Being asked along to the National Wedding Show by Ocean Media (The guys who run the whole caboodle) may well be the single hugest thing that has happened to Rock My Wedding since the idea for a swanky new UK wedding blog fell out of a certain little blog queens head and landed on my desk…
RMW: So… you’re going to give us our own stand?
Ocean Media Yes, we are going to give you your own stand in our “bloggers area” They’ll be you guys and the I am Staggered team, so play nicely with them!
RMW: Yeah we can do that. 
And you want us to run a few inspirational seminars for the brides to be?
Ocean Media Yes please, 33 in total to be precise…
RMW: Erm…. ok.
The Plan.
Once the panic had died down (approximately 7 weeks later) we set about planning first of all how on earth we were going to take a piece of Rock My Wedding To Earls Court one weekend, and then to the NEC the following weekend… in the end we decided the best thing to do would be to actually literally do that. We ransacked our RMW offices, taking all the knick-knacks, thrift store finds and clutter that we surround ourselves with.
So our ‘set’ was actually real stuff from our offices. Charlottes crates (she has a crate problem) My gin bottles (I have a gin problem) assorted records, vintage cameras – we even took Charlottes desk… which incidentally is made from old planks of wood that they used to mature cheese on (she has a cheese problem).
The Presentations.
The next nightmare was what were we actually going to talk about? This may sound silly to you folks but it’s one thing to sit at your desk and tap away about weddings on your keyboard… it is entirely another thing to stand up in front of loads (hopefully) of people and actually speak. Out loud.
In the end we just decided to look back through the blog and pick out 10 or so of our favourite weddings… once we had done that our wedding inspiration seminars pretty much wrote themselves… we took a few images from each wedding and popped together a keynote presentation that we hoped would be informative to all the brides to be that we were going to meet.
Ok. I’ve made this sound easy…. maybe a bit too easy…. At this point I’ll say Don’t try this at home folks… we are dedicated professionals and we know what we are doing.
We loved the weddings that we choose for the presentations so much that we decided that only showing one or two images from each one was not going to do them justice. So we made some books, with loads more detail in from each wedding. The idea was to pass them around after the presentations, just incase people wanted more…
Things were falling into place.
Show Time.
Presentations ready. Books ready. stand decor ready… not quite! We needed some help to make our set super pretty!
We were absolutely overwhelmed with the flower arrangements that Rebel Rebel produced for our London shows and Bloomingayles created for Birmingham. You guys got it spot on, the flowers looked ace. Pocket Typewriter created the amazing luggage labels that you can see in the images – they went brilliantly with our assorted bottles and kept everything on brand perfectly. I also must thank notonthehighstreet.com for sending us parcel after parcel of assorted wedding pretty and Coulson MacLeod for providing the graphic slates that really brought our crates to life.
You are all legends.
The Rest Is History.
The rest is a blur really, and not just because we were stationed right next door to the Champagne bar! Charlotte, Vix and I survived on adrenaline and coffee (and ok, maybe the odd glass of Lanson) for 2 weekends on the trot. I had to buy new shoes because my feet hurt so much. Charlotte had to ration her talking to save herself for all the one-2-one sessions she was doing inbetween the seminars. Vix had to hurriedly D.I.Y up some RMW cushions when our original items were stolen! It was hectic but it was fun.
We were so thrilled that so many people came to see us – the organisers found us a PA system so that the crowds could hear (no-one was expecting so many people). People asked questions, we even got the odd round of applause(!). The polka dot books went down very well (some went walkies!) and to be honest, it was really nice to actually meet people and talk face to face rather than via the blog, Facebook, twitter etc… It is something Team RMW hope to do much more in the future, whether that’s via shows or simply by getting out more into the community.
And as for our friends at I am Staggered, well it was great to be able to hang out with them for a few days in London and Birmingham – they are genuinely lovely guys (this may not do their “stag” image any favours but it’s true)
But, as for playing fair… look what they did to the picture of me in our National Wedding Show programme… my poor lovely face (and chest!)
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little insight into our first big show, we really hope to be back again in February when the National Wedding Show returns and this time it’s got some new very swanky branding.
Click the link to have a look at their new holding page, it’s very fresh, very clean and very now. It looks as though the 2012 National Wedding Show may be the best one yet.
Adam.
