After starting Life is Beautiful Photography, the next big leap I took was requesting an application for the London Bridal Expo at the Western Fair for the Fall 2014 show. It was honestly one of the most daunting things I had done in business up until that point!
Since then, I’ve done two or more bridal shows a year, in the fall and winter. Somewhere around 13 bridal shows in five years! The design of my booth has changed and grown with me as my photos and brand have changed, and my amazing husband (with a few complaints and expletives) did the best job no matter what I threw at him – from building a wall out of palettes, to building a little living room setting that I absolutely loved. And I’ve always looked forward to doing the shows so much! I love getting to talk to new people – I can talk about anything with anyone and it’s SO refreshing for this little extrovert! Plus, it’s never a dull moment with all of my vendor friends that I’ve typically gone months without seeing outside of a few working hours at a wedding on a Saturday evening.
As the years have gone by, though, I’ve noticed another thing that’s changed, outside of LIBP, has been where my clients are finding out about me before they decide to book me for their wedding. Back when I first started doing bridal shows, that’s how I filled more than half of my weddings for a season, but now – not so much. I’m still shooting weddings but the couples who are booking me aren’t the ones that I’ve met at bridal shows!
When I realized this, I decided it was time to take a look at the bigger picture. Every bridal show needed days, sometimes weeks, of prep work, between designing the booth, creating sample albums and brochures, finding outfits to wear, renting or borrowing trucks to move everything around, arranging schedules and child care and asking for favours… It was SO much more than two, 5 hour days of chatting with brides and grooms. As much as I loved it, it was also exhausting, time consuming, and expensive.
So if it was taking this much time and energy, but that time and energy wasn’t transferring to the couples that were booking me to for their wedding day… You can see where things just weren’t adding up!
That brings us to today. This weekend marks the first time since 2014 that I won’t be participating in a bridal show. Instead I’m home, working away on SO many ideas for this year (all to serve YOU better!), and spending some time with Matt and Ethan (and of course, the cats too!).
To all my vendor friends, and to all the newly engaged couples, heading out to bridal shows this weekend – have fun!!
In the last six years, I’ve learned SO much about navigating a wedding day to get you the wedding photos you’ve always dreamed of, but as much as I want to share it all with you, you’ll probably be celebrating your 10th wedding anniversary by the time I’m done talking! So I’ve put together my top 5 Tips for Flawless Wedding Photos in a super fun email series meant just to serve YOU on this crazy wedding planning journey, friend!
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