Houston Wedding Showcase’s Seminar Review
Posted by Simply Frank | Posted in Search Engine Optimization | Posted on 28-05-2009
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Ever wonder how to effectively sell to more brides at a Bridal Show?
If you’re like me, you probably have asked yourself this question before or how to increase the number of brides that purchase your services after meeting you at a bridal show.
Sonja van Florestein, of the Houston Wedding Showcase, has put together a seminar for not only her existing clients, but for anyone who exhibits at bridal shows. Best of all it’s free and you don’t even have to sign up for her Bridal Show to get all the great information she has to offer.
I am going to give my honest opinion and review to the best that I can. It is not influenced by anyone nor was I asked to do this. I was intrigued by the email Sonja sent and I honestly had no intention of attending her show. I just wanted the free information. After attending the seminar, I was compelled to write this review.
The seminar I attended was held on Wednesday, May 27th at Chateau Crystale. Doors opened at 5:30 pm for networking and the seminar started at 6:00 pm and went until 8:00 pm. She also offers one, today, May 28th, but it did not fit my schedule and besides I wanted to get in early to the information.
The name of the seminar is perfect:
The Secrets of Selling to Brides
If you got her email you could see that she asks a few key questions about Selling to more brides, getting the most out of your marketing dollar, and increasing your sales.
I think she delivered right on target!
The presentation was excellent, very well prepared, and very professional. Two hours did not feel like two hours, they went by fast.
Without giving away all her secrets, here are a few things that I picked up that could definitely drastically increase my sales as a result of attending a bridal show.
- I generated 3 key ideas on how I can stand apart from my competition (no I’m not giving those away)
- I was able to ’see’ the different components that make up a well organized and effective booth. I could see a booth and say it looks good, but I could never put my finger on why or what made it look good. There are some key components that I had not realized before.
- The seminar covered in great detail the importance of advertising and really made me understand how and why advertising works. It made me want to advertise, and that is hard to do, since I have all the free traffic in the world from Google and Yahoo and all the search engines.
- How to figure out how much you are spending per bride, and the importance of knowing that one figure.
- The #1 secret, in my opinion, to effectively sell to more brides at the show. I almost feel like giving it away, but that would be unfair to Sonja, you have to attend the show yourself in order to completely understand it.
I could go on with 5 more key concepts that I learned, but you will not get the full effect until you attend the seminar.
In my opinion this seminar was worth over $300 dollar if you had to put a price tag for attending, however in benefits, it is up to you on how you implement what you learned but you will definitely increase the number of visitors to your booth if you implement the ideas well.
There were over 17 points well covered in great detail. Any exhibitor (me or any other wedding vendor) could easily understand and implement all or any of them into their booth.
The only thing I wish I would have seen covered more in detail would have been “Compelling Content.” They threw that word around a couple of times, and in my opinion that is one of the key factors in selling to the brides. This is just a suggestion that I think could add another dimension to an already great presentation. However, it may increase the length of the presentation a little.
Like I said before, this was a well organized presentation, very professional and inspiring, and many other people would have charged well over $300 to sell that same information. Sonja gave it away for free. In my opinion, she wants to gain your business and your trust by helping you have a better turn out at any bridal show, no matter what bridal show you attend. Who does that? Would you give away your secrets for free, even if your client bought from your competition?
Congratulations Sonja on a great seminar. you can’t beat the price, the ideas presented were great, and if implemented well, you will definitely;
- Sell to more brides
- Get the most out of your marketing dollar
- Increase sales
If everything works out well, I hope to see you at the Houston Wedding Showcase on August 29th. For more information visit their website at HoustonWeddingShowcase.com!
Happy Bloggin!
–
|o| Simply Frank |o|
Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston

I certainly do concur! I went to the one today and met new faces and learned new tricks of the trade to sell & market to brides.
Thanks for the great review and the suggestions. I’m glad that you could make it and that you found the information provided to be helpful. You can make that $300 check out to Marc McIntosh
I am going to a 5pm wedding in Houston this January. What should I wear? Is it okay to wear black or a black cocktail dress?
I don’t know if it’s too late, but I can share my experience in making a news site for my town. We were having a bridal show on Superbowl sunday, part of the promotion was the ladies would go to the show and leave the guys watching the superbowl. I did some research and got together links to some of the bigger vendors, contacted the vendors and was able to post some sample photos of their products. Not only did I have a ton of traffic looking for keywords playing off of “superbowl bridal show” but I got alot of hits off of google’s image search engines for their products; geotagging (listing the location, in this case the city’s name) can work wonders in promotions.
Thanks Mr Photographer…
What is your website? Can we take a look at it?
I must agree with you. But I stray away from Bridal Shows as it seems as though most people are price shopping. I depend on a lot of refereals from past works. It seems to work for me, but more business would always be better of course.
Hey Jim,
Thanks for leaving a comment… People will always be price shopping, that’s the great thing, because it means they are interested in a service, it is up to us the wedding vendors to convert those price shoppers into customers… I have not done a bridal show in years, but not because I don’t believe in them, but because I make a living through online marketing… 95% of my new leads come from the internet and the search engines… the free traffic… So just by that I am already 80% booked for this year…
Thanks for the great review
Great review, and some little hints as to how to get the most from wedding shows. Like several before me I’m lucky enough to benefit from quality search traffic. I tend to geo target more affluent local areas where brides waant my top end packages, this gives me more profit from each wedding.
Cheers
Geoff
FANTASTIC post!!! Will definately read this again!
Great post dude! Do you ever have guest bloggers on your site?
Is there a list of dates for these seminars somewhere?
-Jack
Excellent post, thanks for the tips. Loads of common sense and a few new ideas, hopefully this will help secure more business. Thanks again
This is why I go to seminars – you learn new ideas and trends!
Sounds like a great seminar and well worth the $300! I’ll have to check the site and see if they’re coming to Chicago anytime soon!
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Thank you for the post. I will want to read more from you.
I attended to many seminars like this and I have to agree with everything you posted here.
Matt
This is a great way to promote your business to the wedding industry. Find your market and expose yourself.
I read your article with great pleasure. You have very good information sharing. thanks
really great post! so much informatioin on the wedding industry that will be helpful to many. Thank you
good work
Interesting idea for a seminar “how to effectively sell to more brides at a Bridal Show”, but I know some photographers whom book almost there entire year for photo shoots at one bridal show. So I can see the importance of really effectively reaching brides during and after a wedding show.
I am with you though, online is great. Also I live on an island, so that is what i really have to focus on.
Very interesting review, thanks. The wedding is good business for those who serve them, but sorry that is often overlooked is the fact that for some it’s almost the most important holiday in life.
We have a successful Photography business in the South & all of our business is booked threw our websites. We haven’t attended a Bridal show in years until this past week, I had forgotten how great & productive they were. We really enjoy showing off our work and gave a great presentation , We showed a wall of 30 – 16 x 20 prints and gave away a free engagement session to one lucky winner . I would love to attend a seminar by Sonja van Florestein . Thank You for sharing
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