WVU alumna Sam Joneswood got very happily married at Morgantown’s Mountain State Brewery in 2020, wearing a secondhand dress. Apart from the fact that the groom was Joneswood’s high school sweetheart, the ceremony and festivities were “nontraditional,” she said: planned in four months rather than in what she now knows to be the national average of 15 months. She’d never have imagined then that one day she’d speak for engaged couples all across the country.
But today, as a market researcher for wedding website TheKnot.com, it’s Joneswood’s job to be the voice of the matrimonial consumer. She designs surveys that allow her to connect with couples planning their weddings, and she analyzes the data they provide to give The Knot and its advertisers a picture of how wedding culture is trending.
“Because The Knot has been around so long, we have market research studies going back to 2011,” Joneswood explained. “We don’t keep track of the latest wedding Tik Tok trends, but we look for macro trends. For example, I just asked our couples where they went for their honeymoons, how they got there, how they funded the experiences, how soon after their weddings their honeymoons happened. We’re tracking slow shifts in culture, like how some folks at a certain income level now actually do what’s called a ‘minimoon’ or a ‘premoon,’ where they will go get some time away from the craziness of wedding planning.”
When Joneswood first joined TheKnot, she struggled to understand the romance that the wedding industry offers to so many. Now, she said, she’s in synch with the way that “in any
culture, in any era, there have been celebrations. Celebrations are how we mark the passage of time. I absolutely have gotten on board with why someone would want to commemorate this big life stage in a public way.”
That said, Joneswood’s dreams and her plans for the future have long been laser-focused on her professional ambitions.
“I knew from college that I wanted to be in the corporate world,” she said. “I wanted the income. I recognized it was going to be hard work, there was going to be burnout, but I’m very clear that this is what I signed up for.”
Although Joneswood is a Morgantown native, she enrolled at Colorado State University after high school, looking for a change of scene. But within her first semester, she became convinced WVU offered a comparably high-quality education at a steep discount.
“ When I look at the arc of my life, WVU has always been there. ”
— Sam Joneswood
“My dad was formerly a WVU professor, and I grew up in Field Hall. After my mom had been staying at home for several years, WVU gave her a job that allowed her to restart her career, and then she got her master’s from WVU,” Joneswood said.
“I transferred to WVU from Colorado State just as the first Mountaineers Go First campaign rolled out, with branding that featured students who were exceptional. I saw the posters with WVU student portraits on them all over campus, and as a freshman, I was like, ‘That’s going to be me by senior year. I want to be on that poster.’”
After graduating with her marketing degree in 2018 from what is now called the John Chambers College of Business and Economics, Joneswood went on to earn a master’s in data marketing communications from the former Reed College of Media, now part of the College of Creative Arts and Media. A Student Ambassador, she also worked for the Alumni Association, where her responsibilities included compiling the class notes for WVU Magazine.
She said it’s thanks to WVU that she and her husband Kodey Joneswood, also a WVU alumnus, graduated without student debt.
“We worked hard and we made good decisions, but at the end of the day, our financial freedom now is about WVU being affordable. We didn’t have to sell an arm or a leg or our soul to go to college. We own a home, at our age, because of WVU. Not just the affordability of the education, but the connections we made.
“My first job out of college was because of a WVU connection. My husband’s first job out of college was from a Statler College job fair. If I can try and give those experiences to another student, WVU knows they don’t have to ask twice, I’ll do it.”
That sense of loyalty is a big part of the reason Joneswood has been leading the Smoky Mountain Chapter of the WVU Alumni Association from her home in Knoxville. For her work keeping Mountaineers connected, she received the Margaret Buchanan Cole Young Alumni Award in 2021. Then, in recognition of her continued leadership, Joneswood was named to the John Chambers College of Business and Economics Roll of Distinguished Alumni in 2023.
Today, she finds the most compelling part of her career in research to be the chance to watch weddings – and marriage – evolve before her very eyes.
“I’m less interested in, ‘Are you not wearing a white dress? Why did you not wear a white dress?’ and more in ‘What did you love about your dress, that felt so you?’ Gen-Z is one of the most ethnically diverse generations we’ve ever seen, and how the industry adapts to the blending of cultures that’s happening in, say, Jewish-Indian weddings, is interesting to me.
“Weddings certainly aren’t dead to Gen-Z, as the news media often suggests. But while we used to start with marriage and then the rest of our lives fell into place, I’m seeing that younger folks want to have their lives in place first – the housing, the income – before they get married. We’re seeing the order shifting, but at the end of the day, people want companionship, whatever that looks like for each of us.”
