Why I’ll Never Win a Wedding Industry Or Expert Award — and Why It Doesn’t Matter

But ulti­mately every wed­ding awards event exists as a busi­ness. The organ­is­ers are in it for the money. Yes, some have gen­uine con­cerns about integrity (TWIA) but oth­ers don’t. I’m not men­tion­ing names but some of you know me well enough to guess, I think! And there are so many national and regional awards these days that pretty much any sup­plier can win some­thing. It’s hard to know which ones actu­ally mean some­thing any more.

I’d rather be judged on the qual­ity of my work than for a badge on my website

Some of the very best wed­ding sup­pli­ers I’ve ever come across have never won a wed­ding indus­try award. They choose not to. Every­one has a dif­fer­ent busi­ness strat­egy and for some of us it’s not impor­tant to win a badge or com­pare our­selves with other busi­nesses. We sim­ply aim to be amaz­ing at what we do, and to delight every sin­gle customer.

This is why I pro­vide free sam­ples for every bride or groom who asks. I want to write a beau­ti­ful enve­lope and send it in the post. This is how I demon­strate the beauty of my work; by cre­at­ing a moment of true excite­ment when the sam­ple arrives at its des­ti­na­tion. I believe this is far more impor­tant to my clients than an ‘award win­ner’ badge on my web­site would be.

I’m not one for pop­u­lar­ity con­tests either — I don’t col­lect hun­dreds of face­book friends; at school I wasn’t the life and soul of the party or queen of the net­ball team (shud­der). I didn’t hang out with the cool kids but hap­pily fol­lowed my own path. And I don’t think you can win a wed­ding indus­try award these days with­out being an online social but­ter­fly or net­work­ing like crazy — it’s just not for me.

I men­tioned I was writ­ing this blog post to Nathan (from Artemis Sta­tionery) in pass­ing, and he has sim­i­lar feel­ings about the value of wed­ding awards: “When I started in the indus­try I used to com­pare my prod­ucts and designs to those of the award win­ning sup­pli­ers, think­ing theirs was the high­est qual­ity sta­tionery in the UK. A few years down the line and many awards feel closer to pop­u­lar­ity con­tests than recog­ni­tion for qual­ity prod­ucts. I see reg­u­lar appeals on twit­ter for votes, and much of the vot­ing appears to be by other sup­pli­ers rather than brides. In the end it may all come down to who has the most twit­ter fol­low­ers and face­book friends. If this is the case, then where is the value of these awards to brides and grooms choos­ing suppliers?”

Choos­ing wed­ding sup­pli­ers is a very per­sonal expe­ri­ence, never one size fits all

Just because a wed­ding busi­ness has won a national or regional award doesn’t mean they’re right for you. A designer of wed­ding invi­ta­tions might have hun­dreds of glow­ing reviews from happy cus­tomers — but their par­tic­u­lar brand of vin­tage might not be up your street. A pho­tog­ra­pher could have gath­ered thou­sands of votes from their friends in the indus­try, but per­haps it’s not tech­ni­cal abil­ity you’re search­ing for but a unique cre­ativ­ity or style.

It’s like find­ing a wed­ding dress in a way: you’ll make appoint­ments, try a few for size and then find a dress which absolutely blows you away — ‘the one’. When you fall for that dress, would it mat­ter in the slight­est if it had an ‘award win­ner’ badge on it?

Win­ning awards costs a lot of time and money for sup­pli­ers. I have limits!

Fol­low­ing sev­eral friends’ expe­ri­ences with wed­ding indus­try com­pe­ti­tions this year was an eye-opener to say the least. Win­ning an award takes a lot of time and effort, from the ini­tial entry to prepa­ra­tion for the cer­e­mony itself.

The easy part is enter­ing the awards — sub­mit­ting images and writ­ing a descrip­tion of a busi­ness and pay­ing an admin­is­tra­tion fee (£50 for TWIA last year). Then wed­ding busi­ness own­ers have to spread the word. Blogs, face­book pages and twit­ter accounts have to be kept buzzing with excite­ment about the awards process. This all takes time, as does the process of email­ing past cus­tomers to ask for reviews and votes.

It’s really quite sur­real in the run up to all the awards events in the wed­ding indus­try each year. Fraz­zled sup­pli­ers tear their hair out; events organ­is­ers tweet con­stantly about prepa­ra­tions and the indus­try watches with mild inter­est. (Until the night in ques­tion when even I fol­low a twit­ter hash­tag with avid anticipation!)

Brides and grooms see lit­tle of this (any­one ever been offered a ticket to the awards? No. I wouldn’t rec­om­mend it either!) — all you really see is the awards issue of Wed­ding Ideas mag­a­zine and those lit­tle badges I’ve men­tioned on people’s websites.

So is it all worth it? Not for me I’m afraid

Wed­ding awards can be an indi­ca­tion of qual­ity prod­ucts and cus­tomer ser­vice, but I doubt any of you will be choos­ing your sup­pli­ers based on awards alone. It’s impor­tant to see your sup­pli­ers’ port­fo­lios and make informed choices. I see awards as a sug­ges­tion of qual­ity and reli­a­bil­ity, but lit­tle more.

What do you think? Would you choose a sup­plier because they had an award? How much do you know about how the awards work?

Fur­ther reading!

The first time I wrote about wed­ding awards I got in trou­ble. Oops. Hav­ing said that, many of you agreed with me!

Then when The Wed­ding Indus­try Awards intro­duced a £50 fee for sup­pli­ers to enter, it kicked off for a week (and then went quiet). So are the wed­ding indus­try awards worth every penny?

Just for the record, I should say that my opin­ions on the awards have changed since I wrote the above arti­cle in April last year. Win­ners in some regional cat­e­gories were cho­sen because there were no other entries. They could then go on and win a national award (in the­ory). Also, the awards organ­is­ers vis­ited some but not all sup­pli­ers in per­son to view port­fo­lios and do a lit­tle ‘meet and greet’ which didn’t seem a fair process to me. I also heard sto­ries from some sup­pli­ers who had pre­pared sam­ples of their work espe­cially for the judges’ vis­its and later found out their work had been ‘dis­posed of’.

Of course I’m not known for suck­ing up to the big guys in the wed­ding indus­try and I do like to raise aware­ness of the darker side of the busi­ness of wed­dings in the UK! Missed that one? Read What’s wrong with the wed­ding indus­try and how you can fix it

Whether you agree or dis­agree with me, I’d love to hear your com­ments. Have you cho­sen a sup­plier because they won an award? Are all awards equal? Do you love ‘em or hate ‘em?!

Claire x