Marc speaks to the Association of Wedding Professionals

On February 26, I had the pleasure of presenting the "Secrets of Selling to Brides" to the Association of Wedding Professionals. It has been a while since I have attended an AWP meeting and it was nice to reconnect with the long-time members and meet many of the new ones. Once upon a time, I served on the AWP board as treasurer and president. Thanks to Carol Rose, the AWP program chair, for inviting me, and thanks to Larry Glatt for the photograph.

For those of you who are not familiar with AWP, it is a networking organization made up of wedding professionals throughout the Washington area. They have monthly networking meetings that usually include a guest speaker. For information on AWP, click here to visit their web site. (Photo by Larry Glatt).

What to do with all those leads?

So you've received the bride list from the show ... what do you do with all those leads?  Email is quick and free, but much of what you send will get caught by spam filters.  Direct mail can be an effective and inexpensive method for contacting prospective customers, and it works!  

Luckily, getting a high-quality mailing piece can be quick and easy. It's not often that I get excited about a printing company, but I like PostcardMania so much that I want to recommend them to you. We've used them for many printing jobs, including postcards for brides and brochures for potential exhibitors. 

PostcardMania offers design, printing and mailing services, and they can take your project from concept to mailbox. They have competitive pricing, fast turnaround and exceptional customer service. To receive their information kit, visit their web site at www.PostcardMania.com or call 1-800-628-1804.

Congratulations to our Friends at WeddingWire!

WeddingWire, a wedding planning web site, was launched in late 2006 and has been extensively promoted through our shows. WeddingWire brings a fresh approach to online wedding planning and over the past year they have added many new features to their site and traffic to their site has grown dramatically.

This morning, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia announced that it has purchased 40 percent of WeddingWire and will be integrating the WeddingWire planning tools on the Martha Stewart website. To read the entire story, click here to read the press release.

Congratulations to Tim, Sonny, Lee, Jeff and the rest of the WeddingWire team. What a great announcement!

The end of another show season!

We wrapped up our winter show season this past weekend with our two day show at the Baltimore Convention Center.  Our attendance was up from last year and we had a very strong flow of attendees over the two days.

A special thank you goes out to all of the exhibitors!  Move-in went more smoothly than ever as nearly everyone arrived early.  There were very few stressed-out exhibitors moving in at the last minute, and this helped to get the show off to a good start.

This show wraps up our 14th winter season.  We'll take a breather for a few days and then focus on our next show which is April 27th at the Patriot Center.  This show was very successful last spring and more than half of the exhibit space has already been sold.

Thanks to everyone for contributing to the success of our shows!

Just one thing to say ...

If all of this rain were snow, I think that we would have our first-ever snowed out show in Baltimore. Doesn't one inch of rain equals a foot of snow, or something like that?  Well, here in Fairfax it has been pouring all day.  Luckily, the rain will be out of here today and the weather for Saturday and Sunday looks great!  Bad weather is always a concern for our January and February shows, but we made it through the entire season without even a threat of the white stuff.