The Wedding Expo

We went to a wedding show at Drury Lane on Wednesday night as a test run for the bigger, much crazier Bridal Expo next weekend (yes, the famed Bridal Expo from your Chicagoland radio station!). Badly needing R&R and a good laugh after a rough start to the week, we thought we’d just check this one out so we know what to expect.

Words that come to mind when we think back on the experience: Ambush. Awkward. Cheesy. Pushy. Hilarious.

We got our laughs and distraction from our regularly scheduled lives no problem.

The show was set up like a scavenger hunt through a maze of salespeople from their respective vendors. Salespeople literally jumped into our path so we could not skip their booth and they could bug us into giving them our contact information… so they can bug us some more until we’re married. (I had this vision of Harry Potter in the Tri-Wizard Tournament maze – no idea who would attack next. This maze had a lot of pink in it though. Not so ominous.) We assumed this would be like a college fair, where representatives are civilized and you visit the stations you’re interested in. Never assume – a popular theme this week…

My marketing background taught me what happens when you give your info out at an event like this. We have a lot of junk mail coming this week.

The maze's highlights:

• A Chris-Farley-esque DJ sweated through his sales pitch to us, finally offering us money off if we’d just book him and say we talked to him at the show.
• We have a half-hour of free dance lessons – in Lake in the Hills, Illinois.
• Gavin got into the spirit (and laughed at my facial reaction) when he accepted the Linens n’ Things lady’s quest to make us sign up for a registry on the spot. We now have a random registry of about five items – I don’t even know what he marked down, but I think a chair with “Delux” in the name is on there. We didn’t even get any cool free stuff from that table!
• Ellen from Arrowhead was there – and remembered us! She’s either really good at her job, or we’ve been to her office too many times.
• Edward Fox’s head photographer tried to win us over by complementing me – a lot. It was sweet at first when he said I was going to be a beautiful bride, but when he continued to tell me how amazing my hair was going to look “that day,” etc. at inopportune times, it creeped me out.
• A lot of very nice photographers with not-so-nice work tried to make us contract them on the spot.
• We escaped the pink boas from the “Last Night Out” party planning booth.

The maze ended at a stage for a fashion show by House of Brides. We figured we’d watch a couple minutes of the show once it started, see if we won anything (TONS of giveaways), and then leave. When we had collapsed into seats and gotten comfortable, we started to look at our surroundings. We quickly realized there was no way out of the fashion show – except walking back through the maze. We had a simultaneous “oh my God” moment.

We bolted.

We scurried back through the wedding maze avoiding all eye contact and doing a horrible job pretending to have a really engaging, lively conversation that required our full attention. We couldn’t help cracking up as vendors literally shouted to try and catch our attention the whole way through.

We’re ready for next weekend, although Gavin tried to “lose” his ticket for the next show on the train this morning! Hmmm…