The Wedding Industry Awards 2013: Worth Every Penny?

After the awards event early in 2012, there was a buzz of antic­i­pa­tion as wed­ding sup­pli­ers across the coun­try looked for­ward to a big­ger and bet­ter Wed­ding Indus­try Awards in 2013.

The launch of the 2013 Wed­ding Indus­try Awards

The biggest change to the awards for 2013 is the £50 entry fee. In 2012 the awards were free to enter, and the charge for entries came as a sur­prise to many wed­ding sup­pli­ers. Twitter’s dash­board lit up with the news, and there were lively dis­cus­sions on facebook.

The organ­is­ers behind the awards have stressed that fees will go towards mar­ket­ing and pro­mot­ing the awards. The first Wed­ding Indus­try Awards in 2012 were financed pri­vately by the organ­is­ers. (Imag­ine: could you lay on such an event if you had to pay for it yourself?)

I spent much of last week read­ing about the awards, look­ing for face­book dis­cus­sions and blog posts about the event, and con­sid­er­ing my own per­spec­tive. I won­dered if there could pos­si­bly have been another way to finance the wed­ding indus­try awards. What do you think?

1. Should the organ­is­ers pay?

Con­sid­er­ing the hours and hours of work involved, on IT, pro­mo­tion and mar­ket­ing, and not to men­tion the event man­age­ment side of things with the awards event — Damian and Anna Bai­ley paid for the 2012 Wed­ding Indus­try Awards. (As far as I know, the only money raised was from tick­ets to the ceremony.)

2. Should they have courted big sponsors?

I asked Damian about spon­sor­ship: turns out it’s a really dif­fi­cult thing to sort out. The web­site FAQs explain that acquir­ing spon­sor­ship is a long process, and with many com­pa­nies cut­ting back on mar­ket­ing bud­gets it hasn’t been pos­si­ble to get spon­sors to foot the bill for the wed­ding indus­try awards. Yet.

3. What about wed­ding mag­a­zine awards: do it like that!

I con­sid­ered the wed­ding mag­a­zine awards. It’s no secret that Wed­ding Ideas Mag­a­zine put all their pay­ing adver­tis­ers up for an award. Other busi­nesses can be voted for, but they’re not on the drop­down lists in the vot­ing process. (Last time I had a look was 2011 so things may have changed.) Could The Wed­ding Indus­try Awards be run the same way?

With­out a print mag­a­zine, the wed­ding indus­try awards could have asked sup­pli­ers to pay for list­ings on their web­site. I actu­ally think it’s fairer to charge an entry fee. It avoids any argu­ments about sup­pli­ers with paid list­ings get­ting more cov­er­age. Charg­ing every wed­ding sup­plier who enters the awards a nom­i­nal fee is sim­pler, more straight­for­ward and feels fairer to me.

The only solu­tion: wed­ding sup­pli­ers pay to enter

I don’t see any other solu­tion to financ­ing the wed­ding indus­try awards. We can’t ask brides and grooms to pay for this! The ones who ben­e­fit from the exis­tence of the awards are wed­ding suppliers.

We ben­e­fit if we enter, by show­ing our cus­tomers and poten­tial cus­tomers we’re short­listed / regional or national winners.

The indus­try as a whole ben­e­fits from hav­ing an awards process and event which won’t fall apart when you poke it with a stick. And by that I mean it’s gen­uine, well-intentioned and has as much integrity as it ever did.

The Wed­ding Indus­try Awards & integrity

The ques­tion of integrity isn’t about “pay­ing for entries” to the awards. Con­sid­er­ing all the hoo-haa (a won­der­ful word from my sis­ter, who has had her ear to the ground all week!) around the £50 charge to enter the awards, this is really only a nom­i­nal fee and it doesn’t affect — in the slight­est — who will win an award.

The whole point of The Wed­ding Indus­try Awards when it was launched in 2011 was to be fair. Com­pa­nies win on merit; only brides and grooms can vote, there are no twit­ter cliques get­ting in on the action!

Short­lists are based on votes and scores; cus­tomer ser­vice is absolutely key — and the com­pa­nies who won last year were cho­sen for their absolute ded­i­ca­tion to the brides and grooms they served.It’s not about big busi­nesses get­ting all the votes and win­ning on a vote count. The small busi­nesses have an even chance (because the awards look at how many cus­tomers a busi­ness has each year, and how many of them vote for you as a % of your total customers).

And it’s not about being the most active in social media: you can shout loud­est on twit­ter and face­book by all means, but it won’t get you that tro­phy from The Wed­ding Indus­try Awards. You have to work — and I’m talk­ing blood, sweat and tears — to delight your cus­tomers and earn that award!

So win­ning a Wed­ding Indus­try Award means some­thing, it really does. It shows your ded­i­ca­tion to cus­tomer ser­vice is out­stand­ing. It’s a badge of hon­our, and some­thing to be very proud of. By pay­ing your £50 entry fee you’re giv­ing your cus­tomers the option of sup­port­ing your wed­ding busi­ness in the awards. You’re also sup­port­ing our indus­try, help­ing to finance an event which stands head and shoul­ders above any awards we’ve had before.

The Wed­ding Indus­try Awards is an event which really is worth every penny.

Thank you for read­ing my con­tri­bu­tion to this big debate! If you’ve got some­thing to share, please do — I’m very inter­ested to hear what every­one has to say about all this.

The only thing I haven’t men­tioned is the amount. Is £50 a fair price? I don’t know. That all depends how many busi­nesses enter the awards… I think it’s a dis­cus­sion to have next year!

Claire x

http://www.the-wedding-industry-awards.co.uk/

Photo cred­its: http://www.adbycreativeimages.co.uk/