This past Sunday I participated in the annual Faye’s Bridal Show at the Peterborough Memorial Centre.  Both my wife (Sandy) and myself supported our booth from when the doors opened right to the end.  We had a lot of fun and I had a chance to meet a couple new local Photographers and a couple of other industry related vendors.  All were great people.

There was something I liked and something I didn’t like about the show in regards to the Photography displays.

What I liked to see was the quality of work on display.  Most of the work the Photographers displayed was well shot and finished properly.  This conveys a professional … an individual with a good understanding of what professional wedding photography is.  This is important to me as I am affiliated with the industry and I don’t want to be affiliated where the norm for where I live is sub-par, rural amateur work.  I felt proud that Peterborough and the surrounding area was represented well in the art form of what professional wedding photography is.

What I didn’t like was the number of Photographers that had booths setup at this show.  There were far to many.  The show was out-of-balance.  It was saturated with Photographers which gave less diversity to what the show could have offered and thus less for the other businesses.  I had expected around 6 Photographers to be present, not something up in the realm of 12!  This is a small show (I have been to T.O. …. I know what a big show is) and I felt it was a hindrance and not a benefit to the ‘brides to be’ that came through the door.  Because of being one of the Photographers on display, I then felt like a contributor to the hindrance and out-of-balance element of the show.  Personally I would like to see future shows have a cap of say 6 vendors in one discipline.  Once the quota of 6 vendors in any one discipline have been met, there is no more room unless of a cancellation.

Other than my little disappointment, I felt the show was put together quite well and from what I saw all of the guests that came through the door and visited our booth looked to be truly enjoying themselves.  And in the end, that is what it is about.

Now … to the fun part.  I partnered with Sunshrine Day Spa & Salon of Lakefield for my give away.  Sunshrine graciously donated a $100 gift certificate to their first rate salon & spa.  I had visitors to our booth sign their name, if they were engaged, if they had a Photographer and finally contact info.  The submissions were numbered with the intent of using a random number generator to pick the winner.  I used random.org to generate the winning number.  I’m please to report that #14 was the winner!  #14 was a Jasmine Martin.  I will be calling Jasmine soon to get her mailing address so I may send her her $100 gift certificate!  Congratulations!!

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Here are some of the stat’s I gathered from the info provided in our draw:

78% said they were engaged
Of those that indicated they were engaged, 76% did not have a photographer

Note: these numbers do included three of my own 2010 wedding clients who stopped by to say hi 

I was very fortunate to have such a great 2009.

Thank you to all my clients and to all my new clients that have signed with me for their 2010 wedding.

I offer a DVD video service to clients for their wedding images where I build a video slideshow and they can watch it on their TV via their DVD player. In the same fashion, I have put together this quick 3+ minute video highlighting a small collection of my favorite images from the past 12 months.