Bridal Shows: When to Go In Your Planning Process

Centerpiece inspiration for your after-party; photo by Joseph Toris

Our recent Trend Talk survey delivered some fascinating comments on what brides thought about the bridal shows they attended. In addition to expected comments — free champagne, free cake, great vendors, pushy vendors, huge crowds, the show sharing their contact information too widely — one comment stood out: “I wish I’d gone later in my planning process.”

So that got me thinking: wouldn’t it be much wiser to go to bridal shows when you’re first engaged –to gather information and inspiration and potentially find some of your vendors — and then go back to additional bridal shows later in your planning process to find ideas and vendors for your… Continue reading

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Bridal Shows: How Many Are You Going To?

 

Gorgeous cake from The Wedding Salon event in NYC – photo: S. Toris

When you walk through the doors at a fabulous bridal show, it’s like walking into a wonderland of grand, arching floral centerpieces made of bold, bursting roses and cascading crystals, tables filled with candy-colored cake pops, tables set with regal china that you know Kate Middleton would have considered. Smiling servers offer you flutes of bubbly or bright cocktails, and gorgeous models glide by in glittery designer wedding gowns. It’s like bridal heaven.

The visual treats never end, and our Trend Talk survey respondents say they love bridal shows because you can actually touch, taste, and smell the amazing samples and… Continue reading

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Wedding Spending Trends: Gift Spending Is Down But Not Out

After helping you create your dream wedding day, you’ll certainly want to give your parents and your bridal party members fabulous thank-you gifts. According to our Trend Talk survey, though, brides and grooms are spending quite a bit less on those presents, though. For parents’ gifts, 2010 spending was $148, and in 2011, that amount slipped to $103 — that’s down 30.4%. For bridal party attendants, 2010 saw spending of $196 total (not apiece!) and in 2o11, only $100 was spent — and that’s down 49%.

Those are some big dips in spending…but does it mean that everyone’s buying their bridesmaids little monogrammed notepads from the $5 store? Or getting parents a frame from a discount warehouse store? Not necessarily… Continue reading

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Wedding Spending Trends: Wedding Coordinators’ Full Packages Are The Choice

Wedding coordinator-designed tabletop, courtesy of Joseph Toris

You’ve read everywhere that the services of a professional wedding coordinator can make your wedding dreams come true, and TheWeddingReport.com‘s new survey on wedding spending shows that wedding couples are not only booking accredited wedding planners, they’re booking them for the Full Package. Start to finish. Full attention. VIP service. In fact, spending on a wedding coordinator’s Full Package was up 39.8% in 2011, leading into this year.

That number is probably surprising to you, since you might think that in these stressful financial times, couples would book — if anything — Day-Of coordination just to get help with the timeline, setup and handling of snafus. But Only-Day-Of was actually… Continue reading

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Do Vendor Reviews Matter To You? Part 6: Wording to Look For

Photo courtesy of Sharon Toris

You can tell a lot by what’s written in a vendor review, but there are some hot-button topics that our Trend Talk survey respondents said topped their list of most important review elements. I’ve pulled some of the top qualities of a vendor and his or her services that came up most often as top priorities, the things you really want to know:

Quality of work. Brides who are paying for a vendor’s service will have a lot to say about what they got for their money. Was that cake a dream come true? Did the table setting look like they spent 5x the money? Were the details as gorgeous as… Continue reading

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Do Vendor Reviews Matter To You? Part 5: Do You Post Reviews?

In the last of my series on Vendor Reviews, I thought I’d address an important issue related to the validity of wedding vendor reviews, good or bad. Simply put: not every bride and groom out there post reviews about their wedding vendors.

They might have had the most dazzling wedding possible, one that their vendors created from a next-to-nothing budget but looked like a six-figure wedding; they might have received celebrity-worthy attention and VIP perks; their vendors may have gone above and beyond, but they didn’t post any reviews. Why? I cringe at sharing this with you, but a bride I spoke to said, “Why? That’s their job to make me happy. I paid them money. Now I’m… Continue reading

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Do Vendor Reviews Matter To You? Part 4 — Does a Badly-Written Review Affect You?

Does the reviewer’s grammar or spelling have any influence in how much weight you give to a negative or positive review? That depends on your personal Cringe-Factor for typos, poor grammar, misspellings, and over-reliance on social media shorthand, like OMG. Some people have a visceral reaction when they see typos, and they’ll close their minds to any posted review, or vendor response, if it’s written horribly.

You might think that we’re all a nation of bad spellers, lulled down by grammar not factoring into social media posts as long as you get your point across in 140 characters or less. You might think that a mess-up of their and they’re…and okay, there is just one of those things we’ve… Continue reading

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Do Vendor Reviews Matter to You? Part 3 – What If Negatives and Positives Are Equal?

Photo courtesy of Vanilla Iced Cakes

When a vendor has 200 glowing reviews and 3 negative, ranting ones, you pretty much know what you can believe. But what happens if a vendor has an equal number of positive and negative reviews? What does that tell you?

In our Trend Talk survey, the very first write-in response really caught my eye: “If it’s equal, then it’s too negative.” A split down the middle means there are enough brides and grooms out there who were unhappyto the point where they took the time to post their disssatisfaction. If those negative reviews were written with a good degree of detail, and those details spell out legitimate things they disliked, such… Continue reading

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Do Vendor Reviews Matter To You? Pt. 2 – Can You Trust Them?

As you read in my most recent post, over 95% of brides and grooms read online vendor reviews to help them assess potential wedding vendors and decide who to hire. Some reviews are packed with details, such as prices, how a vendor went above and beyond, how a vendor saved them money, and also if a vendor was a giant FAIL.

But the question remains: can you trust reviews written about a particular vendor? After all, if a vendor wants to curry lots of business, he or she can ask friends and family to post reviews. The vendor can post his own glowing reviews. The vendor might have interns who sit at a computer and just post review… Continue reading

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Do Vendor Reviews Matter to You? Pt. 1

Photo courtesy of Tailored Wedding Dresses

If you’re going to put your wedding into the hands of wedding professionals, you want to find out as much as you can about them, right? After all, they’re using your money to work their magic, bringing your wedding designs to life. While most brides ask their recently-married and currently-engaged friends who they hired, there are still some vendors and sites you’ll discover that your friends didn’t check out first. There has to be a reliable way to investigate them, to get an inside view of what they deliver, not just what they promise on their sites.

Our Trend Talk Discussions focused several times recently on Vendor Reviews, with our… Continue reading

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