Wedding Vendors Get Free Exposure

Wedding vendors from every walk of profession including wedding photographers, caterers, florists, DJ’s, bands and others got a free handout from the television show Get Married.  The Lifetime TV show opened its doors wide for wedding professionals to post free listings on their website at http://www.getmarried.com/advertise-with-us.

Since the launch of the free listings, vendors have filled the areas quickly and by the thousands.  If your business is related to the wedding industry, take adavantage of the limited free offer to get listed and seen by literally thousands of brides.  Get Married has not indicated when the promotion will end, but this is a coup for any wedding business interested in getting on one of the most popular wedding websites on the web.

The Knot’s Big Problems

Photo by Graham Minchkin and obtained via Flickr

I’m pretty sure that we’re all familiar with TheKnot.com and its many branches of government. However, it appears that The Knot has been on a downward spiral with brides and now wedding vendors.  Their release of “The Knot’s Best of Wedding Guide 2009″ had some major issues and it became glaringly obvious that it wasn’t based on feedback, but greenbacks.  The Knot’s Editors Pick of DJ companies was a company that had 50 complaints on Ripoff.com, multiple complaints filed against them from the Better Business Bureau who also graded them with an F, and additionally had a few negative news stories on them on television including Inside Edition.  Great advice, Knottie.  Just wow.

Then to make matters worse, posts ordained by The Knot informed people to not choose local bakers over the venue’s in-house bakers to avoid cake cutting costs.  Really?  This along with other suggestions that kick the local vendors to the curb entirely. Not to mention their wealth of bad advice that people seem to be getting downright agitated about.

Truth be told, it appears as The Knot has become a victim of themselves and appear to have lost focus.  Either that or they don’t have time to properly manage their resources which has been consistently sending out bad advice pretty much all of 2009.  And with the presence of competitors on the horizon like Get Married at GetMarried.com that just announced a wedding magazine to further compliment their online presence and their already popular daily television show on Lifetime, The Knot may be a little too comfortable with their lead.

Brides are a fickle bunch and once you give them bad information, you’re hard pressed to get a second chance with the amount of resources available to them online.  I’ll be very curious to see how GetMarried’s offerings align with The Knot’s efforts once the Get Married magazine launches in September and especially since there are major changes that are sure to come with it.  Maybe The Knot should start looking for a good moat digger.