A Whopper of a Way to Pay For Your Wedding
Weddings are a reason to celebrate — for many of us, we’ll only have one in our lifetimes. We invite our family and friends to join us as we and our beloved become, officially, a family of our own. And those ceremonies and parties can be extravagant. Many couples book a venue, hire an officiant, work with a florist for decorations, bring on a caterer and a band, etc. And then there’s the wedding dress and suit or tuxedo, and of course, the wedding rings. And there’s probably a lot more that I’m forgetting. Regardless, all of that adds up. According to U.S. News and World Report, in 2024, the average American wedding cost the couple $33,000.
That’s a lot of money, and many couples forgo the big celebration in order to avoid that price tag. But there’s another way to get married for cheap: find a corporate sponsor. That’s what one couple did in the summer of 2015 —although, it wasn’t their intent, and it wasn’t something that most of us could do.
Why? Because most of us don’t share the name of a fast-food giant.
In the 1990s, a young girl named Ashley King showed up for her first day of kindergarten in New Berlin, Illinois. That’s where she met Joel Burger, another student in her class. It wasn’t long before everyone realized that they combined to make a whopper of a couple, pardon the obvious pun. For example, as CNN reported, “in fifth grade, classmates Joel Burger and Ashley King were asked to stand as student council representatives during an assembly with a motivational speaker. ‘He said our names to the school,’ [said King], ‘and then laughed and pronounced that together we were Burger King.’” The two were friends throughout high school, started dating in college, and then shortly thereafter were engaged. Like most couples do, they started planning their wedding, settling on a June 2015 celebration.
The couple decided to eaned into the unavoidable “Burger King” label as a theme for their nuptials. Specifically, as the State Journal-Register (Illinois) reported in April 2015, “they would love to hand out drink koozies to their wedding guests with their names and the date on one side and the Burger King restaurant logo on the other. They will need the company’s help with that.” So, per Eater, “the duo reached out to Burger King for permission to use the company’s logo on their wedding favors,” likely hoping that someone in BK’s legal department would write a short letter giving a swag designer a green-light to turn the wedding into a low-key Burger King ad. But that’s not quite what happened. When higher-ups at Burger King got wind of this marriage made in hamburger heaven, they decided to do a lot more than just say yes to the dress… er, logo usage. Burger King called the couple up via Skype and gave them the good news: the company was offering to pay for the entire wedding.
BK didn’t cater the affair but they did pick up the tab for everything else — and added some accoutrments for good measure. Per the Today Show, the “wedding featured gifts from Burger King, including the fast-food chain’s crowns and custom mason jars [with $10 BK gift cards in them. Further, the restaurant chain gave each of the groomsmen Burger King t-shirts to wear under their suits; the party dutifully posted a picture that you can see at that link. Per the State Journal-Register, BK also furnished the groom and his groomsmen with Burger King cufflinks and hamburger socks, completing the outfit.
The wedding went off without a hitch — no one from McDonald’s was on hand to object. The couple isn’t the Burger-Kings, though. Ashley decided to take her new husband’s last name and dropped her maiden name. Burger King didn’t seem to mind; per CNN, they wished the couple well, saying “Congratulations, Joel and Ashley on falling in love your way.”
Bonus fact: In 2009, Burger King ran an antisocial social media promotion — if you added a BK-made Facebook app and deleted ten friends from your Facebook network, the King would reward you with a free burger. The offer was a joke, but a popular one; according to CNet, “it was a wild success: the Facebook application was installed nearly 60,000 times in a matter of days, nearly 20,000 Whopper coupons were sent out, and well over 200,000 Facebook friend[ship]s were deleted.” Facebook wasn’t happy about the app, and ten days after it debuted, the tech company shut it down, saying that it went against the spirit of Facebook’s friending ethos.
From the Archives: Where the King Dare Not Go: The town in Illinois that is a Burger King-free zone, except for the fact that there’s a Burger King there.