Amanda and I were married in October of 2011, well before Cherish was a conceptual brand or company. On the morning of our wedding we wrote a letter to each other expressing our love and commitment to one another and then sealed that letter, along with a bottle of wine, to be opened up at our 10 year anniversary or if our relationship was ever “on the rocks”. Cherish now provides a platform to create the digital equivalent to those letters, allowing bride and groom to record a heartfelt video on the day of their wedding to be safeguarded and delivered on a future anniversary of their choosing. (These digital expressions of love shared with someone inside of Cherish are called “Hugs”)

Another inspiration from my wedding came from two of my greatest friends, Mike & Patrick. As a gift they gave us a handheld video recorder preloaded with sentiments recorded at our wedding from all of our family and friends who were there. The recording device was a nice gift, but the content on it was a priceless gift. Cherish allows Bride and Groom to invite guests to send them a Hug on their big day, or guests can prerecord Hugs to be unlocked the day of the wedding or even on the Honeymoon (like we did with our video recorder). These videos take us back to the day of our wedding to experience the love and excitement our closest relationships wanted to share. Especially magical is the message recorded by Amanda’s mom, who passed just a few years later.

Our intention with these foundational blog posts is to share both the inspiration for Cherish, as well as a picture of what will likely be it’s uses that have the greatest impact. As we have reviewed and played with possible uses for Cherish, weddings have come up again and again as a quintessential event to leverage this technology. Not only are they events and memories couples look back on for decades, but weddings are filled with all of your most cherished relationships showing up and providing tremendous amounts of love and support. It’s the perfect time to capture the energy and love you have for one another, as well as the love and commitment you are declaring for a new spouse. While there are many different ways to use technology to capture and safeguard moments and messages from your wedding day (google drive, social media apps… etc), managing and organizing the project and the data are complicated enough that it prevents most people from doing it. As a core function of Cherish, the simplicity, messaging, storage, and organization of these moments make them far more likely to be captured, safeguarded, and treasured.

Cherish’s applicability to weddings extends beyond these two core concepts to include:
* Bride and Groom sending pre-recording Hugs to one another to be opened on their wedding day
* A safe and intentional digital space to upload and store your favorite videos or pictures for future accessibility in a “Wedding Vault”
* Groomsman, Bridesmaids, and immediate family sending locked Hugs that unlock on their 1 year anniversary
* Bride and Groom creating a Hug together meant to be delivered to their [future] children on their wedding day

We believe there are countless other ways to leverage Cherish around a wedding to deepen the relationships that matter most and we are excited to hear from our users as to what those ways will be.

-Peter