Wedding Crashers

This weekend my sweetie and I attended our very first (and possibly last) wedding fair. In typical outlaw outer-borough fashion it was called "Wedding Crashers" and was comprised of only Brooklyn-based vendors. While wedding crashers conjures images of rejecting convention, I found none of the vendors or guests to be particularly anti-establishment. I'm pretty that everyone there (like me) was a ticket-paying invitee.

This was just your standard frou-frou scary wedding fair. And I should have known better. The the guerrilla wedding free-for-all event is so not my style! And from what I learned, we were only at a “small, intimate” show.

Drink up! You're gonna need it!

Though I left wondering what the hell motivated me to go to one of these things, I actually DO remember what I was thinking when I signed up for the event. I thought we would be able to gain specific information from vendors who have ample experience producing weddings in the Brooklyn and NYC area. I thought this would be a great way to meet and support vendors in my home borough. Show the Brooklyn love! I thought we would be able to ask specific questions about the two venues between which we are choosing. I thought wrong.

So evidently wedding fairs are really nothing more than the internet, except here it jumps off your screen and shoves a business card in your face. Oh yeah, and there’s really loud music blaring the whole time that you can’t mute. It was not conducive at all to conversation. What’s more, out of the 20+ vendors, only ONE (Shootbooth, picture and link below) had any type of package or pricing information readily available. Not that I expected to get into a bidding war between macaroons, but I was hoping for more than cheesy sales pitches. I even tried to prompt one of the caterers there by mentioning my interest in a venue they have a lot of experience working with, hoping she would launch into some descriptions of past wedding menus or floor plans. To my disappointment, all I got was an “Oh, uh huh, that’s a nice space.” Hm....

Lovebug and I paid $25 each to attend. I tried to guzzle my money’s worth of prosecco and pomegranate mini martinis, but I came up sorely short. Aside from a couple freebies (which weren’t really free because now all those companies have my email address) and a list of don’t-hire-thems-because-they-were-weird, I was really disappointed with my decision to spend a perfectly good Sunday in this manner.


These fairs are really the epitome of the wedding-industrial complex. Enter at your own expense! They feed on emotions, excitement, alcohol-induced decision making and an “if you have to ask, you can't afford it” mentality. And they introduce you to all the “extras” that you probably didn’t think you needed, like additional desserts, add-on photography products, spa packages, personal training classes, dance lessons, cosmetic procedures... crazy pants in my opinion! Plus the economics make no sense to me. Vendors have to pay the event to present. Guests have to pay to attend. Seems like these wedding fair producers are making bank for providing a whole lotta nothing! Now that is one party I do NOT need to crash!

Shootbooth photo booth freebie