This morning, I told Laurel that if my blog were a baby, it would be dead right now. I have been seriously neglecting my blog because of the madness that is currently my life.
As I enter the final stages of my planning my wedding. I wanted to share with you the impact the Internet, specifically social media has had on all of my decisions. I am a Chicago born, bred and based bride who decided to have her wedding in Arizona. My fiancé is not from Arizona, he’s from Minnesota. My family has a second home in Phoenix and I have always loved it there so I decided to do something different and host my wedding at my family’s home. I thought it would be a piece of cake, I had the venue, the groom, the date, and what else would I need? A LOT! Reality set in when I registered on the Knot.com and they emailed me a wedding checklist of 150 items that I needed to complete before the big day. I did not even know where to start so I started searching on Google for Arizona based wedding planners. After sorting through a ton of people that I knew I wouldn’t connect with, I found my planner.
I instantly connected with her just by looking at her website. I thought it was too good to be true and prayed that she had my date available…she did! I consider myself extremely lucky to have found Ashley because she is amazing at what she does and I have such respect and admiration for her. I cannot say enough good things about Ashley. Trust me when I say that she will dominate the industry very soon. Check out her her fabulous blog www.ashleygainblog.com, follow her on Twitter and Like her Facebook business page. Ashley radiates with positive energy and her enthusiasm for what she does makes planning a wedding an incredible journey.
It may sound strange but it was important to me that all of the vendors I chose to work with understood the importance of social media.
Social media has had a huge impact on my decision to hire many of the vendors that I chose.
Save The Dates – my fiancé and I wanted to do these pictures in Chicago so I used Yelp to find someone that had amazing reviews and was reasonably priced – Peter Coombs was perfect! It worked out very well – 
It would have been nice to use Peter to shoot our wedding but travel and accommodations for a photographer were not in our budget. Therefore, Ashley set up a bunch of meetings with Arizona based photographers. Ultimately, I chose Radiant photography, they do amazing work and out of all of the photographers I researched, Radiant had the most likes on their Facebook page.
Videographer – Again, Ashley connected me with the unbelievably talented group, Bright Bokeh. Every wedding video they create makes me cry, in a good way. Like them on Facebook to see what I am talking about or follow them on Twitter.
Cake – Ashley let me indulge in my love of sugar and gave me a few options. Ultimately, I chose the bakeshop with the best reviews and a great Facebook presence. Actually, the cake I was originally going to have them create was trumped when they posted a picture on their Facebook page of a cake that I knew had to be mine. They tripled their profit from me by taking the time to post updates on Facebook. Sorry, I can’t reveal my cake before the wedding, I think it’s bad luck! Here are a few to enjoy by Classic Cakes & Confections
Without Ashley, I would be clueless., she has lead me to all of these vendors and social media helped me decide whether or not I wanted to work with them.
