How to ensure your Bridal Show Booth is a Major Success
You Guys! This past weekend, I completed my FIRST BRIDAL SHOW in Columbia, South Carolina and my wedding rental sign booth won an award! After posting on Instagram, I had quite a number of you message me asking for Tips and Suggestions of how to go about setting up and running a calligraphy/hand lettering booth at a bridal show, so I figured I’d put everything together for you in a blog post. We had such a great time and I can’t wait to provide signage to SO MANY NEW BRIDES because of our time well spent yesterday. TRUST ME, I know how much of an investment it is to reserve a booth at a bridal show so hopefully, the following will help you ensure your money is a well-spent investment into your business too! If you have any questions or perhaps are looking to market a different service in your business, i’m happy to brainstorm with you! Simply DM me over on our INSTAGRAM Page.
UNIFORMS - Decide what you want your team to be wearing that day. Do you have T-shirts with your logo on them? Do you want them to wear a specific color that matches your branding? Decide what you want everyone to wear and communicate that to your team. (Tip: Make sure your team wears COMFORTABLE shoes. Hours on your feet on that hard concrete floor can be BRUTAL!) Also, go ahead and decide what you are going to do regarding COVID Restrictions. Is the Bridal show or Venue hosting the the bridal show enforcing masks? Look at your information packet and decide. Are you wearing masks? If so, do you want them to be a specific color?
BACKDROP AND TABLE - Really make yourself stand out by changing the color of the curtain backdrop. The bridal show we completed this past weekend came with black backdrops. We called the rental company sponsoring the show and paid an extra $60 to change that backdrop to WHITE to match our brand aesthetic which really helped us stand out on our row. We were the ONLY booth that changed the backdrop. With the number of people we had stopping, I’d say it was WELL worth the $60. BANNER: if you don’t already have a big banner with your logo on it, MAKE ONE :) You will hang this over your backdrop to let everyone know who you are. TABLECLOTH: I already had a tablecloth with my logo on it from a pop-up shop I previously did. If you don’t, the banner should do the trick, just bring a tablecloth that matches your branding. Most of the time, the bridal show will give you an option to rent a table and chairs from them, I opted to bring my own, because I knew the tablecloth fit my 8 ft table perfectly!
WHAT TO DISPLAY - Nothing is WORSE than someone walking by your booth and having NO IDEA what you do. I chose my two “flashiest” mirrors and used them to display right at the front of my booth. I wrote on them EXACTLY what I did: “RENT ME for your WEDDING DAY!” with some popular rental signs: Welcome Sign, Full Seating Chart, Bar Signage, etc. to really get their brains going on what they may need for their wedding day. On the two signs behind those as you enter my wedding sign booth, I displayed two mirrors and used them as actual examples. I did a welcome sign and a signature cocktail sign (Display signage that you’d actually want to get hired for! This is super important!) On the table behind that, I displayed a sign with my VENMO QR Code (You can grab this screenshot directly from your Venmo account!), a sign with my Instagram handle and website address, and 2 mirrors. One Mirror I used as a “DONT WAIT! Our Calendar is Filling up Fast Sign!” and the other I used for our GIVEAWAY (more on this below)! AS A TIP: Make sure to use signs of different colors if you have them: some people prefer silver over gold and vice versa so you want to make sure you display a variety of your rental collection. As an added bonus, I wanted people to really see what rental signage would look like in person on their wedding day, so I purchased 2 canvases and used photography from previous sign jobs, and leaned them up against the easels. This really helped to add some color to our booth (against our Black and White everything) and also helped bring the vision to life for potential bride clients. (if you don’t have any professional photography of your signage, you can always set up and take your own and have them printed on canvases or reach out to the photographers of past weddings you’ve done and ask them if they have any high-resolution photos of your work you can showcase at your bridal show!)
Once you have your booth set up a plan together, you are going to want to sit down and write out your goals and objectives! What do you want to accomplish at this show? Are you looking to have brides reserve their date on your calendar? Are you looking to get your business name and what you do out there? Are you looking to network with other vendors in the area? Are you wanting to collect the contact information of brides getting married? Decide what your goals are and then set an action plan! Our goals were all of the above so here’s what we did to achieve those goals:
CALENDAR RESERVATIONS: Behind the table, we had 1 person. This person’s job was to collect payment and keep our calendar organized. We charged a $100 non-refundable/non-transferable reservation fee. This was to reserve their wedding date on our calendar so that we could ensure we were available for their big day! Once the details of the booking are discussed the $100 will come off of their final total.
MARKETING/SPEAKING TO ATTENDEES: This is the PERFECT opportunity for you to market yourself! We printed 100 pamphlets on details of our wedding rental signage packages before the show and our goal was to hand out every single pamphlet. We had 2 people standing at the front of the booth at all times and we made it our goal to speak to every single person that walked by us! (I can’t even tell you how many other vendors were not doing this. You are literally in the same building and in front of your target customer, please, I beg you please, do not just sit in a chair behind your table and wait for them to come to you. It is your job to explain to them what you do and why they need you!) Also, our bridal show gave everyone stickers to wear based on what role they were playing, don’t just speak to the Bride - Congratulate the groom too! Ask the Mother of the bride how she’s feeling. Tell the Bridesmaids how important they are and how special it is that they are supporting the bride. Remember: you NEVER know who the financial decider is. You never know who may remember the interaction you have when the time comes to make a decision on what they are willing to spend their budgets on. They came as a unit to celebrate the upcoming special day, make sure to acknowledge each and every single person in their party. :)
HAVE A SPIEL/ELEVATOR PITCH: Make it short sweet and to the point. Here’s how we built ours: a) greet the group (say hello! make them feel welcome to your booth!) b) Ask them a question to engage them. (for example: “So, when is the big day?!”, “Tell me about your engagement, how did he pop the question?, “oh my goodness! your ring is gorgeous! what is the name of the cut of that diamond again? I love it!”) c) Hand them a pamphlet and begin explaining what service it is that you provide. (for example: “So as you can see behind me, we offer wedding rental signage. We have mirrors of all different sizes and colors to match the color scheme/aesthetic of your big day! Some of our most popular rental signs are welcome signs, seating charts, and signature cocktails. The way our process works is…..”)
BE QUIET: After your pitch, be quiet. Allow them to ask any questions they have. Some popular ones we got were: “Do you travel outside of Columbia?”, “Are you available on my wedding date?”, “Do you do boxwood wall seating charts?”
COLLECT THEIR INFORMATION: Here is where your giveaway becomes SUPER important! Some bridal shows provide you with the contact information of each person that bought a ticket, some do not. I wouldn’t bank on that though as what’s going to be most important here is having the contact information of those that were truly interested in your services/that you spoke to! Once our elevator pitch was complete and they asked their questions, I would inform them that we were doing a giveaway of a free large welcome sign rental if they wouldn’t mind giving us just a few pieces of their information and directed them to the table to fill out a slip of paper that asked for their name, telephone number, email address & wedding date/city. Decide what you are going to giveaway and what benefit you are going to provide them in exchange for their information. this part is REALLY IMPORTANT so you can continue to make those connections and sell your services even after the show is over.
Always remember to HAVE FUN!! You have invested in your business and yourself to watch it GROW. Don’t ever let that time or money go to waste. The attendees of the bridal show can tell from a mile away who is having fun and who is dreading each passing minute. FUN is Contagious!
Don’t forget to network with other vendors! Before the show, I took the time to walk past each booth and introduce myself, hand over a business card and tell them what I do. You NEVER know where a connection or lead might come from, take this time beforehand to really make a connection with other wedding professionals in your area. If you have extra pamphlets, it’s also a good idea to hand those out to those whose clients can REALLY benefit from your services. (I handed out some extra pamphlets to florists and wedding planners!)