How My Mouth Works...

Tonight, is the Berkshire wedding networking event and I can't wait. I get a genuine buzz out of meeting new wedding suppliers and of course, catching up with people I've known for years or months is always good too. When you work on your own for the majority of the time, the chance to get together with other (usually) like minded people is one not to be missed and I think it's really important, in the age of blogs, tweets & Facebook pages to really connect with people. I know I do the on-line thing like everyone else and I love it but one of the things I like best about this industry is real people.

Yes, we can have passing contact with people on-line every day - we read their tweets and blogs, we 'like' their posts and we sometimes we see them in magazines and newspapers but for me, there's no replacement for really seeing what someone's like. The on-line world is a funny place sometimes - it can make people with little or no experience into 'experts' and there are so many 'recommendations' floating around based on a few e-mails between suppliers who might not have ever talked to each other or met each other, let alone worked with each other. Now I'm not stupid, I understand how advertising works and I don't have a problem with that at all when it's clear that's what's going on. I don't see a dress designer's full page in a wedding magazine and think that's a personal endorsement from the publisher but I've seen websites who say they handpick the best of the best suppliers to feature when really the only qualifying criteria is your ability to write a cheque - no checks with past clients, no references taken and that makes me so upset. It makes me upset because there are brides out there who believe the hype and pick a supplier who's not as 'handpicked' as they thought. And, let's face it, we all know there are plenty of people who can talk the talk but find walking the walk a much harder task. Fling wedding day tension into this mix as well, the emotion, the pressure, the unexpected things, and someone who always came across as calm can sometimes not be!

However, I know that everyone has to start somewhere and goodness, we've all been there, yet sometimes I wonder where the honesty has gone. No-one likes to admit they're new to the wedding world and it's easy to create a persona that makes you into something you're not (or not yet anyway!). But what's wrong with being 'new' - you can often be fresher and keener and those can be pretty good qualities. Some clients will pick the newer talent, some will pick the old hand - it depends on what they want, how you get on and how you behave. No-one's right, no-one's wrong, it's the client's choice. When it gets sticky is when the client's not had all the information...

So, my mouth works like this - I don't really recommend suppliers unless I've met them, checked them out and ideally worked with them, I might sometimes suggest someone takes a look a website but it comes with the caveat I've not met them and if there's someone I think I'd like to work with, I'll make the effort to meet up. There is a photographer I know who I adore and who I get on with really well but he won't recommend me because although we've met on quite a few occasions, we've not yet worked together and do you know what, I can't tell you how much I respect him for this. Of course, as with all things 'wedding', so much is subjective - what I like, who I like and why I like things will be very different to someone else. That's ok - I'm a different type of supplier to others, I work with different types of brides and do different types of things. That doesn't make me 'better' or 'worse', it just makes me, well, it makes me me. I don't try to be cool (I'm not!), I can't be a 'Londoner' (I'm a country girl through and through!) and that's that. I know whom I am and where I sit and in an industry that's trying to give clients 'their' day, why should we be scared to be true to ourselves? Our mouths, our voices, our fingers tip-tapping on our keyboards, are powerful things, we should be careful how we use them. But we should always be who we are - if you lose that, you've lost everything.

Tonight then is an opportunity for me to meet new suppliers, check out new people and maybe hug a few old (and I don't mean 'old' in age!) 'friends' but there are still lots of suppliers to meet and I can't wait for that either because although sometimes my mouth works in a careful way, it does love a good chat...