Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds' wedding photos are about to get significantly less exposure online.
The couple's photos are being banned from popular wedding sites including Pinterest and The Knot as part of a larger decision to no longer highlight photos of plantation weddings, E! Online reports. Blake and Ryan wed at the Boone Hall Plantation in Charleston in 2012.
Plantations have become popular wedding venues in recent years, but, beautiful as they may be, they have a problematic history.
"Plantations are physical reminders of one of the most horrific human rights abuses the world has ever seen," civil rights group Color of Change said in a letter to Knot Worldwide executives, as well as Pinterest, according to Buzzfeed News. "The decision to glorify plantations as nostalgic sites of celebration is not an empowering one for the Black women and justice-minded people who use your site. The wedding industry routinely denies the violent conditions Black people faced under chattel slavery by promoting plantations as romantic places to marry."
While the Knot's new policy will prohibit "language that glorifies, celebrates, or romanticizes Southern plantation history," Pinterest is going further and taking steps to remove previously-posted photos of plantation weddings from the site.
"Weddings should be a symbol of love and unity," a Pinterest spokesperson said, according to E! Online. "Plantations represent none of those things. We are working to limit the distribution of this content and accounts across our platform, and continue to not accept advertisements for them."
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