Exhibiting at Wedding Fairs?

Hi,

You don't need to be a well known company. They aren't like craft fairs at all and there isn't much to buy on the day as most people are there to just show off their stuff, take orders, and get their business cards handed out. If you find out about one that is happening in your area just give the organisers a call and ask if you can exhibit.

I have done 2 exhibitions, one small local one where I was the only jewellery person, and the other was pretty big. Both were very worthwhile doing.

Hope that helps.

Depends on what you sell. We do videos and found them to be the single biggest waste of money EVER! The cost to exhibit is insane and with every hotel, venue and church hall doing a fayre every week the volume of brides is just tiny. They always promise 200+ but its more like 50 couples. When there used to be just a handful of quality fayres it was worth it. Now just pointless.

Our money is better spent on online advertising and the likes of hitched. Much more of a response.

But I suppose it depends on what you do. If you sell mass volume items like cards or cakes then you can make a few sales.

IMHO waste of money advertising includes fayres, yellow pages, google adwords and local papers. Hitched and a couple of other, video specialist sites are for us and the simple google ranking.

I rang one tonight and do they up the price because the word wedding is in the title.They quoted me a price that is the same as doing three days at the Town and Country show and I think I would rather do that than a wedding fayre.

TBH I think it depends what you expect. I've done a few, and have always got a couple of bookings from each which effectively means I break even. I do think they are a good opportunity to raise your profile within the local supplier community, and they are a good way of networking and getting your service recommended by other suppliers. I'm a florist, so it's also a great way for me to design a scheme a couple of times a year without any restrictions. If you go for it, the most important thing is to make sure that everyone goes away with your card!

The best wedding fairs and by best I mean big budget advertising which will attract many thousand let alone hundreds will be the best showcase for your work.

Image makers which include photo and video are usually oversubscribed and you need to be really good to stand out from the crowd.

From our point of view they've always been well worth doing, even for the networking.

Small budget show will always be disappointing from a sellers point of view as they are held weekly.

I've not done one yet but I am thinking of doing one. From people I know in the industry who i've spoken to all of them have said it is worthwhile doing them, especially if you want to try and capture a local market.

I went to one a couple of weeks ago to see what was what and I was very impressed with the layout, amount of couples etc and also even more impressed there was no one there in my line of work ? It seemed to be mainly photographers and bridal dress boutiques and a few big names like Pronuptia and certain teeth whitening companies!

I can't offer a personal opinion on whether it's a waste of money but I do agree that yellow pages and the like are pointless. Bridal magazines are good for advertising i've found but by far you are better off trying to get ahead on Google. That's where most of my business comes from.