Chicago Wedding and Bridal Blog

This morning I ran across an article on Advertising Age about Bridal Magazines. The writer is a soon-to-be groom and he gives an opinion on the outlook for bridal magazines in the current economy.

I do agree that Bridal & Wedding Magazines probably do have a better prospect than most magazines in this economy because they are such a permanent fixture with the bridal planning process. Or at least the older generation.

When I was newly engagedI received a pile of wedding magazines from my mom (who had already skimmed them by the time I got over to her house) and a few from my mother-in-law-to-be also. Both had the idea that there were wedding dresses advertised in the magazines that would be helpful in my search. (I did appreciate the help)

Later I began buying some wedding magazines also thinking, this is the only time in my life that I will be able to buy a bridal magazine in my life, and they have been staring me in the face for years. So, I had quite a few.

What we all thought was that they would be helpful in getting info for planning the wedding and buying a dress. I was kind of disappointed though.

• None of the girls in the dress ads looked anything like my body type so the dress style shopping was impossible, since all styles look great on toothpick skinny models.
• The wedding gowns are also advertised by national brands and not the stores that sell them so you don’t know if you can even find that dress locally let alone try it on before paying thousands to buy it. (no wonder we end up buying more than one dress)
• A lot of the advice was the same about registering for and buying lots of stuff. Not really very practical.
• The flowers and table setting decor they featured was unrealistic also since most people go with some kind of banquet hall that has stock china and silverware and it is not customizable to your colors/theme.
• All the flower designs and themes looked the same between the magazines. I really had to find ideas on the internet before I got the color chosen. You need hundreds of ideas to choose from in order to find something you think will work, not just 3 or 4. And they get repetitive when a lot of people are getting married and you end up doing the same colors.
• A lot of these magazines are national and the vendors you need are local. No wonder the Knot.com gets so much traffic. They have actual listings of vendors with ratings in your area. I found my photographer there. (not the best one ever, but ok)
• None of the magazines had actual reviews from real brides in them. They were just a lot of paid ads saying everything was great and not listing prices. Prices are something you need to know from the start because there are so many different price range budgets that people plan a wedding within.
• The hair and makeup suggestions they listed were also not relevant because nobody in the magazines had thin shoulder length hair. Wy go through all the trouble of doing up the models when nobody looks like that?

So, overall I don’t think the bridal magazine business is bulletproof in this economy. I feel like wedding magazines that aren’t honest and upfront about the vendors, services, reviews and costs will probably perish in a few years. Only the ones that have a large online presence will survive, as well as the ones that are about cutting edge wedding design.

After all, I thought these magazines were fun, but ultimately wasted a lot of my time because nothing listed in them was available here or affordable to me personally. I ended up planning the entire wedding through email, phone, websites, PDF and sharepoint, so the internet is where brides are looking for information and planning everything. (seriously, the wedding folder in my email has 841 emails)

A few weeks after the wedding I had to recycle them all. I listed 13 Wedding magazines on freecycle and nobody even wanted them for free because they are always changing and they didn’t have any planning value 6 months later. So, about 50 lbs went in the recycle bin. We could have saved a lot of trees by just putting the info online.

So, my advice to wedding mags is to:

• Feature real weddings more than celebrities, and feature all cost ranges too.
• Print advice from real brides and reviews on the vendors locally.
• Print lists of top referred resources by city. location and specialty. This may mean breaking the magazine printing and distribution down by market, but its the only way its relevant. If not, maybe just focus on one area like dresses, then you could cover the entire US by geography in one magazine.
• Feature wedding gowns on real size women, size 8, 12, 14, 16, 18+
• Feature flower bouquets and table arangements in a full range of colors (more options than pink, yellow or white) and mock up a large range of designs, so much gets repeated and it doesn’t have to.
• Print prices so people know what range they are looking at when they walk into a bridal gown salon or store. It helps you save time by not going to a place you can’t afford in the first place. Nobody is going to mortgage a dress in this economy.
• Tone down the buy-buy-buy mode for registries. Nobody has room for or enough guests to afford all that stuff. Nobody needs most of what is listed.
• And lastly feature some information for guys. We found that some of the most difficult planning was finding tuxes, rings and groomsmen gifts. Yes this may have been a direct reflection of my husband’s knowledge of these things, but he didn’t have any help from the magazines either.