Category Archives: Bridal event

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The Wedding Experience: The Only Full-Scale Mock Wedding Event For Engaged Couples

Portland, OR – October 12, 2012 — On October 27, 2012, the owners of MEGA Music Entertainment and Wedding Marketing NOW present The Wedding Experience — A Luxurious Mock Wedding for the Real Engaged Couple.  From 4:30 pm to 10 pm, engaged couples will experience a full-scale mock wedding at The Benson Hotel.  Guests will enjoy a four-course meal, sparkling wine, specialty cocktails, see 40 professional wedding vendors in action, listen and dance to both live musicians and three amazing local and professional DJ companies.  The event is sponsored in part by The Benson Hotel.

 

A groom who happens to own a few businesses in the wedding industry created The Wedding Experience.  Simon Blanco, with the help of his new wife, Meagan Hope Blanco, created The Wedding Experience for couples planning their wedding but who are unsure of how to execute the actual wedding day.  The Wedding Experience will allow brides, grooms, friends, and family who are helping plan a wedding to see how the wedding should flow from beginning to end and showcasing only the most reputable wedding professionals from the Portland metro area.

 

An inherent problem at wedding expos and bridal shows is that the typical 10×10 booth does not allow the newly engaged couple to see the professional wedding vendor in action.  On the flip side, the professional wedding vendor does not have a chance to speak to every bride or groom at your typical bridal expo.  During The Wedding Experience, each vendor will have a 2-3 minute interview during the evening emceed by the event host, Mr. Drew Carney.  Also, the vendor (depending on their specialty) might be taking pictures, executing the plan, creating a bridal look, serving a cake or dessert, up-lighting the event, or providing the wedding programs, etc.  There are makeup artists, hair professionals, bakeries, patisseries, a chocolatier, a wedding dress boutique, musicians, dance instructors, photographers, decor companies, a photo booth, two wedding officiates, and more.

 

The event will begin with guest registration at The Benson Hotel (tickets available for purchase at the door or online).  At 5:15 pm guests will be seated in the Crystal Ballroom to observe a Vintage Barcelona-inspired ceremony.  After the ceremony presentation concludes, guests will be invited to a Great Gatsby-inspired cocktail hour in the Fireplace Lobby.  Guests will enjoy hors d’oeuvres and sparkling wine while mingling and speaking with professional wedding vendors, listen to some great jazz tunes while snacking on the gourmet popcorn and nut bar.  At 7:00 pm, guests will be escorted upstairs to the Mayfair Ballroom to feast on a salad, main entree and an assortment of desserts, cake, and other unique treats.  After dinner there will be a formal mock toast, first dance, entertainment, and dancing.

 

At the end of the evening, The Wedding Experience is awarding one lucky couple the “Honeymoon Package” prize.  At 9:50pm, the lucky winning couple will make their Grand Exit from the Mayfair Ballroom to a limousine that awaits and will whisk them to a helicopter pad where Konect Aviation will give the couple a twenty-minute tour of the City of Roses.  After the helicopter ride, the limousine will return the couple back to The Benson Hotel where they will enjoy a night of luxury and romance in the Grand Suite.  The Suite includes flowers, chocolates, massage oils, champagne, a fifteen-minute serenade on the baby grand piano, and a 2pm late checkout.

 

If you would like to partake in this new concept and bridal event, tickets are available for $99 per couple at Ticket Tomato, http://www.tickettomato.com.  To learn more about The Wedding Experience please go to the website at: http://weddingexperiencepdx.com.  For members of the press please contact Meagan Hope Blanco at weddingexperienceusa@gmail.com.

 

For information on the Benson Hotel, go to www.bensonhotel.com.

 

 

What Is The Wedding Experience? Watch Our New Video & Learn!

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The Wedding Experience is a mock wedding, and not a bridal expo. This is a 5hr wedding starting with ceremony and going through: cocktail, dinner, dessert, and dancing. Eat a full 4 course meal, have unlimited beer & wine, and win prizes for both the groom & the bride. We will also have a guide available online, mobile, and on a native app for iPad/iPhone & Droid. It will have a unique matching system to pick the best vendors for you based on the criteria you fill out on our questionnaire. Watch and experience what this is all about:

More Information:
Simon Blanco
360-771-8745
weddingexperiencepdx@gmail.com

Purchase Tickets October 27th 2012 @ Benson Hotel:
Ticket Tomato - Logo, Ticket Tomato - Logo

The Difference Between An “Event” & Expo

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When telling people about the Wedding Experience they love it. There are so many things that are different with the Experience compared to other events, people have a hard time remembering everything that makes it different. In this list you can see the real difference between the Wedding Experience and your typical show side by side. This way people can make a real comparison and understand the difference.

The key goal of the Wedding Experience is to interact and get more intimate with clients. A common theme found from both the wedding professional and the engaged couple was this: both could not communicate the value of the company & services with a 10×10 booth. Clients wanted to go to a wedding or event to see the professional in action. The business owner complains that the clients will never be able to understand what kind of time and effort they put in to their wedding compared to other “vendors.”

The event is going to showcase the best of the best. The only way that they could be shown in the best way is by letting them do their thing. The clients gets to see them in action, get to hear them talk, and experience what makes them stand out. By the end of the event it’s no longer a questions of who they want, they just experienced the best and have to have them!

Wedding Expos – The Real Stats

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In many industry’s expo’s and show’s are the primary way to meet new clients and drum up new business. The wedding industry is no different, but there needs to be some light shed into the events themselves in order to fully understand how successful, or unsuccessful they end up being. It also matters who is the one getting the success: clients, vendors, or the producer of the show.

Lets start with the stats that producers typically inflate or lie about in order to get vendors signed up, and make their show sound big. Numbers for expos are usually never what they say they are. The reason for this is because majority of shows give their tickets away to improve attendance. The producer of the show can see how ticket sales are doing, and 99% of the time they don’t have enough tickets sold, so they give them away. Many shows (even the most popular & most established) in the area usually give away 1/2 of all their tickets to fill their event. This is terrible for the vendor because this attracts people who aren’t serious, and don’t really have money to spend. If you give your tickets away the guest doesn’t really care about the show because they aren’t invested in it, unlike someone who bought the ticket.

Recently some local shows said that they had record attendance. When you break it down you can start to see the “real” numbers. The producer might state that they had 1000 attendees. Then you ask other vendors, brides, and people who went to the event to check it out, and you hear very different numbers.

Even though a show or expo has around 1000 guests registered, they gave away a quarter to half of their tickets, and so only about half the registered attendees showed up. Out of the half that showed up there were actually only half of those attendees who are getting married. Those brides had an average budget of less than $10,000, so a majority of the attendees cannot afford hiring anyone at the show. Vendors were booking clients at the show, but the ones that got booked had the cheapest prices.

Majority of vendors aren’t getting any inquiries from many of these expos and shows. In fact the biggest problem that vendors voiced about many of the shows was there were too many DIY brides taking pictures and video of the decorations and backdrops. The brides picked the cheap vendors and the other 90% didn’t get anything.

Is this the kind of success that most people are looking for? The whole point of a show or expo is to get vendors bookings that they normally wouldn’t get. It’s great if you are a bride not planning on spending to much because you have smaller budget, or you’re the producer of the show itself making money primarily off your vendor booths. If your a vendor though, you get the short end of the stick.

As a vendor these are the questions that you should ask the producer of a show:

  • Whats your demographic?
  • How are you marketing to them (traditional media, social media, print, online, etc.)
  • How many vendors typically book, and how much do they book?
  • What is your budget for marketing?
  • What is the average wedding budget for the attendees?
  • How many tickets do you give away?

50% Male Attendance At A Wedding Event! How?

The Wedding Experience is going to try and beat a record for the wedding industry right here locally in Portland Oregon. One of the biggest problems that both the bride and the vendor complain about is getting the groom there to the event. Guys hate wedding expos and wedding shows, and the ones that do show up are dragged there by their fiance, and want to leave ASAP. The few grooms that are at shows typically walk around staring at the floor and ceiling and hoping that there will be alcohol.

How do you get a guy to come to a wedding expo/show? DON’T DO A SHOW/EXPO! Put on a real wedding so they can see, taste, smell, and touch what would be at there wedding, and see it set up too! You give a guy what he wants: food, alcohol, Blazer tickets, cigars, money clips, and give him 50% on hotel rooms. The point is you need to cater to the guy, not just the bride!

Look what Simon Blanco had to say about your typical groom here in Portland:

I recently sat down with a groom planning his wedding. He was inquiring about DJ services, and he ended up hiring me. When we were finishing our conversation he asked where to find a good resource for other wedding vendors. I asked him if he wanted to go to a wedding expo and find vendors there?

Oh F*@# no! I would never go to one of those things.

OK, well how about going to an event and not a show or expo? What about a luxurious mock wedding at the Benson where you get to eat a 4 course meal, have unlimited beer/wine, see a huge local act, have an opportunity to win Blazer tickets, cigars, a money clip, and get a chance to win the Presidential Suite that night!

Wait, when is that? I want to check it out!

Getting 50% male attendance:

Marketing to males is one thing that the Wedding Experience is going do different that other shows have just missed out on. By doing this and by also offering prizes that are male oriented they are hoping to get a 50% male attendance. These males would want to be at the event, and would most likely stay the entire 5hrs. Even brides admit that if they go to a show or expo that is 5hrs long, they only stay for no more than about an hour. The Wedding Experience plans on getting both the bride and the groom to the event, and get them both to stay the full 5hrs. With a response like the client above it looks like the producers of the show will meet their quota!