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Hire a Photographer!

November 29, 2011 By 3 Comments

I hear it and see it all the time: wedding vendors that do fabulous work but have lame photos to show for it. They spent hours sweating over the perfect food display or those gorgeous tissue paper pom-poms hung perfectly from a tree or the centerpieces on top of the perfect linen. Then after the fact, often months after the fact, the wedding photographer, after much arm twisting and begging sends them a file of stunning prints of the B&G, the wedding bands and a picture of shoes! Wow, score!

Now whose fault is this? Well it damn sure isn’t the photographers. They were hired to shoot the B&G and the list they sent them, not your details. (unless they were on the brides list, that is)

Here is a tip: 

Hire your own photographer!

Then they are working off of your list. You should get the images in a timely fashion and have just the shots you want.

OK, here it comes…

I am about to get hit by photographers that forbid other shooters at their weddings. In this instance, get over it. These vendors are hiring their own professional so they get the marketing materials that they need and have every right to own. Besides, you obviously aren’t shooting what they need in a way that helps them. Your client is the bride. You need to find a way to work this out. I mean come on, 9 times out of 10 this outside shooter will be done before the guests arrive and you won’t ever see them.

But WAIT! There’s more!

Hey you photographers just starting out…

I am always asked how you can break-in with the top designers and planners. How about you start hitting them up to shoot their details? Do a good job over a period of time and they may just add you to their roster.

In my outsider, twisted opinion that is a win for everybody.

  • The vendors get exactly what they need.
  • The wedding photographer doesn’t have to worry about shooting for the vendors.
  • The new photographer gets some real world experience and some new contacts.
What’s not to love?
Oh, and I get great images to work with when marketing my clients.
Filed Under: Ask Christine, Back to Basics, Building Your Business, Marketing, Outrageous Marketing, Website Design Tagged With: , , , ,

The Encore Invitation Debacle

October 24, 2011 By 3 Comments

Have you been following the Encore Invitations bankruptcy story? Paul Panonne has been doing a great job on it on his website eWedNewz.com. 

While Paul reports the news, my role is analysis and here is my take on this whole mess.

If you have been watching the trends, DIY is huge and invitations and the entire paper suite are at the top of the list.  Additionally, more and more couples that are having them professionally done are opting for one of a kind, hand crafted invitations from artists like Michelle  Mospens.

My feeling is that as word of the Encore failure and the deplorable way they handled it filters down to the consumer the net effect will be to drive more and more brides away from the large traditional invitation companies and into the waiting arms of the hand-craftsman. Whether those hands are their own or those of a professional artisan.

And why not?

Brides today are hell bent on as much personalization as possible. This is just going to increase an already hot trend.

Let’s take it a step further. If you add this mess to other things like Priscilla’s of Boston and countless other closings, you begin to see a picture being painted for today’s brides that leaves them fearful of ordering anything. They want it in their hand, or they want to find a small, reputable craftsman that cares about what they create that they can build a relationship of trust with.

If you are one of these small craftsman, as am I, now is your time to shine. Build trust, build relationships, show them that you aren’t some large corporate entity that sees business only in spreadsheets and ignores the human quotient.

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

How Would You Like That?

September 15, 2011 By 2 Comments

Are you selling what you want to sell the way you want to sell it?

If you are then you have it exactly backwards.

One of the secrets to any successful business is giving the consumer what they want how they want it.

I read a couple of interesting articles this week that address just this point. One about UPS and one about a consignment bridal salon.You often hear me say to look beyond the bridal world for inspiration so I am going to start with UPS.

paper dinosaurThe most annoying thing about ordering something is that damned yellow slip on your door that tells you that you missed a delivery. ~grrr~ UPS states that residential delivery has jumped by 12% in just one year and that online spending now exceeds $1 Billion. Their customer is now as much the receiver as the sender.  In an effort to give this customer base what it wants how it wants it, it launched a new premium service that allows the orderer to pre-select when the package is delivered when they place the order. Bravo! Check out the full article on Media Post.

 

The other piece was a press release from a consignment bridal gown salon, La Dress Boutique in Atlanta.  Most of the article was touting the cost savings of buying consignment but this paragraph really caught my eye.

Brides and moms love one other benefit of shopping bridal consignment. Shoppers can try on the dress and take it home the same day. Traditional bridal shops have only sample gowns. Brides must order the dress with a 50-100% deposit of the purchase price and wait 4-6 months for the dress to arrive. With bridal stores closing amid a tough economy, this is a risk for any bride.

Yet another example of giving consumers what they want how they want it.

I listen every day to a great wailing and moaning about brides today. So many vendors think that they need to be educated to shop and buy they way that the “professionals’ think they should. Well, I’ve got news for ya’ baby; they are they ones with the money and they are going to spend it however they damn well please!

If you want to survive, you had better figure out HOW that is.

 

Filed Under: Back to Basics Tagged With:

Some Companies Get It, Some Don’t.

September 1, 2011 By 2 Comments

One of the keys to continuing to be successful in business through the ups and downs of culture changes and economic upheaval is to stay focused on what your customer wants. Customers evolve with time, businesses have to as well.

Two very different articles crossed my path this morning and they highlight this better than anything I could do or say to convince you.

(Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff)

 

First was an article in the Boston Globe talking about David’s Bridal’s decision to close their Priscilla’s of Boston division. Started in 1945, Priscilla’s was the epitome of high end gowns for many, many years. It salons were upscale, gorgeous and exclusive. The purchase of Priscilla’s by David’s in 2007 was their attempt to tap that market at the height of the wedding bubble. Unfortunately, the bubble burst, the economy tanked and the culture changed but the business model didn’t. The market for high end gowns sold in a slow paced pampering environment all but dried up.

This quote in the article from Yolanda Cellucci, once the reigning queen of the high end bridal salon says it all

“I used to carry Bob Mackie wedding dresses that cost up to $25,000,’’ Cellucci said. “We had a baby grand piano in the foyer with a pianist. There were models, and we served champagne. People don’t have time for that anymore. Everyone is rushing.’’

Cellucci saw the writing on the wall and closed her famous Boston salon 2 years ago. This was a woman that was smart enough to have an ATM installed in her parking lot. She never missed a trick.

David’s, also a very savvy player, hooked up with Vera Wang to go the other direction. Wang’s moderately priced line for David’s, White has reportedly been a tremendous hit. Know thy customer!

On the other end of the spectrum is Chicago’s House of Brides. I have listened for years to bridal salon owners call HoB every nasty name in the book because they saw the writing on the wall and opened an online store in addition to their brick and mortar operation. Originally opened in 1929, HoB could have continued to plug along with one little store but they jumped online and stayed ahead of the curve.

Today’s press release announced the opening of their 10th store, The Quinceanera Boutique . Something else that the article highlighted was it’s Diva Bridal Boutique, a shop exclusively for Plus size brides.

The Diva Bridal Boutique is the first salon in the nation dedicated to plus size brides. The Diva Bridal Boutique showcases fashion-forward designer wedding dresses exclusively in sizes 18 – 40. All wedding dresses are available in Women’s sizes only including the samples. Plus size brides can try-on dresses in Women’s sizes instead of the industry’s standard sample sizes of 10s and 12s. Diva Bridal Boutique features dresses available for immediate purchase or special order.

Talk about listening to your customer and giving them what they want.

Now you tell me, is it better to continue to do what has worked in the past or to continue to evolve as your customers do?

Filed Under: Back to Basics, Blog, Building Your Business, Trends 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: ,

Shrinking Options.

May 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I attended an open house last night at a very cool, out of the ordinary venue , The Wine Loft.  The thing about events like this is the chance to chat very openly with others in the industry. It’s amazing what you can learn.

One of the topics that came up was the trends of venues moving beyond the use of preferred vendor to the new level of “only” vendors. One very popular local venue1 has made the decision to only allow a certain rental company and a certain lighting company. On the one hand I can somewhat understand the desire to protect this historic property, but I have to wonder if there isn’t more to it. You know, like kickbacks. In those two categories, there are some other very professional options, often at a lower cost.

This decision has the potential to hurt a lot of people in the wallet. Brides for instance. If they want the venue, they have to hire the higher priced vendor or forgo the use of lighting or a tent. Hmmm. The other option she has is to start slashing the budget somewhere else. That has the potential to hurt the florist or decor vendor, the caterer or the baker. How long are they going to be excited about this venue once they realize that the brides that use it are going to have to cut their piece of the pie so they can afford the more expensive lighting company. How long before they stop referring this venue?

It’s an interesting question and I wonder if the venues that are doing this have fully thought out the unintended consequences?

Along those same lines, there is another group of local venues that are charging a percentage of a vendors bill. This, in my opinion, is just crazy. If a brides tab with, say a caterer, is $15,000, someone has to pay the venue 10%, $1500 on top of the rental fee for the venue. That charge is going to the bride one way or another. If the caterer is paying it, you better believe that that charge is getting padded into the bill. Can’t you just see the bride’s reaction if that charge appeared as “Venue demanded kickback”. Yah, I just gulped too. I wonder what  would happen if the venue just tagged the bride directly.

I realize that the economy has sucked for the last few years, but really?

How long will this trend continue and how far will it go before the law of unintended consequences kick in?  Today’s bride is more than willing to look at out of the box options. Just because you have a popular venue, doesn’t mean you can just keep squeezing.

 

1 No, NOT the Wine Loft, they are very cool.

Filed Under: Trends Tagged With: , ,

Game Changers in the Wedding Market

April 8, 2011 By 3 Comments

I talk to a lot of different wedding businesses over the course of a week. I also talk alot about change and our changing marketplace.

When I run across the former that really gets the later I want to jump up and down with joy. You have heard me talk about photographers that are switching focus, florists that are changing to showcase rental and planners that are putting thier talents into an Etsy store with all the things they make for weddings.

Here are two that are jumping into the wedding fray from other industries that might just be game changers.

My Flip Wedding:

My Flip Wedding is the brainchild of Storymix Media. These guys have been doing editing and fusion media for pro-photographers for a long time. Now they are jumping into the retail side.

Couples can rent Flip Video cameras and have their closest friends and family members video their wedding, shower, stag & hen nights or any other part of their celebration. Then they send the cameras back in the pre-paid envelope and let the Apple Certified pros create a highlight reel. It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s really inexpensive and couples are loving it.

I know that videographers are going into convulsions right now. Look, this doesn’t have to be about cutting you out, it is about adding a different POV. It is also an option for the 70% of couples that weren’t going to hire a pro anyway.

Here is a company that read the numbers, found a new solution using cutting edge tech and are poised to be the hot new trend.

Just an example of reading the market and giving them what they want in the way they want it.

Something Borrowed NY:

We have all watched the changes happening in the bridal gown market. Vera Wang saw it coming and hooked up with seemingly strange bedfellow, David’s Bridal.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Brittany Haas last night of Something Borrowed NY. Haas and her business partner met while in university studying fashion, both design and business. As they watched their older sisters and friends search for the perfect wedding gown and grapple with the cost, they listened and learned.

It seems that the newest generation of bride still longs for that high end designer fairy tale gown, but don’t attach the same sentimentality to it as generations past. Yes they want to wear it, but once the wedding is over, they could care less. After the wedding, these same brides tried, mostly in vane, to sell their very expensive gowns. Despite the now seeming abundance of resellers and consignment sites on the web, they had no takers.

As a response Haas is working the plan and building the foundation of what may well be a new trend. Rentals. It may not take off tomorrow or next week, but mark my words, as more and more Gen Y brides enter the marketplace this will become acceptable. They are already comfotable with concepts like Rent the Runway and Bag, Borrow or Steal. When it comes time to decide what to wear on the big day, well, Something Borrowed NY will look pretty good.

Yes, it is a fledgling business in a fledgling concept, but when it hit’s; look out world. Something Borrowed NY is an idea whose time may very well have come.

(I purposely did not include Something Borrowed website because is isn’t ready for prime time, but give them a follow on Facebook and watch these dynamic ladies leap forward?)

How are you changing the game? Or are you content to just stand there and get run over.

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Rants & Raves, Trends, What Brides Say Tagged With: ,

DIY Your Niche

February 14, 2011 By 4 Comments

My friend Sheryl shared a press release she ran across about how Micheal’s is upgrading their wedding section to add more upscale designs. It just so happened that I had the opportunity yesterday to poke my head into the wedding aisle at this mecca of DIY. What I found got me thinking.

It wasn’t the products that intrigued me, but the shopper. Here stood a lovely young women, looking flustered, frustrated and not at all happy. Such is the truth about DIY.

To read the forums, the blogs and the magazines, crafting and creating all the details of your perfect wedding are a pleasure and a joy unspeakable; something akin to walking barefoot through a field and picking daisies. Well, as a life long crafter, I am here to tell you that is about as far from the truth as it gets. Then you go and add a deadline, a million other tasks and the looming presence of “The Biggest Day OF MY LIFE”  and you have a recipe for a major meltdown. I wonder just how many weddings have been canceled by grooms witnessing an overload of DIY?

I know, just make them stop doing it and we will all be a lot happier. Sorry kids, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

But…

You can use it to your advantage.

How you ask?

Trust me, when they finally cry “uncle” the person that picks them up, dusts them off and helps then finish is going to be their hero and they will pay handsomely. You have to have the right attitude about it, you can’t be all “I told you so” you have to be the kindly big sis/brother that just wants their day to be perfect. You will want to explain ~gently~ that you do of course have to pay your staff.

Business success has always been about finding a problem and then solving it. I am here to tell you, this is a problem!

Filed Under: Blog, Building Your Business, Horror Stories, Trends Tagged With: , ,

Look Outside of The Industry for Ideas

February 11, 2011 By 3 Comments

Are you stuck in a rut of only doing either what you have always been doing or just doing what is working for your competetors? What makes you think that the only ideas for the wedding industry are IN the wedding industry?

It’s time to start thinking out side the lines.

Here is just one idea.

I am working with a bridal salon that was struggleing with whether or not to stop taking walk-ins. Brides keep telling her that she is the only salon in town that will take walk-ins and that is what brought them in. Her staff was getting overwhelmed trying to wait on everyone at once. The brides would get antsy waiting and this was putting a lot of pressure on the sales consultants. All in all it wasn’t working and the owner was ready to abandon, rather than embrace one of her strongest selling points.

After a bit of conversation we came up with an idea.

Nobody likes to wait, but with a few accomadations, clear communication and the right reason, we all do it. Really? Yes really. Have you ever been to a hot restaurant on a Friday night with out a reservation?

The restaurant takes your name, gives you an idea of how long the wait is and points you to the bar. I suggested she do the same thing.

They set up a comfy little area with drinks and tiny snacks, stacked the coffee table with wedding books (not magazines, we don’t want them looking at other gowns) and pointed them in that direction.

If they are really busy, she now has a list of nice little restaurants in the area that she suggests and gets their number and offers to send them a text when their name comes up. The bonus with this is that our owner knows that brides get hungry and cranky during a long day of shopping, this fixes that.

It has taken a few Saturday’s to get the system running smoothly but her staff love the idea and the brides still get to just walk-in.

Where can you look to find answers to the issues you are having in your wedding business? What other industries have similar problem? There is your answer.

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Inspiration, Personal Coaching Tagged With: ,
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