Sunday, November 9, 2008

Are you ready for upcoming Bridal Shows??

I love the bridal show season! There is nothing more fun than being a part of the day's event. Meeting interesting people, enjoying the flavor of the foods, Setting up and waiting for the flurry of brides, moms and friends to pass by the booth, talking with other vendors, etc.

If this will be your first bridal show as a bride-to-be, here are some tips:
  • Take along preprinted labels with your name, address, phone number and email address to place in the guest books of vendors, registration, prize drawing cards. It will save you an enormous amount of time.
  • Gathering all the information from a bridal show is great, but when you return home after the show, don't toss that bag on your kitchen counter and never look through its contents again. Take time to organize the handouts into a binder or folder by category. These are local vendors who can assist you in so many phases of the wedding process.
  • Take time to browse the show; if a booth is particularly busy, don't give up. Vendors want to meet you and learn about your wedding needs.
  • Make the most of the day. Bridal shows generally last up to 5 hours. Most bridal shows producers provide a link on their websites to identify who the vendors will be at their event. Take time prior to attending the show to identify the vendors you need to make contact with first. Some even include the show layout so you can locate vendor's quickly. If you are in the preplanning stages of your wedding, your initial vendor booths might be jewelers, reception venues, dress, invitations, photographers, caterers, music, etc.
  • Take advantage of preregistration for your show tickets. Some bridal shows offer in advance purchase discounts for show tickets.
  • Give aways - vendors typically have little trinkets as take aways from their booths. Keep in mind that although these give aways are free, these items had to be purchased by the vendor to pass on to you. Help yourself to one of everything offered as a "please take one" item, but please, just take one!
  • Finally, in these economic times, please strongly consider making your purchases local in 2009. Supporting your local business supports your community and state. As Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."

Occasions (www.occasionsandinvites.com) will be participating in these upcoming shows.

We look forward to meeting you at these bridal shows! You will have a busy day, but it will be great time for all of us. Enjoy!

Mary

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Testimonals from Customers

June 6th 2009

Autumn and Ryan get married on 8/7/09, Hudsonville, MI

Hi Mary!

Ryan and I wanted to thank you for the awesome invitations you designed for us. You made this process stress-free with yourprompt service and helpful advice. You had a wide variety of invitations to chose from that fits every budget. Again, we would like to thank you for providing us with a quality product and excellent customer service!
Autumn & Ryan

Thanks again & have a great weekend.

Autumn

Mary was very great at helping us find the style that we were interested in. Mary was prompt at sending a breakdown of the expenses to expect. We were able to make changes and Mary quickly expedited those so we could receive an updated preview as soon as possible. Our invitations were beautiful and we were so very pleased with our selection and the help that Mary provided for us. We would recommend everyone to use her because of the service that she provided with handling all the ordering, editing changes, and the behind the scenes work that she does. Mary was a true professional, very courteous and extremely helpful to us.

Dana LaMacchia

8/12/08
Mary, with Occasions, knew her products well and showed us many examples of invitations that met our "style". She was good at communicating with us the extra costs, when necessary, and never said "this is final" so we knew the total cost would go up or down. We also put ourselves in a pinch with timing our order and Mary was excellent at making sure we got our invitations by the date we specified at the beginning of the process - even if that meant having to push buttons with the company!
All in all, we did not stick to the budget we had set but we received beautiful invitations. Many of our guests have stated they are the nicest they have seen and feel that they know the "tone" of the wedding already.
We would recommend Occasions to anyone looking for unique invitations that has a flexible budget. We also suggest giving yourselves plenty of time to decide and leave room for editing and proofing - Mary can push things along but things take as long as they need to take to get done.

Lindsay Lee

09/05/09 - Wedding Reception celebrating the marriage of Sue and Vern S.


I had the pleasure in working with Mary in ordering invitations for my wedding reception. I was impressed that Mary provided me status updates and proof changes statuses regularly without ever having to ask her for a status. Her follow up to the customer is wonderful. Her experience in helping me decide between hundreds of styles, colors, etc. was so valuable as there are so many options and choices when purchasing invitations. I would never hesitate to recommend Mary to anyone needing help in purchasing invitations. She is a valuable and knowledgeable resource and took a lot of stress off me as I tackled my list of things to do for the wedding!

Sue Race (now Scheck)