meanwhile, ICANN's Board of Directors, for reasons that remain entirely secret, decided at a so-called meeting (closed to journalists and the public, in violation of their bylaws on transparency) in October 2004 to overrule their consultants' recommendation and authorize ICANN's president and general counsel to work out the details of ICANN's delegation of .travel to Tralliance/TTPC in another series of closed negotiating sessions (also in violation of ICANN's bylaws on transparency).
That agreement was duly and secretly negotiated, and presented at the last minute (without the advance notice and public comment period required by ICANN's bylaws, and with portions of its terms still being kept secret) for final approval by ICANN's Board of Directors at their meeting in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in April 2005.
I didn't (and still don't) know what was really going on behind the scenes, but it was clearly not in the interests of travellers, consumers, or the public.
As the secret negotiations with ICANN moved toward completion, I continued to report on what made it into the public record, and to ask questions about:
ICANN revealed a further web of secret contracts between IATA, Tralliance, and TTPC on 2 April 2005, less than a week before ICANN's final decision on .travel, when ICANN released a contract between Tralliance and the TTPC as an appendix to the (secretly-negotiated) draft agreement between Tralliance and ICANN for sponsorship of .travel. But ICANN continued to ignore most of my questions and requests for documents and access to meetings, going to increasingly ludicrous lengths to keep me out of their press conferences.
In detailed comments to ICANN's public forum on 7 April 2005, I reiterated the specific requests I had made, and which ICANN had ignored, for access as a journalist and a member of the public, in accordance with ICANN's bylaws on openness and transparency, to ICANN meetings and documents. I pointed out my exclusion from ICANN's press conference (also in violation of ICANN's bylaws), and ICANN's failure to provide the advance notice, explanation of the reasons for the proposal, and 21-day public comment period on the proposed .travel agreement (all also as required by ICANN's bylaws). I advised that, if ICANN's Board of Directors proceeded to consider or approve the .travel agreement during its meeting the next day, I would request that any such "decision" be referred to an independent review panel -- as also provided for by ICANN's bylaws -- charged with determining whether the decision had been made in a manner consistent with ICANN's bylaws on openness and transparency.
I wasn't surprised that ICANN's Board of Directors ignored me, and proceeded on 8 April 2005 to approve an agreement (portions of which were kept secret) to create a .travel TLD and delegate authority over it to Tralliance and TTPC. ICANN shouldn't have been surprised that, as I had said I would, I immediately submitted a formal request to ICANN that it refer its decision on the .travel agreement to an independent review panel, in accordance with its bylaws. I also requested -- as also provided for by ICANN's bylaws -- that ICANN's Board of Directors (which was still in session in its meeting when they received my request) stay their decision pending the recommendation of the independent review panel.
ICANN's bylaws require it to "operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner". This requirement has been ignored in the process of ICANN approval of .travel, and this failure to comply with its own procedural requirements for openness and transparency is the basis for my request for independent review of ICANN's decision on .travel.
In a separate set of requests, I've also exhausted ICANN's internal procedures for review of its decisions by ICANN's pretender to the title of ombudsman, and by a committee of the ICANN Board of Directors. The Committee on Reconsideration secretly denied my request on the basis of a secret recommendation by the person claiming to act as Ombudsman (despite never having been properly appointed), in violation of ICANN's rules requiring the committee to base its decisions solely on "the public written record" and in a demonstration of gross professional malfeasance by the Ombudsman in deliberately (and successfully) attempting to influence the committee to take this improper action.
Since the decision on .aero in 2001 (at which time ICANN's bylaws required ICANN to have its own Independent Review Panel, which ICANN never actually appointed), ICANN has amended its bylaws to require that "ICANN shall have in place a separate process for independent third-party review of Board actions alleged by an affected party to be inconsistent with the Articles of Incorporation or Bylaws". But so far as has been publicly disclosed, ICANN does not in fact have in place any such process.
ICANN has never publicly acknowledged or acted on my request for a stay. Instead, they ignored my request entirely while they did everything possible to put their questioned decision into effect, so that it would be as hard as possible to undo, even if that's what the independent review panel eventually recommends.
On 5 May 2005, ICANN and Tralliance signed off on their agreement for the creation and sponsorship of .travel (portions of which still remain secret), just a week later on 12 may 2005 TheGlobe.com purchased Tralliance -- exercising its option contingent on the agreement with ICANN.
TheGlobe.com/Voiceglo.com has been kept from bankruptcy only by a series of convertible loans from "E & C Capital Partners II, LLP", a partnership whose principals Michael Egan and Ed Cespedes are also the principal owners of Florida-based tour operator Certified Vacations. By "calling" those notes and converting them to stock, Egan and Cespedes could at any time take control of TheGlobe.com/Voiceglo.com, its subsidiary Tralliance Corp., its financial captive the Travel Partnership Corp., and (subject to ICANN's approval, if ICANN asserted its contractual right to approve the transfer of control of the domain) the .travel domain.
On 27 July 2005, the .travel TLD was added to the root-zone files, and registration of .travel second-level domain names launched on 3 October 2005.
So far as I can tell, ICANN took no action whatsoever on my request for independent review and stay pending independent review until almost 8 months after my initial request. In December 2005, I went to Vancouver to report in person on ICANN's annual meeting, which was ICANN's only public meeting in North America in more than 2 years. Only then, after I "stood up at the public forum and shamed them into responding", as one observer put it, did ICANN agree that, "we will refer your complaint to an Independent Review Panel", as they were required to have done when they first received it.
Six weeks after this public "agreement", ICANN's General Counsel sent me a bizarre letter saying that my request wasn't worthy of being forwarded to an Independent Review Panel.
In response, I once again asked ICANN to tell me what, if any, procedures they think they have adopted for independent review of their decisions, in accordance with the requirements of their bylaws.
ICANN didn't respond to those questions. Instead they went to extremes to exclude me from the press conferences during their meeting in New Zealand at the end of March, 2006. (Among other things, they claimed that the Internet isn't a legitimate medium for journalism about the making of Internet policy!) But in response to an unprecedented showing of public support for my request for independent review, the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Dr. Vint Cerf of Google, put forward a novel and unsupported claim that a decision made during an earlier secret telephone conference of ICANN's Board, based on a secret proposal, authorizing a contract which (if it exists at all) remains secret, had fulfilled ICANN's obligation under its Bylaws to designate an independent review provider (IRP) and approve IRP procedures through a maximally open and transparent, bottom-up, consensus process of policy development.
Dr. Cerf "recommended" that I contact the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR), to "initiate" my request for independent review. (Which request I had already initiated, in actuality, almost a year earlier.) ICDR isn't really so international at all: it's an operating division of the American Arbitration Association. And none of its standard procedures would fit the requirements of ICANN's Bylaws for independent review.
Moreover, when I contacted ICDR for comment, they said they had never heard of ICANN, and they have no procedures applicable to independent review of decisions by ICANN. And in order to make a request to them for arbitration, I'd have to provide them with a contract which, if it exists at all, ICANN has refused to provide me, in spite of a year of explicit requests.
In June 2007, ICANN posted as a fait accompli links to ICDR as the purported Independent Review Provider, and new procedures for independent review, as well as proposed new rules for (non)disclosure of information. But there was no mention of how, when, or by whom these newly-posted policies and procedures had been adopted, and no indication that the decision-making process satisfied the requirements of ICANN's Bylaws.
As I pointed out in comments and a follow-up, ICANN's "Documentary Information Disclosure Policy" (DIDP) fails to satisfy the requirement of ICANN's Bylaws for the maximum extent feasible of transparency. ICANN published that policy without a formal policy development process, and I have requested that, if ICANN considers it to be a policy, it be referred to an independent review panel charged with determining whether it is consistent with ICANN's Bylaws. That request has, of course, been entirely ignored.
But in the meantime, to test that policy, I made renewed formal requests in 2009 for any records of (1) ICANN decisions to designate an independent review provider or approve independent review policies or fees, and (2) appointment by ICANN of an Ombudsman.
With regard to independent review, ICANN responded in April 2009 with (1) an explicit admission that ICANN has a secret side agreement with ICDR, its claimed "independent" review provider (which agreement, according to ICDR's rules, I would have to provide a copy of in order to initiate arbitration by ICDR), and an explicit categorical refusal to disclose that secret contract, and (2) an explicit admission that ICANN has not, in fact, conducted any policy development process for independent review since the independent review Bylaws were amended in 2002, and has no independent review policies:
ICANN/ICDR Agreement: ... ICANN does not make public its individual vendor contracts. Further, individual contracts of this type are protected from disclosure under the balancing test outlined within the DIDP.... Allowing public disclosure will impede ICANN's ability to negotiate and enter into contracts with persons and entities not wishing to make their business dealings open to the public, which will greatly harm the organization in running its business. Moreover, it is hard to identify what public interest would be served by the disclosure of the contract. This harm/benefit analysis is sufficient justification for nondisclosure under the DIDP. ICANN can, however, confirm the existence of an agreement with the International Centre for Dispute Resolution ("ICDR") as the Board-designated Independent Review Panel Provider.
ICANN does not currently maintain any "policies" relating to the Independent Review process...To be clear, since 2002, ICANN has not undertaken any policy actions nor adopted any policies pursuant to Article III, Section 6 of ICANN's Bylaws to govern the Independent Review Process or the designation of the Independent Review Panel Provider.
With regard to appointment of an Ombudsman, ICANN responded in May 2009 that, "Ombudsman was appointed on November 1, 2004, with the appointment consistent with ICANN's Bylaw V." Since that article of the Bylaws requires that an Ombudsman be appointed by the Board of Directors, and since there was no notice or minutes of a Board meeting on that date, such an appointment could not possibly have been consistent with those Bylaws. ICANN's Bylaws also provide for any initial appointment of an Ombudsman to be for 2 years, subject to renewal by the Board. ICANN didn't respond at all to my request for information about renewal of an Ombudsman's appointment. But a 2-year appointment made in 2004 would, of course, have expired in 2006 unless it had been renewed.
More than five years after my original request for independent review, I still don't know when, if ever, ICANN will actually designate an independent review provider, or put in place procedures for independent review of whether their decisions comply with their Bylaws.
In the meantime, TheGlobe.com / Tralliance is almost bankrupt.
Even supporters of privatization of Internet governance have criticized ICANN's failure to act on my request or allow any independent review of its decisions. Here's what Network Solutions, LLC, said about it in its formal comments to the USA Department of Commerce, 7 July 2006:
To date, however, there is no evidence that this Independent Review procedure is effective at all inasmuch as this mechanism does not appear to have been allowed to work by ICANN, essentially obviating its value as a realistic tool for any challenge of a Board decision. For example, travel expert Ed Hasbrouck initiated an Independent Review in April 2005.... ICANN did not act on Hasbrouck's Independent Review request for 8 months. In a January 2006 letter, ICANN General Counsel John Jeffrey stated that earlier e-mail communications from Mr. Hasbrouck did not "meet the guidelines" for a formal IRP.... ICANN has failed to demonstrate that its [independent review] process is viable. Thus, the amended MoU should include terms that require ... an actual venue for challenging Board decisions. ICANN should be required to institute a formal, user-friendly process for seeking an [independent review]. These changes should include enforceable timelines by which ICANN will respond to and provide a decision on an [independent review] request.
One corporation with a financial stake in an ICANN decision, ICM Registry, has chosen to accept ICANN's after-the-fact and procedurally-improper "decision" to designate the ICDR as the Independent Review Provider.
In an exchange of comments on ICANNwatch.org with Stuart Lawley, the CEO of ICM Registry's, I said this about his company's request:
Stuart Lawley says, "I think we are actually the first entity to actually file an Independent Review Petition. I may be wrong but I think you simply indicated to ICANN that you wanted one and I guess they just pointed you to the ICDR and sat and waited for you to file."
This is not correct. I filed a formal request with ICANN. (ICANN didn't "point me to the ICDR". They ignored me for months, than promised to act on my request, then didn't act.) ICANN's Bylaws provide that an IRP request be filed with ICANN. ICANN claims to have adopted procedures for IRP requests to be filed directly with ICDR, but (1) ICANN has never actually approved such procedures in accordance with the rules in ICANN's Bylaws for such decisions, and (2) even if they had, they would not comply with the Bylaws, which provide for filing of IDP requests with ICANN.
As a business, Mr. Lawley and ICM Registry are, understandably, more concerned with a favorable decision that would allow their business plans to move forward than with the procedures. They may choose to accept ICANN's (procedurally improper) "decision" to designate ICDR, and may choose to follow procedures (not in accordance with ICANN's Bylaws) for filing directly with ICDR, etc. But their willingness to follow those procedures does not legitimate those procedures, negate the claims of other pending IRP requesters, or require others to follow them rather than insisting that ICANN actually bring itself into compliance with the IRP Bylaw by (1) conducting a proper policy development process to designate an IRP provider and approve IRP procedures, and (2) acting on the outstanding IRP requests.
Fundamentally ICM Registry's objection is to the substantive outcome of ICANN's decision, not the process. The IRP request relates to the process, but its main goal is to overturn the substantive decision. Ultimately, ICANN would be able to accommodate such an IRP ruling without fundamental or procedural change.
In light of ICM's commercial goals, the cost of an independent review, even at US$1 million, is small compared to the profits if the IRP rules in ICM Registry's favor. So ICM Registry has little reason to object to the establishment of IRP procedures and fees unaffordable to individuals or public interest advocates.
Fundamentally, my objection is to the process, and my goal as a journalist is change in ICANN's process with respect to openness and transparency. This is much more threatening to ICANN, since a ruling in my favor by an IRP would require major change in how ICANN operates. And I cannot afford, and would not readily "agree" to, expensive procedures. My request is thus much more threatening to ICANN's established secrecy. Perhaps that is why ICANN has been unable to conduct the kind of discussions with me about my IRP request that it has apparently been willing to have with ICM Registry.
Of course, by any interpretation, ICANN has violated its Bylaws by failing to post the ICM Registry request, or any of the other IRP requests, on the ICANN Web site.
After I made this public comment, ICANN posted some documents related to ICM Registry's request, but nothing related to my request or any of the others. As I have pointed out again in more recent comments to ICANN ICANN's agreement with ICM Registry to submit a particular matter to a particular arbitration body, under particular rules, by mutual consent, did not satisfy the requirements of ICANN's Bylaw, and do not relieve ICANN of its obligation to comply with its Bylaws and to act on my request and the other pending requests for independent review. For what it's worth, though, the panel of three arbitrators agreed upon by ICANN and ICM Registry eventually declared that ICANN's actions in relation to ICM Registry were not in accordance with ICANN Bylaws.
Meanwhile, despite public objections, ICANN has amended its Bylaws (by voice vote at a closed telephone "meeting", as usual) to abolish the Committee on Reconsideration and transfer its responsibilities to a new "Governance Committee" -- all of which does nothing to address the problems in the reconsideration process. A few months later, ICANN proposed to rewrite its independent review Bylaws yet again -- but still, as I pointed out, without any promise that it would actually implement its Bylaws or take up the outstanding requests for independent review.
Most recently, in June 2010, ICANN posted a page of what it said were its answers to my "Recurring Questions Regarding the Independent Review Process". In these "answers", ICANN:
But I haven't given up. This is a work in progress. ICANN tries to ignore me, but I'm not going to let the ICANN parade pass by without holding up a sign that says, "The emperor has no clothes." (See my blog and my articles from "ICANN Watch" for the latest updates I haven't had time to add to this page.)
Much of the jargon in the articles linked below may be unfamiliar to readers who haven't been following ICANN and domain name politics. What's needed, perhaps, is an "Internet Governance for Dummies", but so far as I know it doesn't yet exist. I would welcome reader suggestions for other background references.
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around-the-world and multi-stop airline tickets from Airtreks.com


text:
Alcatel 1040 hard reset and Alcatel 1040 soft reset
Alcatel 1040 mobile phone is frozen, can't power on or you have forgotten your phone lock password
- Make sure your battery is not completely used up or damaged
- Remove your battery, remove your SIM card then reinstall them to power on again, if still does not work
- Hold down # key and press Power on/off key for a while to reset the phone
Long press "# key" and "power on key" at the same time in power off mode.
On the screen you will see "All data will be lost, continue?", select "Yes,"
You will see "Formatting flash, please wait." The phone will restart when reset finished.
ALL User phone data: contacts, photos, messages and files, downloaded applications like Java games will be lost permanently.
From the main menu, select the menu icon and select Restore default set.
Another way to restore factory settings is fromt he menu Go to MENU > Settings > RESTORE DEFAULT, select OK using LSK(Left soft key) or OK middle button, and input password. Default Alcatel 1040 password is 1234. If you do not know your phone password, then try the hard reset method above.
A confirmation message should appear "Confirm to restore and reboot" select YES if you want to restore default factory settings.
My Alcatel 1040 cannot switch on
Check the battery contacts, remove and reinstall your battery, then turn your phone on
Check the battery power level, charge for at least 20 minutes.
If it still does not work, please use User Data Format to reset the phone
My phone is frozen or has not responded for several minutes
Restart your phone by pressing and holding the RED power key
Remove the battery and re-insert it, then restart the phone.
If it still does not work, please use User Data Format to reset the phone or
My phone turns off by itself
Make sure power off key is not mis-contacted
Check the battery charge level
If it still does not work, please use User Data Format to reset the phone
Note: As fair as I know there is no ONE TOUCH Upgrade tool for Alcatel 1040 to upgrade software, despite the fact that the user manual refers to it. You cannot use ONE TOUCH Upgrade tool for Alcatel feature phones.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
There is something about eBay, whether it is the thrill in chasing a bargain, the high of tracking down something rare, or the pleasure you get from buying something completely random that you never thought you wanted but now can't live without. I go through spells of addiction with eBay, from searching for the latest Barbie doll or the one that got away, I am talking about you Vera Wang Barbie, to a new cover for my mobile, to picking up supplies to make my own bracelets – I just love that no matter what you are after, whether fashion, beauty or technology, there is always at least one person selling what you are looking for.
Recently I have been working with eBay to try out their new fab shoppable 'eBay Collections' feature, which handily places all the things you are stalking into handy groups. In my case one dedicated to handbags, kitty fashion – because who doesn't love a cat jumper , and even one for all the fashion books I still haven't had chance to add to my book shelves. Basically it is just a cool feature that makes it easier to watch all the items you want to snap up or showcase the pieces you are selling.
I really like the pinnable-vibe of the new feature, anything where I get to curate my own space I am totally in, and it is so easy to do – just search out the products you are after, get scrolling through, and then simply click 'add to collection' on the products you want. It just makes it easier to search out the bargain as once in your 'collection' you can then look through all your wanted items and click straight through to buy. If you don't believe me on how simple it is, give it ago – all you need to get started is an eBay account, and come on everyone has one of those!!!
You will also notice that the profile pages are a little different, less anonymous and much more personal and more like other social media platforms – you can personalise with a piccie, a background and even a few words about yourself – plus you can follow your favourite people, hint hint me, and see what they are adding in their collections. It is fun seeing what other people are crushing on, obsessing over, and desperately trying to track down – trust me you can lose a couple of hours getting inspiration from other peoples collections.
Check out my first 12 ebay collections here and don't forget to share with me on Twitter and Facebook what let you have your eye on.
Sponsored post in collaboration with eBay


text:
Interesting – there is another guy talking about how people should focus their efforts on fixing and improving core libraries rather than writing their own code.
Documenting Emacs also improves your Emacs Lisp skills because you'll likely be reading other hacker's Emacs Lisp code. Most important of all you'll be working on existing code for Emacs rather than making more when it is not entirely necessary to reinvent the wheel.
I guess my last two posts, which have been more self-indulgent rambling than code demonstration, have muddied the purpose of this blog. Let me try and explain where I'm coming from. Then in future posts I can get back to the important thing which is talking about code.
What do I want [from this blog]?
I don't want to become a super emacs coder primarily because the effort required is too great. There is no documentation other than the code that gets me from where I am to there. And to be honest I don't care about hacking on emacs core.
My [unrealistic?] goal is to get more people to write emacs lisp. Not necessarily good emacs lisp but any emacs lisp. Why? Because that leads to more discussion, more libraries, better documentation and more people writing emacs lisp. It is a virtuous circle.
And if you don't get anyone in on the first rung of the ladder, for sure you won't be getting new guys hacking on the core libraries either.
What have I done about that?
I've written about a couple of libraries and APIs that are available and techniques to solve simple emacs problems that are accessible to any programmer, not just one who is steeped in the emacs way.
And I think I've done a pretty good job.
If I want to know how to use overlays, and even what they are where are the best places to look (the answer – my lens which covers a practical use of emacs overlays). If my blog didn't exist, the only option people have to learn about this stuff is to read some fairly dry documentation or the code itself.
What about comint, my favourite library? Again, either my db mode lens or my comint post. An example that is not mine: emacs fu is the best place to learn about custom menus and numerous other little emacs features.
Unfortunately a blog isn't an ideal place for documentation. But I do keep the list of archives up to date. And one day I'll make a half decent index page.
Other places to go for a good introduction to emacs are Xah Lee's Emacs stuff and of course the Emacs Wiki.
Do you want to know why there are so few elisp programmers? Its because emacs is "self-documenting". That basically means "we can't be bothered to write documentation".
Take a look at perl, php, python. The documentation is good, extensive and centralised and there are numerous examples and discussions of how to do things. And perhaps not coincidentally, all of those languages are orders of magnitude more popular than elisp. That should be the model to aim at.
And a good start might be to translate parts of PLEAC to elisp. I'll take a look at that.


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Surrounded by fashion his entire life, Kourosh Babaian always dreamed of creating the world's most phenomenal and desired Evening Wear Collections. He was inspired by the hard work his father put into the family boutique and the exquisite and creative designs of his mother. Now you see these amazing designs here at Diane & Company. Call today to make an appointment for your next event!
Janique Evening Dress, limited sizes and colors available. Please check with us for availability.
Janique Evening Dress, limited sizes and colors available. Please check with us for availability.
In Stock:
- Pink: 6 , 8
- Turquoise: 10
Items available in store
*A style on our web site listed as IN STOCK can usually be shipped 7 TO 10 business days or quick delivery direct from our inventory. Only IN STOCK items are eligible for returns. Items that are listed as QUICK DELIVERY must be Special Ordered from the designer's inventory and can usually be shipped in 7-10 days once we confirm availability with the designer. SALE PRICES ARE VALID FOR IN STOCK ITEMS ONLY NOT SPECIAL ORDERS. SALE PRICES ARE VALID ONLINE ONLY! SALE PRICES ARE NOT VALID IN STORE. ATTENTION CUSTOMERS: Items in this sale category are CLEARANCE items. Many of them have been tried on before, and the condition of these sale dresses can vary from brand new to visibly worn. These dresses and prices are available online only. ALL sales are final. Diane & Company does not issue refunds, returns, or exchanges.


text:
Every year in the United States there are about 2.3 million marriages, and to the members of the North American Bridal Association, a trade organization for bridal retailers and wholesalers, each of those marriages represents evidence of the sovereignty of love in a world generally governed by harsher passions, proof of an urge toward commitment in a short-attention-span culture, and a demonstration of the endurance of traditional family structures. It also represents a marketing opportunity. For every vow exchanged there is, it is hoped, a sweeping gown of satin and tulle to be sold; for every aisle walked, a trailing cloud of veil. Every kiss bestowed at the altar, under the huppah, or before the justice of the peace is, potentially, an occasion for the use of a silver-plated wedding-cake knife or a leather-bound guest book or a frilly lace garter threaded with blue ribbon. The average American bride and groom together spend twenty-two thousand dollars on the day that sees them transformed into man and wife, and each new union is filled not just with cordial hope but with the promise of profit.
How is a bridal retailer to make the most of that opportunity? This was the question addressed at a seminar entitled "Winning Bridal Strategies," which was held not long ago at a semiannual trade show in Las Vegas, at which bridal-store owners from around the country view the latest in wedding-dress designs, place orders, share gossip, and pick up business-management skills. The bridal market was held at the Tropicana Hotel—one of the less luxurious of the city's resorts, its main attraction being not a scale model of the Eiffel Tower or an indoor replica of the Grand Canal but a ticktacktoe-playing chicken against which a challenger stood to win up to ten thousand dollars. For five days last September, the hotel looked like backstage at a Moonie mass wedding. There was a dizzying range of wedding dresses from designers whose exotic names—Janell Berté, Lorrie Kabala, Aurora D'Paradiso—seemed culled from the register at an expensive international school. In display cases, there were enough tiaras to restore every deposed monarchy in history. The endless amount of product appeared, to the untrained eye, deceptively similar and induced, after a few hours, what bridal-store owners call "white blindness." Retailers, however, could discern important distinctions among gowns when it came to stitching, boning, and the ease with which a wearer would be able to "Y.M.C.A." at her reception.
The seminar featured a Tennessee-based motivational speaker named Chip Eichelberger, whose résumé noted that he got his start in the business by working for Anthony Robbins, the best-selling author of "Awaken the Giant Within." "I am excited to be here, and I am challenged to be here," Eichelberger announced, as he bounded to the front of the hotel conference room. He kicked things off by asking the members of the audience—who were, as is typical for the wedding-retail business, mostly women in their middle years—to give their nearest neighbor a back rub. Next, he launched into a peppy exhortation filled with attention-getting, counterintuitive statements.
"People say you should satisfy the customer, but setting out to satisfy the bride is a losing game," he said. The bridal-store owners, who had paid $199 each to listen to Eichelberger, looked puzzled. "Satisfaction is mediocrity. If you set the bar at satisfaction, some people on your team will set out to satisfy. You have to set up a system to exceed expectations. You've got to think, How can I provide a better experience for the bride?" The store owners scribbled down his words. He explained some of the rudiments of salesmanship, and how they applied to the bridal business. "Some salespeople start at the lower end instead of at the high end," he said. "If you get them excited about the three-hundred-dollar dress, it's hard to get them excited about the thousand-dollar dress." A bride's anxiety—about her dress, about her mother-in-law, about the man she's marrying—should be greeted as providing an opening for the self-assured salesperson. "A lot of people are scared going into marriage, and if you can transfer your certainty, that's good for you," Eichelberger said. Stores should send e-mails to brides who came to browse but have yet to buy—"There's a difference between being pushy and following up," he said—and they should consider traditional seduction techniques. "After every weekend is over, hire some kid with a bike for eight dollars an hour and have him ride around and deliver a single rose to everyone who placed an order," Eichelberger went on. "There's nothing wrong with inducing a little reciprocation, if it's done elegantly. I would wager that's why a lot of brides buy from a salon: because the consultant spent so much time with them. You have to help them buy what they really want, not what they need."
Most of all, he urged, consultants shouldn't let what he called the " 'Oh, Mommy' moment" pass them by. "When the bride comes out of the dressing room and looks at herself in the mirror and says, 'Oh, Mommy,' you need to say, 'Let's write it up,' " Eichelberger said. "You owe it to them. Do they really want to go to nine other appointments at nine other stores? Of course, they don't. You're cheating them if you don't say it." Eichelberger also suggested that retailers should work on themselves. "The best gift you can give your family and your brides is your own personal growth," he said. Store owners should involve their employees in bonding rituals, beginning each day with a football huddle and a declared commitment to go out and do serious business. "Motion creates emotion!" Eichelberger said, and told everyone to stand up and punch her hand in the air and say "Yes!"—at which seventy ladies with blow-dried hair stood up and punched seventy manicured fists skyward.
The wedding industry, like the funeral industry, is something most ordinary people don't think about until it's too late not to. Just as with a funeral, preparing for a wedding is an emotionally charged journey into an unfamiliar territory of arcane practices, all of which appear to be the intimidating preserve of experts and specialists. The bride-to-be, whose initial ignorance of what her nuptial role entails is matched only by her anxiety that she play it to perfection, is one of the most assiduously courted customers in America, where, according to a recent survey by the Condé Nast Bridal Group, the wedding business is worth nearly forty billion dollars a year. That figure includes expenditure not just on long white dresses but on all the accoutrements of the wedding: the catering services and floral arrangements and officiants' fees and rental of banquet halls just large enough to seat all the couple's parents' friends but not quite large enough to fit in most of their own. If you add the national outlay on honeymoons and gifts, wedding-related expenditure comes to fifty billion dollars a year. Bridal-industry sources like to point out that the amount that is spent on weddings is more than the national revenues of McDonald's and PepsiCo; it is also far greater than the gross domestic product of, for example, the Bahamas ($5 billion) or Aruba ($2 billion), or of many other island nations to whose beaches the newlyweds are likely to repair after the ceremony is over.
The size and reach of the American wedding industry belies the fact that the bridal business is what Gary Wright, the head of an industry association called the National Bridal Service, describes as "the purest example of an inelastic market." The number of weddings taking place annually has remained static for the past two decades, which troubles bridal retailers. As Wright puts it, "No one yet has found a way to increase the demand. No one ever says, 'This is a great time to get married—the bridal store is having a sale.' " Similarly unnerving to the bridal industry is the changing demographics of marriage. Brides are getting older and are more likely to have been married before, both of which, it is feared, make them less susceptible to the allures of traditional bridal trappings: the "Oh, Mommy" moment may not have quite the same impact when the bride herself is already a mommy.
There are other problems facing the country's three thousand independent bridal retailers, who cling proudly to their mom-and-pop status, even though the stores are usually run only by mom—who, having married off her own daughter, thinks it might be fun to marry off other people's—while pop keeps well out of the way. The biggest threat is presented by a chain store called David's Bridal, which has been greeted by independents with all the enthusiasm shown by small booksellers toward Barnes & Noble or by general stores toward Wal-Mart. David's has a hundred and eighty-one locations around the country and is expanding rapidly: already, twenty per cent of all American bridal gowns are purchased at David's. The chain, which is owned by the May Department Stores Company, is the first store to sell wedding dresses in the manner of mass-market ready-to-wear clothing. Although many independent bridal stores do stock some off-the-rack dresses, the traditional method of buying a wedding dress has required the bride to try on the store's sample gowns and place an order for a new dress, which can take as long as six months to be delivered by the manufacturer and will require alterations at additional cost. David's dresses can be bought in sizes 2 through 26, and retail for an average of about five hundred dollars.
Many independent retailers have decided that their only hope for survival is to emphasize their specialized knowledge, and to persuade each bride-to-be that dressing herself for her wedding is a project that she is about as well equipped to undertake as she is to remove her own appendix. Vows, the trade magazine for bridal retailers, regularly features articles suggesting how such persuasion might be effected. "Pay attention to the verbal and nonverbal clues the wedding party gives," Steve Lang, the president of Mon Cheri Bridals, advises in an article entitled "Seven Steps to Closing a Sale." "You are like a doctor watching vital signs. You adjust the use of selling tools and approach as a doctor would change treatments based on patient response." The undecided bride should be urged to leave a twenty-five-dollar refundable deposit so that the retailer can "continue to research the dress you love" until she returns to the store, because, as Lang points out, "taking money is a much more intimate relationship than just giving a business card to someone."
The average American bride spends eight hundred dollars on her dress, though many gowns retail for thousands, such as those by the designer Vera Wang, who claims to create three new shades of white for every new collection, a feat deserving of a Nobel Prize in Physics. After a bride has been sold on a dress, a retailer should press for further sales: a rule of thumb is that whatever a bride has paid for her dress she should spend over again on shoes, undergarments, jewelry, and other fripperies. The necessity of cumbersome accessories should be explained to the bride, even as she sensibly resists their suggestion. "The most common reason brides don't buy a purse is because they don't want to carry it around on their wedding day," one bridal retailer told Vows. "Admittedly, this is a difficult objection to combat, but you still need to try." Long white gloves should be advocated, even though they present an obstruction to the crucial symbolic moment of marrying. The suggested solution: a left-hand glove slit at the fourth finger, so that a groom can put the ring on his bride without messing up her look.
The romance that the retailer is most interested in promoting is not the one between bride and groom but that between bride and gown. Kleinfeld, the wedding-dress retail store in Brooklyn, greets women who make an appointment with a letter that announces, "We believe the day you choose your wedding gown should be as joyful and memorable as the day you wear it."
One evening last fall, hundreds of young women attended a Bridal Expo at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square. After standing in long lines to enter, they swarmed the scores of booths that were occupied by dress venders, linen and tableware companies, jewellers, tuxedo- and limousine-rental companies, and representatives of every imaginable division of the bridal business. The highlight of the evening was a catwalk show of bridal fashions. But, before the show began, a mistress of ceremonies poked fun at the few sheepish-looking men who had dared to attend. "Have you noticed how, from the minute you put that ring on her finger, your fiancée starts suffering from P.M.S.?" she said. "I mean premarital syndrome. She has lost all interest in things that aren't to do with her wedding day. You've got to understand: She already had the dress picked out, she had the church picked out, she had the music picked out. You were the last element she picked out."
The contemporary conception of the betrothal period as an extended occasion for retail consumption and elaborate event production is a boon for wedding professionals, among whose gloomier number are those who have feared that the traditional American wedding may be going the way of the traditional American nuclear family. Happily, the opposite seems to be true. Apart from a brief, alarming moment in the nineteen-seventies when dress manufacturers stooped to the demands of hippie brides by offering bridal blouses rather than dresses, weddings have only got bigger and grander, as if the extravagance of the ceremony might keep at bay the hobgoblin of divorce statistics.
However, the bride who approaches her engagement with the fervor of a war planner combined with the giddiness of an Oscar winner is, for the bridal professional, not just an opportunity but a liability. "Brides don't want the fun to end," says Barbara Barrett, the owner of the Bridal Mall, in Niantic, Connecticut, her voice heavy with weariness. When Barrett opened the store, in 1993, her typical customer came in for an average of two visits before she bought her dress. Nowadays, a bride averages five visits before settling on a gown.
The Bridal Mall is the largest bridal store in Connecticut, where brides-to-be can choose among about eight hundred different styles of wedding gowns—from enormous, pouffy productions that weigh twenty pounds and look like bead-encrusted pup tents to flimsy slips with spaghetti straps and layers of chiffon that seem less suited to the altar than to the honeymoon suite. Barrett doesn't just sell wedding dresses: her brides can also order engraved invitations, multitiered cakes, and floral arrangements; they can outfit bridesmaids and, from the tuxedo-rental department, intended spouses and their attendants. Barrett also provides, for a fee, services such as pre-ceremony gown storage, with visitation rights included: on busy weekend afternoons, the Bridal Mall looks like a petting zoo, filled with brides-to-be and their friends and relatives, all cooing over the tulle.
For Barrett, as for any bridal-store owner, part of the job's reward is the intangible joy of sending a happy bride into her marital life. Yet the structure of the bridal industry conspires to frustrate both bride and retailer; while they appear to be collaborating on a grand romantic project, their economic interests are very different. The bride is afraid that her naïveté will be exploited; the retailer is on guard against the bride who is shopping but isn't buying. A cycle of resentment can easily be established, which, though it is usually masked by the air of sentimentality that thickens the oxygen in a bridal store, sometimes breaks out into real hostilities. Not long ago, one of the Bridal Mall's customers flung an unwanted garter at Barrett after being reminded of the store's no-returns policy; and last summer Barrett was sued in small-claims court by a bride who contended that the fit of her dress had restricted her ability to dance at her wedding reception, twelve months earlier, a trauma that had persisted throughout her first year of marriage.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, a steady flow of brides arrived at the Bridal Mall. First-time visitors were asked to fill out a form including the date of the wedding: a bride without a date is instantly suspect, since she may well also lack a fiancé. Brides are also discreetly asked about their dress budget. More affluent customers are steered to the "couture room," which is spacious and painted purple and furnished with a sofa and chairs and soft lighting and plates of butter cookies, and where the cheapest gown costs twenty-five hundred dollars. On this particular day, Barrett had one customer for the couture room, a twenty-seven-year-old attorney from New Haven who, on an earlier visit, had found a dress she favored and had returned for a second look with her punkish younger sister (and future bridesmaid), who had black-and-blond-dyed hair. The bride's choice was an enormous gown that looked as if it might have been designed by a cartoonist for Disney: it had a scalloped neckline and a crinoline so wide it would have been sufficient to support a parachute jump. It cost $2,899. "This is the only time in my life I'll be able to wear a big dress," the bride-to-be said. "And this is going to sound gay, but when I was a kid I loved the dresses on 'Gone with the Wind' so much."
Brides with fewer resources are directed to the main salon, where dresses cost from $299 to $1,499. A hang tag is attached to each dress, showing three levels of pricing, depending on whether the bride chooses gown storage or post-wedding preservation services; also attached is a booklet of coupons with discounts on items such as cake toppers and toasting glasses. One function of the different pricing levels is to confuse the bride who is bent on comparison shopping. Barbara Barrett cuts the manufacturers' labels out of the dresses in the main salon, and won't tell a bride who designed her chosen dress until she has paid for it. She also does not permit cameras or video recorders in the store. "We've had people videotaping through their purses," Barrett says. "Like they were from '60 Minutes,' " Barrett's husband, Chris, adds.
Such tactics are intended to discourage brides from using Barrett's as a dressing room before taking their business to a competing store or buying a dress online. "Brides used to come in with their mothers, and their attitude about the bridal consultant was 'This lady is going to help us have the most beautiful wedding, because she is a professional,' " Barrett said. "Now they come in and they're, like, 'Look, lady, I've been on the Internet, and don't tell me you can't go lower than six hundred and nineteen dollars on this dress, because I know you didn't pay that much for it.' This is a scary person to deal with." But because of the chain-store alternative offered by David's Bridal—there are four branches in the geographical area that Barrett serves—Barrett cannot afford to treat her more difficult customers with the sternness she thinks they deserve. Barrett's animus against David's is so strong that she will not allow a garment bag bearing the store's name to enter her shop, even if the bride carrying it is prepared to spend cash on a veil-and-tiara ensemble. "Store owners weren't so down and dirty ten years ago, because there was plenty of business for everyone," Barrett says, bitterly. "It has ceased being a ladies' business."
As happens every weekend, there were, on this occasion, some crises: the bride whose wedding was two weeks off and had been provided with a bridesmaid's dress that was too small (Barrett said they would alter the dress to fit); the first-time visitor who, having undressed in the changing room, informed her consultant that she had no intention of wearing a bra, now or at the ceremony. (Barrett instructed the flustered young consultant to tell the customer that bras are required while trying on gowns, "for health reasons.") There was a cancellation from a girl who had been in five times already to try on gowns, each time with a different set of friends. There was a young bride who, having tried on a Maggie Sottero gown with a beaded bodice and a lace-up back, had been "loaded up," in the parlance of the store, with a cathedral-length veil, chunky-heeled shoes, and a tiara. (Barrett sells between three and five silver-plated crystal tiaras a week, at an average of $249 each. "This is the piece that pays the bills," she says.) The young bride's mother, sister, and cousin all urged her to say yes to the dress, even though her wedding was still sixteen months away. There were lighthearted moments, too, such as the bride who made her selection with the help of two friends armed with paddles marked 1 through 10, like judges at a skating contest. Whenever a sales consultant closed a deal with a bride, she rushed out of the dressing area toward the other consultants clustered at the checkout counter, holding up three fingers above her head in the shape of a W, for "win." A failed sales pitch would end in a sorry L-shaped hand gesture, for "lose."
There was, thankfully, more than one "Oh, Mommy" moment. One customer was a twenty-eight-year-old music teacher who arrived at the store with her mother and sister, needing a dress in a hurry. She'd been engaged for just a week, and the wedding was planned for June, only three and a half months away. The groom was thirty-nine, and also a teacher. "He told the priest who's going to marry them, 'I'm not afraid of commitment. I'm afraid of divorce,' " the mother-in-law-to-be said, solemnly. The bride, her dark hair piled on top of her head and a string of pearls around her neck, tried on six dresses, the last of which had a scooped, off-the-shoulder neckline, a tight bodice, and a full skirt, and was decorated with white lace flowers. She perched on a footstool provided so that a bride who isn't Julia Roberts's height can get some idea of what she'll look like when she's in her own gown rather than a sample, and gazed at herself in the wall-size mirrors.
"This is my dress," she said dreamily, smoothing the skirt repeatedly with her hands, while her damp-eyed mother looked on. The bride said she was thinking of her fiancé. "I am seeing him in my mind and picturing his reaction," she said. "This is the one that will make him forget to breathe."
The big white dress was firmly established as proper bridal wear in the United States by the end of the nineteenth century. Though brides had worn white in earlier eras, it was Queen Victoria's choice of a white silk-and-lace gown with an eighteen-foot train for her wedding to Prince Albert, in 1840, that confirmed the necessity of the costume. The notion that every woman in the American Republic should look, on her wedding day, like a member of European royalty is the principle upon which David's Bridal was founded. "We basically serve the masses at David's Bridal," explains Robert Huth, David's C.E.O., who is based at David's headquarters, in Conshohocken, just outside Philadelphia. The company occupies a handsomely renovated foundry building with stripped beams and exposed-brick walls, a fancy cafeteria, a staff gymnasium, and cubicles and conference rooms whose calm hum is indistinguishable from that of a prosperous insurance office. "In many cases, this is the most expensive apparel purchase our customer has made to date," Huth says. "It may be the most expensive she will ever make. She wants to feel special. She is living her dream, in many ways."
David's Bridal was conceived by Phil Youtie, who, in the nineteen-seventies, was the owner of a small chain of traditional bridal stores in Florida, and one of the relatively few men in the business. (The original David was one David Reisberg, who sold Youtie his first bridal store.) In 1990, Youtie joined forces with his best friend from high school, a financier named Steven Erlbaum, to open a wedding-dress outlet store in a warehouse on I-95 outside Hallandale, Florida. Youtie and Erlbaum sold off-price merchandise at a deep discount, and the only frills were the ones on the dresses. "We did no alterations, and if anyone needed a bobby pin we would charge them for it," Youtie explained recently. Within a year, David's Bridal was buying all its dresses directly from manufacturers in Taiwan, where most American wedding dresses originated then. These days, David's dresses are made not only in China but in Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, where the company established its own factory a few years ago. "The factory has to be spotless and air-conditioned, because you can't have people perspiring all over white garments," Youtie explains. "Everyone looks like scrub-room nurses, and when we first opened in Sri Lanka the workers kept catching colds because they weren't used to the air-conditioning."
The market of brides who were pleased to have an alternative to the rounds of appointments and ordering and alterations offered by the traditional bridal salons allowed David's to expand dramatically over the next decade, and in 1999 Youtie and Erlbaum took their company public for more than a hundred million dollars. A year later, David's was bought by the May Department Stores Company for four hundred and thirty-six million dollars; the company plans to open about thirty more stores a year for the next five years.
Under May's direction, David's has continued an evolution away from its original, bargain-basement image: the new stores are decorated in peach and sage green, and have the bland conformity of an Ann Taylor store. Some special-order dresses bearing the name of the designer Oleg Cassini have been introduced, but the company's primary appeal remains to the budget bride, with her customary tolerance for the rustle of polyester, the scratch of nylon lace, and the sparkle of plastic beading.
The democratization of princessdom promised by David's has, predictably, a substantial business rationale for the May Company, whose C.E.O., Gene Kahn, intends to build the largest bridal business in the country. After buying David's, the May Company purchased Priscilla's of Boston, a high-end company with a chain of ten stores and a good, if languishing, reputation (the company's last big moment was dressing Tricia Nixon for her White House wedding); a tuxedo-rental chain; and a five-million-dollar stake in the bridal Web site The Knot. Information about every David's bride is gathered and tabulated, so that the company's anticipation of bridal needs can be more precisely refined. "Tuxedos generally get bought five to six months after the wedding gown; bridesmaids' dresses, three to four months," says Gary Schwartz, the senior vice-president of marketing for David's. With these data, David's is able to send e-mail reminders to its brides at the appropriate moment, advising them of special offers and urging them to return to the store. "The May Company said, 'Hey, you know what? There are opportunities to influence and generate income from other aspects of the wedding-planning process,' " Schwartz says.
The May Company's intention is not simply to dominate the bridal business. "They bought us for two very solid reasons," Huth says. "One is our ability to grow and be profitable and be a major contributor in our own right. The other is to give them an entrée to a younger customer who is forming a household and needs many of the products they offer." The bride is, in effect, a loss leader for May's bridal registry, which is promoted to David's brides by means of discount coupons and advertising. A David's bride is thus a means by which the department store can tap into her guest list, a much larger pool of potential customers for its cookware and appliances. "The number of brides they can put through our door is a lead generator for all the processes after," as Gary Schwartz puts it. According to the Condé Nast Bridal Group wedding survey, the average American engagement lasts sixteen months, and during this time couples shop for four billion dollars' worth of furniture, three billion dollars' worth of housewares, and four hundred million dollars' worth of tableware. While the bride's fling with a David's store amounts to a brief and heady romance, the May Company is hoping for a retail relationship till death does them part.
Faced with such competition, independent bridal-store owners have been obliged to be imaginative about new marketing possibilities. In particular, they are looking for ways to appeal to the so-called nontraditional bride: divorced brides, older brides, and brides with offspring. To the independent retailer, such customers present a challenge, but one that should be greeted enthusiastically. Vows' tipoffs for recognizing the nontraditional bride included the fact that "these women won't change their wedding dates to accommodate dress orders," and they are dangerously apt "to forget the wedding and prepare for marriage."
Bridal specialists have a vested interest in the high incidence of both marriage and divorce, and speak of their returning brides with an exasperated fondness, like an indulgent parent. In the past, a second-time or third-time bride would generally have a low-key ceremony to inaugurate a new marriage, but such modesty has fallen out of fashion, much to the relief of the industry. Cami Hester, a bridal-store owner in Melbourne, Florida, and a frequent contributor to Bridalindustry.com, a bulletin board for the trade, says, "We have one bride we have done seven weddings for already, and every time, the dress gets whiter and the train gets longer."
The bridal industry has taken to promoting the idea that you don't even have to be divorced to enjoy a splashy second wedding. The emerging phenomenon of vow renewal is, potentially, a hopeful sign for retailers, though it should be admitted that, so far, the trend seems largely to exist in the minds of marketing executives at resort hotels, such as the Don Cesar, in St. Petersburg, Florida, which last year hosted a mass renewal of vows on the beach at sunset for two hundred couples and reporters from the St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune.
Still, bridal retailers know that such events are rare, and that they would be wise to concentrate on actually sending women to the altar to undergo a legally binding ceremony, not least because a satisfied customer may one day be legally unbound. Retailers are aware of the need to keep in mind the question posed in a recent issue of Vows: "Are you reaching the future remarriage market by serving the current generation's brides well?"
On the last evening of the Las Vegas Bridal Market, industry members came together to celebrate a specially orchestrated wedding. Because the market coincided with the first anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, its chairman, Randy Friedman, of the North American Bridal Association, had decided that a fitting way to commemorate the day would be to donate an entire wedding to a Las Vegas firefighter and his bride. Last May, the name of Ken Teeters, Jr., a thirty-five-year-old member of the Las Vegas Fire Department, was drawn out of a firefighter's boot. His fiancée was Destiny Esposito, a thirty-three-year-old editor with the film-advertising company the Ant Farm.
Ken and Destiny were, in many ways, a couple who had made do quite well without marriage or a wedding. They had been dating on and off for fifteen years, and were in the midst of renovating a house they had recently bought together. "I don't think either of us has quite figured out why we didn't get married before," Ken, who is tall and ruddy, said at the wedding rehearsal, as he affably accepted the beers with which his friends kept supplying him. "Hopefully, it won't make any difference to us, being married, because everything works real well as it is. It's really just a piece of paper." Destiny, who has long blond hair and an athletic grace, said, "We've been together forever. We've been engaged a few times, and we've had to put it on hold. But winning this wedding gave us the push we needed."
On the evening of the wedding, a hundred and fifty of Ken and Destiny's friends and relatives gathered on rows of white seats on one side of the Tropicana's large, irregularly shaped pool, while the bridal conventioneers massed on the farther bank, looking on. As dusk fell, a bridal march was struck up on the sound system, and Destiny's five bridesmaids, in dresses provided by Mori Lee, walked down past the hotel's bridal chapel, through the artificial grottoes, past the fake waterfalls, and down to the pool. Destiny, in her donated outfit of an ivory-colored Alfred Angelo gown, a veil by Bel Aire, and Dyeables shoes, and carrying sunflowers and Gerber daisies that had been supplied by Amazon Events, a local décor company, was escorted along the red carpet by her father. Ken, who was wearing his dress uniform, looked on with a grin.
Destiny's sister, Bliss Esposito, read a poem she had written, called "They Won a Wedding," which ribbed the couple for their protracted courtship. "So today here we stand, too late to falter, with Kenny and Des finally at the altar," Bliss read. "They're surrounded by loved ones, some close to tears, and, oh, did I mention the fifteen hundred conventioneers?" Justice Michael Cherry, who had offered his services after reading about the planned wedding in the local newspaper, pronounced them man and wife.
Bride and groom embraced and kissed, and everyone applauded—both those who actually knew the couple and those for whom Ken and Destiny were an astonishing instance of that which is axiomatically impossible: a couple who had been persuaded to wed by the wedding industry itself. It was a very moving moment, and tears of happiness were shed on both sides of the chlorinated depths. ♦