Jacob got engaged last weekend. Yay! Mysteriously, before the wedding plans could even begin, his fiancÈe received an e-mail from Pottery Barn inviting her to start a wedding registry. Except she never signed up with them, or told any other retailer that she was engaged. What she did do was…change her Facebook status.

I got engaged last weekend. My fiancÈe got an email from Pottery Barn this morning congratulating us on our engagement. How on earth did they know we got engaged? I thought maybe a friend signed us up for emails. I know you can sign up for a registry on their site, but I can’t find any way of sending someone else Pottery Barn emails. Maybe Pottery Barn is stalking us on Facebook and saw my fiancÈe’s status…

Unfortunately, the Pottery Barn registry FAQ does not include the question “How the hell did you know that I got engaged?”

I wrote Jacob back and asked whether the future Mrs. Jacob had recently registered with TheKnot.com or a similar site. She had not. She did register with them a few years ago, but never added anything about her engagement. So what’s going on here?

UPDATE: It turns out that the fiancÈe’s Facebook profile is 100% friends-only. Marketers could not have gleaned her new relationship status from the public Internet.

(Photo: RockaWolf)

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