Brides cry foul after contest
Reuters
A row has broken out over the winner of a bridal competition because she is a senior employee of one of the event’s biggest affiliates. The competition is to be aired on Top Billing.
Chanel Ferreira walked away with the top prizes, which included an overseas holiday, a local holiday and a R12 000 shopping voucher, after winning the Wedding Diary Bride of the Year Competition at Cape Town Stadium last month. It is not clear when the insert will be aired.
But some contestants have cried foul, calling the competition “rigged from the start”, after it emerged that Ferreira is a senior co-ordinator for the company that organised the event, Aleit Wedding and Event Co-ordination.
Wedding Diary managing director Carl Wallace said the company was aware of the complaints and had communicated with all the brides. As far as he was concerned the matter was settled.
He denied any unfairness and said the Aleit Group had organised and co-ordinated the event but had no stake in it.
“The judging panel was independent,” said Wallace.
When it became clear that an Aleit employee had entered, Aleit founder Aleit Swanepoel stepped down as a judge.
Wallace said the fact that the winner worked for Aleit was a “complete coincidence”.
In a letter to all the brides, he said it had “come to his attention that some of the finalists are discontented with the results of the competition and feel the judging to be unfair, mainly because the winning bride worked for Aleit”.
However, he said in the letter, there had been no restrictions on who could enter the competition, other than getting married between June last year and June this year.
He wrote: “There is, in summary, no legal basis for the complaints lodged to date.”
Swanepoel said the complaints stemmed from “sour grapes” on the part of one of the brides, and that they had received phone calls and e-mails from several other brides praising the event and the outcome.
“They couldn’t believe the response from the brides who complained,” he said.
“We went out of our way to make it fantastic for the brides, and most of them were very happy with how the event went.”
He had also sought legal advice and had found that everything was above board in terms of the competition rules, which made it clear the competition was open to anyone who wanted to enter.
The mother of one of the brides, who did not want to be named, said because Ferreira was a senior co-ordinator at Aleit, she should not have been allowed to enter.
“I’m not saying my daughter should’ve won. They were all such lovely girls. I just felt that it should not have been somebody who works for Aleit,” she said.
A bride, who did not want to be named, said none of the contestants knew that Ferreira worked for Aleit until after she was announced as the winner.
“She said she was a wedding co-ordinator but she didn’t say she worked for Aleit.
“It was only after the event that we saw for the first time that she was a senior staff member there.”
http://www.iol.co.za/news/back-page/brides-cry-foul-after-contest-1.950813?showComments=true
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