Influencer bride begs for free artwork in exchange for social media exposure

‘Since she shamed your number of followers for your business, you should reply that you only work with real influencers who have 1M+ followers PER platform,’ one Reddit user writes

A wedding shaming Reddit post has revealed a bride who wanted free work in exchange for social media exposure (Getty)

A bride has asked one artist to provide her with artwork for free in exchange for being promoted to all her 250,000 followers on social media.

In a recent Reddit post posted on the “Wedding Shaming” subreddit, the artist shared the email they were sent with the subject line “Inquiry for a Custom Wedding Illustration Collaboration”.

“An influencer bride-to-be reached out to me, offering me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get my work in front of her 250k followers. She won’t be able to make any payments to me though,” the artist captioned the Reddit post.

Throughout the email, the influencer gave a detailed explanation of her wishes to have a drawing of her and her partner in their wedding attire to place in their guest book, in addition to a background of their venue and her bouquet.

However, the Reddit post highlighted the compensation section, which didn’t offer a traditional payment. “I’m a lifestyle blogger and I have over 250k combined followers on Instagram and TikTok. Once the wedding is done, I’ll be sharing your artwork and highly recommending your services to my audience,” the bride wrote in the email.

“And I’m certain that you will be overwhelmed by the response from my followers.” The bride continued to plead her case mentioning that she was working with other vendors who had agreed to provide her and the groom with free services in exchange for social media exposure.

“I believe that your illustration would be an amazing addition to our wedding, and it would be an incredible opportunity for your business to gain more recognition. Last I’ve seen, you have only around 1,500 followers on your Instagram and a business like yours deserves much more,” the email ended.

Influencer bride-to-be begging for a free artwork
byu/Mik_0010 inweddingshaming

After posting, many people took to the comments section to agree that the artist should say “no” to the influencer for various reasons, as some reflected on experiences where they’ve agreed to influencers and were never promoted and other commenters who thought the influencer might be lying about her following.

“Apart from the fact that she’s a complete grifter and you are extremely unlikely to get any business from her followers, I would turn her down based on her grammar alone,” one comment began. “She claims to be a lifestyle blogger but makes several grammatical errors in this email. ‘Every steps’ for example. She is not a good blogger.”

“She is probably inflating her follower numbers, and even if she’s not, she doesn’t have 250,000 individual followers, because those numbers are combined over 2 platforms. Probably a lot of double ups, as well as bots and ‘like for like’ accounts who couldn’t care less about her content.”

Another commenter pointed out that 250,000 followers isn’t as high enough to earn free products for exposure.

“250k COMBINED followers across platforms isn’t even that high for an ‘influencer.’ Since she shamed your number of followers for your business, you should reply that you only work with real influencers who have 1M+ followers PER platform,” they wrote.