Last fall as I was doing my morning inbox grind, one email with a strange subject line seemed to just jump off the screen. It was titled, "Model Toy Pontoon Boat" and I immediately skipped over other emails to see what it could possibly be about. We cover mini pontoons in our magazine, but why was someone emailing me about a toy? Turns out it was from bride-to-be Roxanne Rockvam. She fully admitted in her email that it was an unusual request, but she was in dire need of a model toy-sized pontoon boat.
Why the need? Wasn't it obvious: she was getting married! Since I wasn't following her line of thinking, I took the bait and got a little more information from here.
"I'm getting married in December at Disney World [in Florida] and my fiancé and I have a strange sense of humor," she explained in her email. "The cake we (I) like is this two tier with Cinderella's castle on the one side, with a bridge to the other side where usually prince charming and Cinderella are making their escape. The only thing is the figurine is super ugly so we want to put a cop car on the island like it's going to bust the party at the castle and a pontoon boat under the bridge."
Uh.ooookay. I'll fully admit that I didn't quite see the vision on this one, but at the same time I wanted to help the bride with her search. She knew exactly what she wanted and so I turned to the largest group of online pontoon enthusiasts I know, the members of the PDB Forum. Ideas and website links instantly flooded in off the forum, which of course made Rockvam extremely happy. She was very appreciative, and to be honest, I didn't give it much thought after I wished her good luck and a happy marriage.
Fast forward to this spring when once again an usual subject line caught my eye while scrolling through emails. Why would someone send me an email with the subject "Wedding Cake Photos," I griped under my breath. And why didn't my spam filter catch it? Then it finally clicked in and I realized Rockvam had followed up at my request with an email message of how her day went with wedding cake photos. After seeing the photos (see the letters to the editor section on the next page for the full display of the cake), her request didn't seem so odd and I actually liked what she had come up with for her wedding cake. To top it off, she even gave a plug to her dad's Minnesota pontoon rental business by including Rockvam Boat Yard's name and phone number on the miniature pontoon logs. And just to take it one step further, she placed rental brochures for Rockvam Boat Yard on the table by the cake. When I asked her about the brochures that were in the photos she was quick to remind me that she has an odd sense of humor.
