Tips before attending the Grand Rapids Bridal Show with Stacey Nelson
episode
Wedding Planning Experts | Wedding Planning Tips, Budget, Vendors & Advice for Brides
29 min
2 speakers
3 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
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What is the Grand Rapids Bridal Show and who runs it?
Welcome to the Wedding Planning Experts Podcast, hosted by Dan and Andrea DeWard. In this podcast, we will discuss details about the Grand Rapids Bridal Show. If you are recently engaged and you're looking to plan your wedding, we are going to discuss what bridal show in West Michigan to attend with the most vendors, the dates, times, and location for the bridal show, how to get tickets, including a free ticket, when are the fashion shows, Tips that all brides and grooms need to know prior to attending. Also, if you are a vendor that would like to participate in the bridal show, what should you expect and how to sign up? So let's dive in and talk about West Michigan's largest and longest running bridal show.
Welcome, Stacey, to the Wedding Planning Experts Podcast. We're excited to have you here and talk about the Grand Rapids Bridal Expo that's coming up. You host that every year. It's hosted by Bunny Tuxedo. So we are happy to have you here.
Thanks for having me. I love talking about The Bridal Show. To get started, we're curious, like the background of The Bridal Show, as far as when did it get started and who started it? Yeah, so it was started in 1970 by my grandpa, actually. Before I had anything to do with it, I never got to work with him hand in hand with it. But I started it out as a small tuck shop and knew a bridal shop owner. And they were like, what can we do to like... pool our resources? Because all alone, they didn't have a very big advertising budget. What can we do to get together with maybe even some other wedding professionals? And it just kind of grew from there and began to be a yearly thing. And he never started it with this end in mind.
But I don't know, it kind of had humble beginnings. And so I try to like remember that. Whenever I'm like talking to smaller vendors in particular, it's like, all right, you don't have an advertising budget all by yourself. Let's all get together, get all these brides in one spot and go from there. So he ran it for a long time at smaller venues like the Pantland Hotel. And I think from there it moved to the Grand Center.
Yes, you're right. Yeah.
And we had maxed out space wise. Like we had to cap all of our categories. There was only two people per, you know, only two dress places, only two caterers, only two venues. And my mom at that point was running it. Her and my dad kind of took it over, but she was like the front lady for it. And I was coming up in the tuxedos and working at the store. This is so much fun, mom. Like, let me help. And she's like, no, I don't need your help. It like clockwork. It just goes. Well, then they renovated the Grand Center into the DeVos place, and it's huge. And so we start getting more vendors. And just the sheer amount of walking back and forth. The first year my mom did the show there, she's like, all right, you can come with me next year.
I need a second person there.
And it just elevated and escalated from there.
Yeah. I mean, it was a... decently big show back when it was at the Grand Center, but we had to limit attendance. The fire marshal would shut the doors because more brides and their attendees wanted to come in than they would allow. So we were so excited when they opened it up to DeVos Place, but then it was like, wow, this place is huge. How are we ever going to fill it? Now here we are with double the amount of vendors we had back then, which is great because it gives way more opportunities for the brides to see all that's out there. It's not just two photographers. It's 10 of them that all have their own unique style and what one is going to work best for you. You can see them all in one day. So it's awesome that we're able to have something this big.
How did the Bridal Show grow from a small shop event to DeVos Place?
And as a vendor, we can only do so many weddings in a weekend. So there's a lot of times that if you have that many brides and grooms that you're talking to, your dates might be full. And so from their perspective, a bride and groom's perspective, having that wide variety of vendors to pick from, and maybe if you're booked, there's somebody else they can pick.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
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