Tips on Finding Vendors: Curated Bridal Showcases

Deciding on your team of vendors for your rustic wedding is incredibly difficult. But before you can make the decisions on who to choose, first you have to find the vendors, and that can be a challenge in and of itself. The Internet and its plethora of vendor directories is great, but it can also be misleading and a huge time sink. One alternative to online directories is to attend bridal showcases in person.

Showcases allow you to see a variety of vendors you might not have run across otherwise, meet the vendors in person to get a sense of whether your personalities would mesh, see a sampling of their wares firsthand without the biased lens of a camera, and, perhaps most importantly, provide a narrowed down selection of vendors, cutting down on the potential of getting horrifically overwhelmed with choices.

But how do you find the showcases to attend?!

One way is to ask your venue (or all of your top contenders for venues). Many venues hold their own showcases for potential and booked brides to present them with a sampling of vendors that they know and have enjoyed working with.

Another is to search for a regional or national curated bridal showcase, like BeSwoon in Maine, which is in its 2nd year now and has different rooms that are decorated in a variety of styles by handpicked teams of vendors.

The Big Fake Wedding (formerly known as The Not Wedding) is another great option, and it occurs in a whole bunch of different locations around the US every year. The Big Fake Wedding always showcases vendors who are local to wherever it is taking place. The photos below were taken by the amazing Patti at Kivalo Photography and are of The Big Fake Wedding’s first Portland, Maine, event, which took place this past October at the Barn at Flanagan Farm in Buxton, Maine, which is about half an hour outside of Portland.

The Big Fake Wedding is neat, too, because it features an actual couple who participates in a short vow renewal ceremony to which all of the attendees to the showcase are witnesses. After the vow renewal ceremony, a catered dinner is served (in this case by the incredible Fire & Co. woodfired pizza foodtruck. So delicious!), which is followed by desserts and live entertainment (the Wavelength band rocked it at this event!). Lining the walls of the event were tables set up with different vendors’ wares, and each of the dining tables was decorated by a different florist, providing a sampling of styles.

While showcases also run risk of being overwhelming or of not having your perfect vendor there, all-in-all, we think they are a really valuable way to narrow down your selection of vendors (and also just have a fun evening!)