Teaming Up to Produce DVD for DIY Brides

Jacksonville Producers Team Up With Veteran Wedding Planner Susan Southerland
To Produce Wedding-Planning DVD for Do-It-Yourself Brides

DVD available now on Amazon.com

Jacksonville, Fla. May 5, 2008 Jacksonville-based producers Pepper and Kent Lindsey of Lindsey Films and Toni and Gideon Carpenter of Wolf Creek Films recently teamed up with seasoned wedding planner Susan Southerland to produce a DVD designed to help every couple have the wedding of their dreams. The DVD, Susan Southerland’s Just Marry! Wedding Planning Secrets, is the first in a series of planned wedding-related products to be released by the newly created joint venture, Just Marry! Ventures, LLC. The DVD is a virtual how-to guide for any bride-to-be and offers tips from an industry insider for planning a custom wedding without the custom price tag. It is available for purchase on Amazon.com and justmarry.com.

I met Susan while producing Whose Wedding is it Anyway? for the Style Network, says producer Pepper Lindsey. Watching Susan interact with brides and their families made me think that her expert advice should be made available to every bride-to-be not just those with the means to hire a wedding planner. The DVD was conceived to do just that.

Weddings today are often loaded with stress and pressure to over spend, over impress and be over-the-top. Brides are bombarded with images of wildly expensive weddings and messages insisting they host the event of the decade. Our goal with the DVD and our new line of Just Marry! products is to help couples create beautiful, customized weddings that reflect their personality and style and create an atmosphere of warmth and celebration – regardless of budget or income level, says Southerland, president of Just Marry!, Inc., a full service wedding planning company headquartered in Orlando.

The DVD was written and directed by Toni Carpenter, an award-winning writer, producer and director. Her credits include a seven-season run on the HGTV series All in Good Taste. She produced and directed the HGTV hour-long special, Company of Animals Understanding Cats, and launched the initial season of DIY Kids as a director, writer and producer for the DIY Network. Writing credits include Vacation Living, Health Corner, It’s Your Move for HGTV and the syndicated special Southern Living, Our Christmas Memories.

Pepper Lindsey was project creator and also served as producer. Her diverse portfolio spans two decades and includes hard-hitting reality programs such as America’s Most Wanted, Great Vacation Homes with Samantha Brown for Discovery’s Travel Channel, feature films for Miramax, television movies and commercial campaigns. An award-winning commercial and music video producer, Pepper has more than 100 national and regional commercials to her credit and is immediate past chair of the Mayor’s Film and Television Advisory Board.

Award-winning cinematographer Gideon Carpenter served as director of photography. His credits include the upcoming Samantha Brown’s Passport to Great Weekends, Passport to Latin America, Secrets of the International Spy Museum, Girl Meets Hawaii and Great Vacation Homes all for Discovery Travel Channel and At the Chef’s Table and Animal Attractions for PBS.

Susan Southerland has planned hundreds of weddings in cities across the country and abroad. She has been quoted as an industry expert in magazines and periodicals worldwide and recently authored The Planning Pages for The Perfect Wedding Guide, a national wedding publication. She has been featured numerous times on the Style Network’s Whose Wedding is it Anyway? and her wedding advice can be heard on The Wedding Podcast NetworkTM.

Media Contact:
Heather Surface
(904) 588-4140
heather@surfacecommunications.com