I have now had three days of wedded bliss since all those weeks of frustration and stress finally came to an end on Sunday and we finally got to say our "I dos". I was encouraged by some fantastic people and businesses that helped Shelley and me enormously in preparing for the day. Yet, there were other frustrations that demonstrate common mistakes by wedding suppliers marketing themselves online.
It is no surprise to anyone who has ever walked down the aisle that suppliers charge until it hurts for anything remotely connected to nuptial celebrations. Suddenly, the same chairs you hired for that family barbecue cost 50% more. Everything seems to come with ribbon. Virtually every item comes with insistent suggestions that we will need half a dozen other items as well if we don't want our wedding to be ordinary and unmemorable.
My best man described the pain I was going through as 'death in increments of $200' as each alteration; each additional charge and each added extra seemed to be the same magic number. Need an alteration to the dress? That'll be $200. Need to book the lawn for an extra hour for the ceremony? $200.
Therefore, those suppliers that made life even marginally easier for us, as we lost our minds in a sea of stress and debt, are worthy of praise. Meanwhile, those that had me reaching for the valium need to have a good long look at their customer strategy.
The Cars
At first, we didn't think we would need wedding cars, as our wedding took place almost entirely within the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, only a short distance from the hotel. Eventually, we decided that even that short journey would probably be best in a car, if only to make things easier on us.
Therefore, I embarked on sourcing quotes from wedding car services. I worked down the Google results, clicking on one site after another, systematically sending emails outlining the two very short journeys required.
The problem was that most services offered a full 4 or 5 hour car hire, with plenty of extras such as champagne and rose petals. As we only needed a couple of ten minute car rides, and did not require the cars for the photographs between the ceremony and reception, the usual packages were highly unnecessary. There was no way we were going to pay thousands for about twenty minutes of car time.
The responses I received were incredible. Most maintained that I needed to book a complete wedding package and one told me quite abruptly that what we needed was a taxi, insisting he would go broke meeting my needs. Being advised by someone supposedly experienced in weddings that my bride should hail a cab from the side of the road did not help my mood.
So when Gail from Prestige Wedding Cars responded with a polite, friendly and personal email offering me a budget rate that covered exactly what I asked for, she got my business.It is no surprise to me that they have won 'Best Wedding Transportation Provider' at the Australian Bridal Industry Awards a record four times in a row!
Gail demonstrated that flexibility and friendliness is the best service a business can provide. We swapped emails and phone calls in the weeks leading up to the wedding that were funny, friendly and, above all, helpful. She showed that she understood the stress of planning a wedding and tried her best not to add to my worries. It is such a shame I don't get married again because Gail would be high on my list of first people to call.
The Ceremony
Shelley and I had planned an outdoor wedding to make the best use of the beautiful place in which we live. I have loved Sydney Harbour since first moving to Australia as a child and as neither of us are church people, the idea of tying the knot in a stuffy registry office just wasn't a consideration.
The Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney was the ideal place, providing jaw-dropping backdrop after backdrop to choose from. As you can see from the photos, I don't think it gets better than that.
But an outdoor wedding still requires furniture. A red carpet for the aisle, chairs for the grandparents, a table for the signing of the register and another table for refreshments and canapés. Again, I trawled websites, trying to find the best solution to our specific needs.
Whereas finding the cars highlighted the need for flexibility from suppliers, the wedding furniture demonstrated how so many wedding suppliers have very little understanding of online customer behaviour.
There was no shortage of websites offering wedding services, but surprisingly little that contained any real detail. More often than I would care to remember, each website in turn would promise to meet whatever request I may have - without indicating how - and invited me to submit an online enquiry for a quote.
Without any idea of price or, in many cases, even any real detail of the items available, I was loath to spend hours sending enquiries to every site I visited. Think about it - don't we only really want to source quotes from two or three providers? Any more would be far too confusing and unnecessarily time-consuming - especially when each provider then starts trying to close the sale on their quote by calling repeatedly.
I only sent out two enquiries for quotes - both times to websites that included a detailed price list and plenty of information about the services they provide and the areas they cover. I knew the quote would be reasonable, as I could estimate the potential costs from the price list and was therefore not wasting my time.
Many businesses avoid placing prices on the website in the mistaken belief that, by forcing people to lodge enquiries, they can close a sale more effectively. It's the foot in the door policy - if I get you talking to me, I can sell my product to you. I feel it is more likely they miss out on sales from people who can't afford to waste time finding out information that should be contained on the website.
Here's an analogy; when shopping in a supermarket, wouldn't you quickly become annoyed if every item didn't carry a price tag? If you had to carry each item to the price scanner to find out how much it cost, particularly if you are comparing a number of similar items to make a decision, it wouldn't take long before you gave up and shopped somewhere else.
Hiding your prices does not increase sales. It demonstrates that you are more focused on your experience as a retailer - by trying to keep control over the transaction and forcing an enquiry - than on the users experience as a customer.
If you honestly feel your prices could deter customers from hiring your services, they are too high - end of story. Put them on your site! I can't stress this enough. A website that poses more questions than answers for a reader does not perform well.
And when you are dealing with people trying to plan a wedding, often on an extremely tight budget, these inconveniences can turn potential customers against you.
This is why only two businesses received enquiries from me, because they provided a lot of information on the website and made me feel confident I was close to a solution before I contacted them. In the end, we chose Outdoor Wedding Aisles. They not only provided convenient packages to make the choice of furniture easier, they also offered an additional catering service at a price no one else could match.
They managed to pull everything together very quickly for me and provided fantastic service for my guests on the day, serving drinks and snacks before the reception.
The Reception
The first booking we made was the reception as this had the potential to dictate how everything else would fit around it. An idle thought about cruising the harbour led me to investigate how much a reception on a boat would cost. I was expecting such a luxury to be way out of our price range.
On discovering it could actually work out cheaper than many of the quotes we had received from traditional reception venues, I knew this was the way to go. What turned out to be the cheaper option would still feel far more special and memorable.
The MV Sydney, run by Sydney Princess Cruises, was a fantastic choice that put the final cap on a perfect day. Sonia and Col looked after us admirably and all the staff were brilliant.
Goes to show that it is worth thinking outside of the box and not assuming something won't work.
The Band
Finally, choosing the band was a big issue. So many wedding bands were recommended to us, but on hearing the MP3 samples we would receive, our hearts would sink. Annabelle over at Talent Online was very patient with me as I asked after this band and then that one. She recommended a final couple, one of which turned out to be the band we finally booked.
The Late Set not only provided the exact atmosphere we hoped for, but knew when to bump up the pace into a party. Many of my guests commented to me how much they enjoyed the music, but some of the credit must go to Annabelle for knowing her stuff and organising everything for me.
What's Next?
I could mention those suppliers that added to my stress instead of alleviating it, but I won't. The whole occasion went better than I hoped and the end result is that I am married to a wonderful woman. Therefore, our deepest thanks to those businesses that helped make the day so special.
To those who aren't mentioned, maybe there are some clues in the above observations.
In just over a week, we fly out to the UK and then Paris for New Year. Understandably, blog posts will occur less often and those that do happen may be less about writing or marketing and more about Paris in winter, but I will try to intersperse the personal posts with the usual observations and frustrations of writing when I can.
In the meantime, as previously mentioned, there will be a few posts automatically programmed to appear in the lead up to Christmas that were originally published on my now defunct Christmaswatch blog. Although not always writing or marketing related, I hope they still give you some seasonal cheer.
(Thanks to Kieran for the photos).
