Wedding Plans - Can You Really Organise A Wedding Using the Internet?

By: Luca Salamone

Think of any business name or any service you know of. Now open a web page to a search engine, like ‘Google’ or ‘Yahoo’ and type in that phrase or name. Voila! A million results and most probably, (If you typed a business name) the business’ own website.

For example, I love Jelly beans. I also want to buy a plasma TV. So, I’m going to do 2 product searches. For a business search, I will randomly select a business from the yellow pages and search for it by typing the business name. I’ll perform 3 searches in total:

1. “Jelly Beans”
2. “Plasma TV”
3. Randomly selected business name

Ok, here were my results:

1. The “Jelly bean” search brought me 10,200,000 results! Of course I was bored after the first page, but I found what I was looking for-the official Jelly Belly website. There were other various suppliers listed in the sponsored links along the top and right hand side, some selling the original Jelly Belly Jelly beans. I compared prices.

2. The “Plasma TV” search produced 76,100,000 results! The first page consisted of the major high street stores, comparison website links and a few manufacturer website links. If I had searched “52” plasma TV” the results would have been more specific and probably less.

3. I performed 5 business name searches. 4 of the 5 names searched produced results in the top 10 listings and 3 of the 5 names searched produced sponsored links for that company.

RESULTS: Any business owner with half a brain will list their information, in some form, on the internet!

So now we know….Everyone is on the internet…nothing new really is it. But to answer the big question of “Can you really organise a wedding using the internet?” I would have to say DEFINITELY!

I know this because I’ve done it myself. I got married this year and I made a point of sourcing all of my information from the internet. There are so many companies out there-it’s so easy. The Wedding business is still big and everyone wants to make money off you, which is why you must seriously shop around before making any choices.
Here is an example: I work as a wedding singer, my wife as a wedding DJ, so we both know a fair bit about the business. My wife has seen her share of bad singers and bands. I have worked with more ‘cheesy DJ’s’ than I care to remember. The last thing either of us want for our evening reception is bad entertainment.

What we do is this:
1. Type in key phrases through a search engine like “Wedding bands in North Wales” or “Wedding DJ in Chester”. We do this a number of times with different key phrases as we may get varied results each time. We look at the sponsored links as they will pick up on the key phrases.
2. Visit websites, listen to audio samples and log the results in a database.
3. Contact the various entertainers for availability, prices, audio samples and repertoire. I personally do this by email as I don’t like to be hassled afterwards.
4. When we’ve narrowed it down to a few we’ll see if we can watch them in action, or at least get some more info on them from another source, i.e. References or reviews.

…And then we’re satisfied!

This sounds like a lot of work, but I always think it’s better to be thorough. You’re always going to be taking a chance, whether booking online or in a shop, but you’ll get a lot less fed up flicking through internet pages than you will carting yourself around shops and wedding fayres all day. In fact the only two suppliers that we felt completely let us down were the ‘Greenwoods’ store (Various stores misplaced suit measurements at the last minute) and ‘Deco-Mantone’s’ (For a personalised cake topper) who we booked at a wedding fayre (We paid a deposit, then never heard from them again), so it just goes to show that you can never be 100% certain, internet or not.

Whilst looking for a photographer we found a few that were charging Ł2000+, many that want around Ł1000 and few that charged Ł600-Ł800 for what we required. Everyone naturally thinks that the photographers who charge Ł600-Ł800 will surely not be as experienced or skilled as the ones asking for Ł2000+.

This isn’t always necessarily the case. There will be a percentage that can do a fantastic job and only charge Ł600-Ł800. The same will go for the other 2 categories. The motive for charging more of a fee is sometimes that they simply can, or that they are aiming at a particular market. Someone may see the big figures and think “ooh, wow, they must be very good! I only want the best so I’d better pay the most”.
Their cost doesn’t always necessarily reflect their service; so much as it does their business sense.

Using the internet you can look at many more options than if you were browsing the high street or the yellow pages directory. Plus, you’ll save a packet, which means more money for the honeymoon!

Luca is one of the UK's most talented wedding singers. Along with female wedding DJ Sally, he provides live wedding entertainment in places such as Liverpool, Leeds and London. Visit http://www.vocalshow.co.uk for more details.

Added on: Nov 30, 2007

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