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The Changing Face of The American Wedding

June 29, 2011 By 3 Comments

I set out this morning with the intention of doing one of my Trend Tracker post. You know, where I run through about 1000 posts in my reader quickly to see what jumps out. Well today, what jumped out was a little deeper than colors and feathers, circuses and painted signs.

What jumped out was a different way of thinking about weddings, to be more precise, how couples are thinking differently about their wedding.

There seems to be a feeling or yearning for the small town, tight knit community of family and friends. Gone is the urban chic. Even the Mad Men look was no where to be found. I felt transported to a time and place when life was simpler. A time of picnics in the town square, concerts in the band shell, carnivals that appeared magically on the outskirts of town, a time of farmhouses and faded picket fences.

I saw more and more of families pitching in to help the couple realize their dreams. Think of the new American wedding as a modern day barn raising.

If you will notice, I used the word ‘couple ‘ in the 4th sentence instead of ‘bride’. That is another change that is just beginning to emerge. Because weddings are increasingly being financed by the couple, the men are becoming more involved and to a lesser degree, more excited by the wedding planning process.

I have long maintained that more and more, brides are getting their information from blogs, chat and forums. I ran across an interesting thread that helps to explain why. There are several pages to this thread, but this one statement tell the story better than I ever could. Mainstream wedding media, pay attention.

Shortly after getting engaged, a recently married co-worker suggesting I check out Weddingbee. She said of all the wedding websites, Weddingbee was her favorite as it followed real brides on real budgets. (emphasis mine)

Two more  interesting threads concerns the desire of some brides to blow off the fluff and pouf altogether. The first is from Weddingbee and illustrates that despite their desires, brides were into full on planning mode due to pressure from not only their families but also the groom.  In the second thread the Tribe Community manager for OffBeat Bride explains that she really isn’t all that OffBeat. This quote explains why she wasn’t a fit for traditional wedding media:

I don’t do the poetic schmoopy thing very well, but to ME, being offbeat is putting your marriage and relationship ahead of your wedding and being true to the people you are every day. It means that your wedding (ie: a party) exists to honor the two of you, and to celebrate you choosing to spend the rest of your lives together with the people you adore. It’s not a showcase of wealth and taste, carefully tailored to inspire envy, covetousness, and awe in as many people as possible … it’s a showcase of your love

Well said Ang.

More and more I see the face of the American wedding changing in some very positive ways. Oh maybe not positive for the wedding professionals that still yearn for the “More is better” heyday of  2008; but a big plus for our society and for the vendors that change and adapt with it.

 

Oh ya, the Trend Tracker

 

Colors are softer, dresses are softer, finishes are softer, it is like the world is looking at wedding by squinting.

 

 

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Filed Under: Announcement, Trends, What Brides Say, What's Hot Tagged With:

Who Is Your Customer?

June 23, 2011 By 2 Comments

I got to thinking about this today as I was following a fairly heated conversation on a couple of wedding blogs. 

By and large, the customer base of wedding blogs and the wedding print media is wedding vendors, not the bride & groom.

Now think about that for a minute. Any information based business is going to advocate for their customer base. They are going to speak in such a way and feed their readers information that is going to enhance the position of their customers. Again, please remember, their customer is the wedding vendor.

What does this mean for the bride and our industry?

It means that today’s bride is being fed a steady diet that is not always in her best interest. She is being told what to do and what is hot based on what the wedding industrial complex wants to sell. Just take a look at the dramatic rise in staged photo shoots on wedding blogs. Yes, they are gorgeous, I won’t argue that. The problem is they aren’t reality, although they are often presented as such. Most are unreachable by the average bride. I hate to tell you, but not every couple is hipster or shabby chic. don’t even get me started on the wedding gowns shown in the major magazines editorial. I have ranted on that until I am blue in the face.

It is no wonder that today’s bride is turning to alternatives to wedding professionals. As heavily exposed as brides are to over the top weddings they are beginning to believe that they both will not be able to afford a “wedding” professional and that even if they could, said “professional”  wouldn’t listen to them anyway. It isn’t that they are exploring using professionals and deciding against it, they are looking for alternatives first.

Is there an answer? Maybe.

I think that every wedding professional out there has a blog, why not start using it to really advocate for the bride. There is this little thing called Karma. If you as wedding professionals start telling the truth, being an advocate for the bride, showing them that you do offer alternatives  they will come back. Not only that, they will see you as a savior, a bright light in the darkness and they will be your evangelists.

By the way, I plan on cross posting this on Wedding Dish.

 

Filed Under: Back to Basics, Rants & Raves Tagged With: ,

Time for an Attitude Check

June 13, 2011 By 6 Comments

Rant Alert!

I wasn’t sure whether to call this “What’s With All the Drama” or “How Not to Use Social Media” or maybe “You’re Not the Star, the Bride Is.”

I have rarely in all my years in the wedding industry seen so much bad behavior, bad attitudes and just plain misplaced sense of entitlement in wedding ‘professionals’. What is going on gang?

Saturday night a videographer went on social media to complain that the planner didn’t come find him before the DJ announced the bridal party. Um, lose your time line, Bud? Seems to me it was your responsibility to be on top of the goings on at the event.

Also a videographer, did a blog post telling DJ’s that aside from getting the couple’s name right, their biggest job was to communicate with the videographer. Sorry, I thought the DJ’s job was to keep the party going and the couple happy. Am I missing something here?

How about the photographer complaining about the videographers off to the side of the pavilion because they would be in his shots. Um, didn’t the couple hire them to capture the wedding ceremony? Do they not have some right to do their job too?

Then there was the photographer that wasn’t going to shoot the toast because, “I only focus on the bride and groom.” I guess that was also the reason that he walked up the aisle to get his gear during the recessional instead of shooting any images of the bridal party.

Then there was the bridal shop in a discussion about brides buying gowns online from China that thought that we need

A vigorous effort to force government to put
the clamps on the flood of incoming direct shipments

Um, doesn’t China hold a large part of the United States debt. Wow, what a great idea, lets piss off our biggest creditor over an infinitesimally small part of out economy. I know that it is a large part of this salon owners economy, but the government isn’t going to hang itself over it.

What has happened to the professionalism in this industry. I do realize that 3 years of a struggling economy is starting to take its toll on everyone, but this is not the way to handle it. We need a little bit of an attitude check here. You are not the star, the bride is.

Get this through your heads people, I don’t care what you do or how good you are, you are the hired help. We work live events, not staged shoots. The other vendors are not there to make your product or service look better or serve you. They are there to serve the bride, if that doesn’t fit your plan then you are in the wrong business.

 

Just a heads up.

This isn’t just back room fighting anymore, brides and people outside the industry are starting to notice. I read this quote on Salon.com last week

“A modern wedding is an elaborate photo shoot during which two people who love each other very much attempt to escape the photographers long enough to get married.”

 

Filed Under: Back to Basics, Blog, Rants & Raves Tagged With: ,

Marketing to Grooms

June 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

Now that we have established this new dynamic going on in the wedding industry, specifically grooms having more input, how do we use it?

First things first, you have to decide if your service or product is one that is likely to fall in their laps. Some things like gowns and flowers probably won’t. Face it,  you show a groom a bouquet of all white carnations and another of white phaleanopsis orchids and most are going to see two white bouquets. Just about everything else is fair game.

Next, let’s take a look at where he is mentally on this whole thing. He is probably going to have an attitude of “Well heck ya I can do this and I’m going to look damn good doing it! i’ll knock this out of the park.” Underneath all that is doubt and fear at entering an arena in which he has never been. Add to that the knowledge that this is the first really big thing he has undertaken in his budding role as “husband” and the outcome will forever color the opinion of not just his wife but also her mother and sisters. Let’s not forget that he still wants to look manly to his bros. No pressure.

Men Shop Differently

Much of the marketing we do aimed at women can best be summed up as ‘wooing’. We strike her emotions and become her friend. She buys the team, he buys a commodity.

Your first goal will be to put him at ease. A little humor will work wonders here.

You will want to clearly state the benefits of your product or service. Even go so far as pictograms and charts of why you are different. Remember, the nuances that she would see must often be pointed out to the men. Also, men are visual.

You need very clear calls to action. Don’t just list your phone number or contact info. Put in a big button.

Give them clear steps to follow.

  • know your budget
  • know your guest count
  • choose your style (see options)
  • review our menu suggestions (click here for menu)
  • set a tasting
  • book your event

    •  

    Here is the deal, women shop a bit like the students in a Montessori program learn, by seeking out and discovering on their own. Men want a clear orderly list of actionable steps to success. Your goal is to give it to them.

    In the end, your couples are probably going to make the final decision together, but an increasing portion of the leg work is going to fall on him. You need to be ready.

     

    Disclaimer: I am not talking about all men, nor am I talking about all couples or all women. I am in the most general terms trying to help you be ahead of a trend I see on the horizon. As with most trends, this is happening first in the more urban areas with the couples least bound by tradition.

    Filed Under: Ask Christine, Trends Tagged With: , , ,

    Has Our Client Changed?

    June 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

    Conventional wisdom is that wedding vendors market to brides,

    but is that still true?

    I have been tracking a rising trend of grooms doing more of the planning than ever before.1 Time was when the groom picked maybe the band and maybe, just maybe the men’s wear. Other than that, they knew they were better off just staying the hell out of the way. This was between their future bride and their soon to be Mother in Law, both of which he knew better than to piss off.

    That was then, this is now.

    I  have been having a discussion with wedding vendors all around the country and most are saying the same thing: Grooms have more power in the process today and they view it much differently. Men view shopping (and to them that is what this is) as price, contracts and commodities. They don’t see the nuances. They see apples to apples when we all know that simply isn’t true.

    Grooms may or may not be as emotionally invested in the wedding as the bride.2 They are flexing their muscle to impress her by handling it in a very businesslike manner. Determined to get the best price and the tightest contract they are bringing their negotiating A-game. Lovely.

    So how did this all happen?

    Our culture is changing, for one thing. If you have read any of the numerous studies that have come out in the last year or so about the rise of women then you should have seen this coming. By the time women reach the average age of a bride in 2011, they have completed university and begun to establish their career. They have learned the value of team work and delegation of duties. They see their role of wife as an equal partner and the see the wedding as belonging to the couple not just her. Another change is that her career is of high importance to her and she realizes that she has to work very hard to rise in her field. So she does what she has learned to do: she delegates.

    No longer is the conversation, “Honey, please help me decide between these 2 invitations.”  Now it is more likely to be ” Look, you have more time than me, you have great graphic skills, deal with the invitations.” Women have long grumbled about the entire job of wedding planning falling on their shoulders and they are finally finding a way to change it.

    That is wonderful, but it comes with it’s own issues. Men are just different in the way they approach the issue of acquiring goods and services. We as wedding vendors have gotten very good at how to sell to women. Now comes this new creature that we formerly either humored or ignored that is now the decision maker. It is time to hone you A-game and learn to sell to these guys. Your future may depend on it.

     

    1Like most trends, this is most prevalent in the urban centers. Talking with professionals in less urban areas, this isn’t as much an issue…yet.

    2 Notice I said wedding, not marriage; many of them are even more invested in the marriage than the bride.

    Filed Under: Blog, Trends, What Brides Say Tagged With: , ,

    Has Our Client Changed?

    June 1, 2011 By 4 Comments

    Conventional wisdom is that wedding vendors market to brides,

    but is that still true?

    I have been tracking a rising trend of grooms doing more of the planning than ever before.1 Time was when the groom picked maybe the band and maybe, just maybe the men’s wear. Other than that, they knew they were better off just staying the hell out of the way. This was between their future bride and their soon to be Mother in Law, both of which he knew better than to piss off.

    That was then, this is now.

    I  have been having a discussion with wedding vendors all around the country and most are saying the same thing: Grooms have more power in the process today and they view it much differently. Men view shopping (and to them that is what this is) as price, contracts and commodities. They don’t see the nuances. They see apples to apples when we all know that simply isn’t true.

    Grooms may or may not be as emotionally invested in the wedding as the bride.2 They are flexing their muscle to impress her by handling it in a very businesslike manner. Determined to get the best price and the tightest contract they are bringing their negotiating A-game. Lovely.

    So how did this all happen?

    Our culture is changing, for one thing. If you have read any of the numerous studies that have come out in the last year or so about the rise of women then you should have seen this coming. By the time women reach the average age of a bride in 2011, they have completed university and begun to establish their career. They have learned the value of team work and delegation of duties. They see their role of wife as an equal partner and the see the wedding as belonging to the couple not just her. Another change is that her career is of high importance to her and she realizes that she has to work very hard to rise in her field. So she does what she has learned to do: she delegates.

    No longer is the conversation, “Honey, please help me decide between these 2 invitations.”  Now it is more likely to be ” Look, you have more time than me, you have great graphic skills, deal with the invitations.” Women have long grumbled about the entire job of wedding planning falling on their shoulders and they are finally finding a way to change it.

    That is wonderful, but it comes with it’s own issues. Men are just different in the way they approach the issue of acquiring goods and services. We as wedding vendors have gotten very good at how to sell to women. Now comes this new creature that we formerly either humored or ignored that is now the decision maker. It is time to hone you A-game and learn to sell to these guys. Your future may depend on it.

     

    1Like most trends, this is most prevalent in the urban centers. Talking with professionals in less urban areas, this isn’t as much an issue…yet.

    2 Notice I said wedding, not marriage; many of them are even more invested in the marriage than the bride.

    Filed Under: Blog, Trends, What Brides Say Tagged With: , ,