Wedding Wednesday: Wedding Expos

I cannot tell you as a bride, how excited I was to attend my first Wedding Expo. It was one of the first things I had planned on doing with my MOH where I felt I was a true BRIDE. I had heard about these shows before so I immediately bought tickets online, excited about attending my first show back in June of 2017. There is a lot of anticipation leading up to one of these shows. They advertise it as a great resource for the newly engaged bride-to-be, from having you connect with caterers, bakers, wedding dress shops, reception venues, rental shops and the like. They do not hold back in telling you about all the Free stuff you are going to get and the all the prizes and raffles that go on throughout the entire event.

But, as a bride-to-be attending my first show, I admit I was disappointed. First, the only runway show they had that day was for the bridal gowns for Alfred Angelo, you know the one that filed for Bankruptcy in July 2017. The dresses were limited and the lack of diversity in designers were disappointing. Side note, all the women who wore the dresses were pageant winners for the state, so not many diverse body types either. Once the show was over, there was an apparent raffle, for a total of 8 items, and the raffled items were for easily budgeted items, like toasting flutes, garters, and thank-you notes.

With about 20 minutes to go visit the vendors who did show up, most were of venues about an hour's drive away or more from the city center. The cake tastings were limiting and most had the same vanilla cake with vanilla icing. As many vendors were bombarded with an abundance of multiple potential customers trying to get questions answered, there was not enough vendors to get a really good idea of what variety is out there. Overall, I felt the experience was lackluster. For the $30 I spent to see the gowns, the vendors and get information, I walked away empty handed. I never utilized any of the vendors who were there and most vendors ignored those brides-to-be who seem to not be "within their budget".

It was the first and last show I attended. While there were plenty of Wedding Expos that circled the city a couple of times, I realized finding a good vendor through the show was not for me. I wanted someone with passion, and I felt the commercialized wedding industry vibe the entire time I was at the show. It felt impersonal and cold. Personally, I felt rushed through to sign with a vendor I had no idea if they were right for me or not. The worst part of it all was my name and number was sold to a third-party vendor that had been calling me daily about a resort getaway (which I had to ultimately block because they refused to remove me from their calling list). While I think these shows have the potential to show the bride-to-be the many wonderful aspects of her big day, I found my show displayed the very reason brides become "bridezillas".