Going Bridal
15 Jan 2010 1 Comment
in Weddings
In a previous lifetime, Amanda and I were custom wedding invitation vendors. While we eventually left the wedding industry to pursue our passion for creative fiction and nonfiction writing, we sometimes still receive invitations to attend wedding vendor events and bridal shows. After recently receiving a bridal show invitation, I decided it was time to post one of what I assume will be many pieces about our adventures in brideland. Today, may I present to you, the top three reasons to attend and to not attend a bridal show as a wedding vendor:
Reasons To Attend
- Watch someone who is neither family nor a paid actor stop at the booth, admire the products, and compliment you on a job well done. Same stranger decides to book appointment with you, giving you the opportunity to create art again.
- Invite Erica, long-time supporter and incredible saleswoman to finish out the last few hours of the show. Realize Erica also has an incredible sweet tooth and uses her sales charm to convince the bakery vendors next to us that we’d be glad to take some of their leftover wedding cake samples home with us, thus proving you don’t have to be a bride to enjoy wedding cake for breakfast on a Monday morning.
- Talk shop with some of your vendor friends, especially the dressmaker who made you feel like a million dollars at your brother’s wedding. Can you really put a price tag on a dress that is made to fit?
Reasons to Skip It
- Listen to brides compete at “Bridal Idol,” a part-karaoke, part-marketing “game” that has brides-to-be on stage in the convention center, singing badly, hoping to win fabulous prizes. Hearing their singing attempts makes talking to prospective clients very difficult.
- Hearing the words, “I just want something simple, but elegant,” nine million times in the span of six hours.
- After the show is over, you need to pack up your booth. Get your SUV in line behind the tuxedo rental van, blocking your view. Sit in line so long you decide to turn off your SUV in hopes of conserving gas. Follow the parking attendants’ directions until they lead you into the convention center. Park inside the convention center to load. Help Amanda and Erica schlep the wares to the SUV. Dodge vendors, brides, chandeliers, children, and wedding gowns driving out of the convention center. Turn out the convention center lot in time to hit pedestrian traffic from the Home and Garden show. Watch three plumbers roll a dolly down the road with toilets. Watch a toilet fall from the dolly, shattering into a thousand bits of porcelain three feet in front of your car. Realize any hopes of driving anywhere in the next twenty minutes have just gone down with the crapper.
–Whitney
