Make sure to look for this sign at booth #39 at the bridal show tomorrow! We’re giving away a Target gift card and you know you want it!! But, keep reading, as we get all nostalgic over the bridal shows we’ve done over the past 7+ years!

This weekend we will be at the Syracuse Wedding Magazine Bridal Show! It’s Sunday the 21st, at the New York State Fairgrounds. Check out their event on Facebook for all the details. While we prepare for Sunday, we can’t help but reflect on bridal shows of SHP’s past.

Bridal shows take a bunch of preparation and planning. Sarah and I work together to get everything ready, Sarah does the design and printing of anything we hand out, we pack meet up ahead of time to load the car, unloading all the things at bridal show venues, and setting up the final display (as a side note, we love that the folks at Syracuse Wedding Magazine help us load and unload our stuff! That special touch and extra effort makes us feel like rockstars!). We’ve been all over central New York for shows, including The OnCenter, The American Foundry, The Holiday Inn, The DoubleTree, Alexandria’s, The Colgate Inn, and Vernon Downs Casino to name some! Sometimes we invite past brides & clients to work the booth with us too! We think this best illustrates the photographer/client relationship we are aiming to create, and besides, we love working with our friends. Once we’re set up and the doors officially open, we invite those that approach our booth to tell us about themselves and their wedding day plans and we tell them a little about SHP and what we do. There’s a good chance we have a nice deal to share, too! At one show Sarah was raffling off a selfie stick, so we used one to take tons of us-ies with attendees (and of team SHP)! She’s also been known to include beautiful canvas prints in packages, upgrades to wedding albums or even a gift card towards any wedding package! We encourage interested attendees to book an appointment at the show to meet up at Sarah’s studio to talk more in detail about their big day and our photography packages! We find meeting in person after the show where it’s not so loud and overwhelming helps us connect and see if we’re a great fit for each other! After we’re done chatting with the brides we then direct them to our booth display to check out all of our goodies!

SHP’s bridal show booth has definitely evolved over the years! It continues to change as SHP strengthens and grows. The cool thing about bridal show booths is being able to display our most current work for potential clients. We also bring examples of the lovely products we offer, including our signature lay-flat, archival quality heirloom albums, custom thumb drives, and a variety of print examples (canvas, metal, and wood). We believe it’s important to allow potential clients to see the products we offer (and touch ’em too!) to know what they will want in their home after they get their photos back. As you will see below, this is something that we have been doing for years! And the evolution of the SHP bridal show booth has been well documented by Sarah! Check it out!

My how far SHP has come! Sarah standing by her very first bridal show booth in the autumn of 2010 (left) and a much more recent version of the booth (right).

If you’re looking for a wedding photographer, we’d love to chat with you on Sunday. Come see us, we’ll have a surprise for you! 🙂