Hi Everyone!!

I thought I'd just say thanks for all the wonderfull advice I recieved from everyone while preparing for my first wedding show! It was (I feel) a great success! The doors opened at 10 am and we went in with the plan of distributing as much info as possible! We talked to EVERYONE who walked by and ran out of hand outs by 3pm! lol.. (we had attended a fall show to scope out the exhibits and look for tips and found that we didn't even look at a booth unless they talked to us, so we decided we would talk to ecveryone!! lol) It was crazy busy on the first day and we booked a few orders. The second day was a lot slower, the experienced photog next to us said that was normal, and we were super tired so we were a little more lax in our distribution of information and only talked to the brides we thought were truly interested. That way we had more time to "sell" ourselves to them. We booked a few orders that day also! Half the talking and same result.. it was quite interesting! We also had a huge number of web hits on both days and about 25 email inquiries each day about pricing and booked total about 25 - 30 tastings... so it was really great success I think! We also networked with almost all the vendors there and made a few business deals that I'm super stoked about! I will definately do another one but would change a few things... I would bring an extra person, more bottled water, have more dummy cakes (we only had 10 and the big cake places had like 50!) and I will definately bring WAY more handouts! We also collected emails for a draw. But I think next time instead of ballots, we'll go with a form or list because I'm not looking forward to having to go through all the ballots to create my mailing list!!

Thanks again to everyone for all your tips!! It was super helpfull!!

muddpuppy....

I am so glad it was a success for you!!

That's great news! I'm getting ready for my very first bridal show at the end of this month. I'm very nervous and am scrambling to get ready. I was hoping to have 10 dummy cakes for display, but now I wonder if that will be enough! YIKES!

Did you bring contracts with you? When you say you booked some brides, did you have them pay a deposit and sign a contract right there at the show or did you gather their information and contact them later? I'm planning on bringing a large amount of flyers and business cards as well as samples of 3 different flavors. I was just wondering this morning if I should also have a lot of contracts in case some brides want to book right then.

Great news! I'm preparing for my first bridal show later this month also. Didn't the brial show give you the list of names, addresses and emails after the show?

Where did you get your brochure done? How large was it?

What was your introduction line that you used since you said you talked to everyone that walked by?

I think that 10 dummy cakes sounds like alot. How would 50 cakes even fit on a table? I think I only have a 6 foot table. 10 cakes would completely fill up a 6" table. I was hoping to have five to seven dummies and that will take me a ton of time to complete. The last dummy cake I made took me about 20 hours. Do you have any pictures of your booth?

Oh, I also wanted to know how you packaged your samples to hand out.

Wow, I'm doing my first bridal show in February and no way I'll have 10 dummy cakes! I only have one table! I am thinking I might just have two dummy cakes and then a real 3D cake to raffle, plus tasting hand outs, flyers, and my photo album will be maxxing out my space.

Ok.. lol.. I didn't get a broucher done, I got the postcard size cards from vistaprint! They were awesome! I originally ordered 500 but that was not enough. So next time I will order 750 I think. I also got signs and magnets and biz cards from vista print all matching and matched all my booth decor to it... I'll try to add some pictures later tonight... It was way better when we still had the postcards with our prices and info on them... we found that once we had run out of those, we had to write on the back of our biz cards for people....

The show didn't give me a list of registered brides, I cant remember if they're supposed too.. lol.. I'll check. My 10 cakes were fine, but I think I would have liked to have 15 or so.. just to have a bigger example.. I directed almost everyone to my website to see more examples.. The larger booths that had 50 + cakes had different height tables and stands so it was just a wall of cakes in thier booths!

I did bring contracts and invoice forms. And yes, we took orders and deposits right at the show. We didn't give out samples.. I felt I had only a 10 x 10 booth and didn't want it to be full of people who just wanted to taste the cake and not really gather any info or care about placing orders.. I dunno.. Just my feeling...

As for what I said to people...
I tried so hard not to ask "Are you the bride?" "Or when's the big day?" as my opening line.. everyone says that... so I was kinda waving at people and saying "Hey there...Do you need cake?" Or "Have you booked your cake yet?" .... if people were looking at our dummys I'd hand them our card and say "Here's something else for you to carry, as if you need it..."
I didn't say more than a few sentences unless they asked a question, I didn't want the brides to feel attacked!! lol...

Oh!! Another thing... We tried to stand in the isle and talk to people as opposed to in our booth or behind a table... it allowed for more people to come into the booth and look at stuff... also, we could still hand out info to passers by without ignoring the brides who were already looking...

Thanks for all the information. I'm good with the computer but had trouble finding a suitable template for my brochure. I also liked the postcards and think I want to go that direction. How many pictures were on your postcard. That was one of the main problems with the postcards. Most only let you put in one picture.

We didn't put any on the postcards... we went with what was already on them.. it was more to give them some info about pricing and contact info... like a really big biz card with pricing on it.. it was a hit! We had a small amount, like 25 on reserve for the 2nd day and we were handing out biz cards to everyone and giving the post cards to the brides that seemed to be interested and people would see us do that and as for the postcard... lol