Want to be inspired? Remminder for Nashville brides!

This is a reminder for our local brides (and their grooms) to come out and visit Relish and other great Nashville vendors at The Little Black Dress Revue TOMORROW NIGHT! There will be the best of the best vendors, cocktails, live music, free gifts and best of all - a $5000 grand prize drawing! So don't be lame and miss out! Be fabulous and dress up and come on out! We can't wait to see you!

Tuesday, November 9th

6:30 - 9:30pm

Noah Liff Center 

3622 Redmon Drive, Nashville TN

Click HERE to register for the event!

Elegance Bridal Gala - WRAP!

Have you missed us? We apologize for our lack of blog activity, but we have been recovering. It takes a lot to be in a bridal show and can take a lot out of you as well as take awhile to get caught up on other things. The good news is we're back! The GREAT news is that the show was fantastic! :)



The show was put on by Austin of Last Minute Planners. As hard as it is to be IN a show, I would never want the task of putting one on. She did a great job! And she didn't even look or act stressed!


[Austin, the show's coordinator & Stephanie of Relish]

Ashley of Ashley's Bride Guide sponsored the event. As always, we love her site and Ashley personally!


[Rebecca of Relish & Ashley of ABG]

Relish had the opportunity to set up our fun, interactive, design-your-mini-invitation booth again. It is colorful, unique and custom-made for brides! (which is the whole point of Relish as a company!)


[A Great Team: Lindsay Brazier, Paula Kennedy, Stephanie Resch, Leeann Cooper & Michelle Garcia]






Many other vendors were amazed at the work involved to put it all together, but in the end it is so worth it for the brides!












Even some guys got involved in the process!



The night was full of give-aways and ended with a spectacular fashion show put on by one of my favorite companies: Cherished Memories Bridal Shop.

I didn't get a chance to take photos of all the awesome vendors, but here are a few...


[Kendra Uhl (owner), Kyra & Rachel of Bella Kru]

[Liza Hippler, Bridal Coach of Maiden to Married]

[Scott Thomas of Scott Thomas Photography]

[Oscar, the beloved mascot for Elegant Diamonds was even at the show!]

[Shara of Cakes by Shara]

As we said, this is just a small sampling of the awesome vendors in attendance! For a full list of vendors that attended the show, visit: http://www.elegancebridalgala.com/VendorList.html

Thanks again to Austin for all your hard work!

***RELISH INSIDER INFO... Look for Relish Invitations in Atlanta next Spring! (more details on exciting bridal shows coming soon!)

Talk of the Town, Relish Wedding Invitations and Elegance Bridal Gala (Part 2)

For you Nashville locals, we are so excited that we were on Talk of the Town today. For those of you who don't know, Talk of the Town is a mid-day news program that features events / happenings going on around Nashville. We were part of a mini-bridal show that offers a sneak peak into the Elegance Bridal Gala happening THURSDAY NIGHT!



This is a photo of the vendors who were chosen to participate in the mini-show.

From Left to Right.
TOP: Jessica Clingan of Cherished Memories Bridal Shop came out as a bride (she is getting married in October and got her invitations from Relish!); Kendra Uhl of Bella Kru hair & makeup; Stephanie Resch of Relish; Austin Floyd, the planner of the gala and owner of Last Minute Planners; Rebecca with Wedding Cake Design; Stephanie with Chic by Stephanie (custom decor design & staging);
BOTTOM: Taira Baughman of Baughman Media Works; and Liza Hippler of Maiden to Married (she's a bridal coach-very cool!)

These are just a few of the AWESOME vendors participating in the show. For a full list, click here.

And now, without further ado - here is a clip from the Talk of the Town piece!

Talk of the Town, Relish Wedding Invitations & Elegance Bridal Gala (Part 1)

In case you haven't seen the numerous previous posts and reminders to the Nashville community - a new, exciting bridal show is coming up THIS Thursday (the 13th). It is the Elegance Bridal Gala, being held in Mt. Juliet.


The great thing about this event that differentiates it from all the other standard wedding shows is that it is BRIDE-FOCUSED! Each booth is striving to give the bride a true experience of their company's services. There are even going to be wedding planners there to assist brides (for free) with a consultation and even helping them in the walk around the show. It's truly going to be a show like you've never been to!

In an effort to give a demo on why this show is so different, Talk of the Town news program that plays here in Nashville on News Channel 5 came out and did a piece on the show. A "mini-show" was set up using some of the vendors that will be participating at the show. These few vendors had mini-booths set up to display what they will be offering at the show. Relish was selected to be a part of this mini-show and the story will be featured tomorrow (Tuesday, August 11th) at 11:00am on Channel 5. For replays of the broadcast, check out the Talk of the Town website.

Here are a few photos from the taping of the show, compliments of Baughman Media Works. The first 3 are of the Relish "mini-booth". The last one is of all the vendors that participated. We will tell you more about them on Wednesday!






We will follow-up with a summary from the Talk of the Town show (and maybe even a clip) on Wednesday. In the meantime, those of you Nashville locals, don't forget to set your DVR for tomorrow at 11!! BRIDES - don't forget to come out on Thursday night for an awesome experience!

To our vendor friends... it's not too late to be part of the show. The booths may be full, but you can still get in on the "bridal bucks". There will be a "smart shopping" type of card given to each bride in attendance. They will feature companies and specials. You will also receive the all-coveted lead-list! It's a great, very affordable way to be part of this revolutionary show! For more information regarding this opportunity, contact the Bridal Gala Committee at: vendorinfo@elegancebridalgala.com

Reminder: ABG Blogging Workshop starts Aug 16th!

This is going out to my fellow business owners... as well as fun, blogging brides!

"Social Networking"... what does that mean? Apparently, it means a lot in today's world and if you aren't doing it, you could be missing out! A GREAT way to learn all you need to know about this topic is to go to one of the best - Ashley, of Ashley's Bride Guide. That's who I went to a little over a month ago. I have to tell you our website traffic has went up 30% since we started social networking (just in a month!). It is WORTH IT for your business!

All of this "social networking" stuff has seemed very overwhelming to me and seemed like it would take too much of my all so valuable time... until I took that awesome course! :) Now I know how to OPTIMIZE my time and make my social networking work for me!

Ashley has single-handedly mastered the art of social networking to turn her business (which is simply a social network) into a huge success over the past couple years. She has always stayed one step ahead of everyone else... which can make her seem intimidating. That is, until she shares all her secrets with you! :) I HIGHLY recommend going to these 3 Sundays in August. IF you already have a blog and know enough to "get you by" like I did, then you may skip the intro course (suprisingly, I was advanced compared to some of the other attendees) but TRUST ME - there is a lot to be learned in this area! You can learn more about the August Bridal Blog Camp by clicking here.



If you are ready to learn, CLICK HERE to register for the August Bridal Blog Camp. Don't miss out - it's starting in just 2 Sundays!! Take it from me, Ashley will have you learning with laughter and leaving with confidence! And if you're a bride, don't miss out on your social networking, starting with Ashley's Bride Guide! TRUST ME - You will RELISH IT! ;)

Elegance Bridal Gala - AUGUST BRIDAL SHOW!!!

Attention Brides & Wedding Vendors! Don't miss the first exclusive bridal show event happening in Mt. Juliet! It's the first big show on the East side of Nashville and it is going to be beautiful!

Here are the details:

Mount Juliet's first annual
luxuriously customized bridal
experience!

Thursday, August 13, 2009
6 o'clock in the evening
9 o'clock- Fashion Show
Mt. Juliet's Park District

Tickets are $7 at the door or $5
if you pre-register online!
Little Black Dress Attire

It is being sponsored by Ashley's Bride Guide, Nashville Weddings & One Wed. It will feature some of Nashvile's finest vendors, including Relish, Cakes by Shara, Fresh by CarryAnn, Cherished Memories Bridal Shop, Gina Bilyeu Photography, Baughman Media Works and many, many more! So get your friends together, dress up and be sure to come out to this fantastic event!

View the website with lots more details & a complete list of vendors here: www.elegancebridalgala.com

Blogging - it's an art!

"Social Networking"... what does that mean? Apparently, it means a lot in today's world and if you aren't doing it, you could be missing out, especially in the wedding industry! Let me preface that this blog is going to be targeted mainly at business owners, but you brides can get something out of it as well! I know this is off-topic for the normal wedding info, but I took a social networking course 2 weeks ago and went in feeling very nervous, but my experience made me want to share with the world!


[Amy, from Photo Booth Nashville - looking like I felt when we started the course!]

First of all, how important is Social Networking? In the wedding industry alone, social networking is becoming a massive market. There are 50,800,000 search results returned for "wedding blogs" on Google. For brides, it is their biggest day and they have learned to use this method for exchanging information directly with each other and researching vendors without the pressure & time committment of one-on-one meetings and without the expense of paying someone to do the research for them. For wedding vendors, it is an invaluable tool to get your name out there with little to no expense. Who can pass that up?!

The thing for our company is that I wasn't sure if I needed to do more social networking since we have been paying a Search Engine Optimization company to get our name out there on the internet. What is that, you may ask? An SEO & "Social Networking" are closely related. Let me explain...

An SEO (Search Engine Optimization Company) is where many corporations turn to get their websites ranking towards the top of search engines. There are many different levels of SEO companies as well as many different plans with each company that you can purchase. The company we have been using is for small to medium-sized companies and they offer month-to-month levels of service. The level we paid for equaled $100 / hour. It's not a huge big expense IF IT'S WORTH IT, but this course lead me to believe it wasn't worht it. Upon investigating what they did for us each month, we found they mainly make blogs posts for us on other sites (i.e. They will go to a wedding blog and reply to someone's thread about wedding invitations and talk about us). In the end, this was just social networking, something we can do on our own... with the only cost being time.

Social Networking includes what our SEO has been doing for us, PLUS... Blogging; MySpace networking; Facebook networking; Twittering, etc. All of this has seemed very overwhelming to me and seemed like it would take too much of my all so valuable time... until I took that awesome course just 2 weeks ago! :) Now I know how to OPTIMIZE my time and my social networking to work for me!

Ashley (awesome, awesome Ashley) of Ashley's Bride Guide.com hosted this small social networking course and I jumped at one of the limited spots. I admit I had a few stomach knots going into it. This girl knows her stuff - if I was going to pay anyone to show me how to do it - she is the only one I would trust to pay for her knowledge. She has single-handedly mastered the art of social networking to turn her business (which is simply a social network) into a huge success over the past couple years. She has always stayed one step ahead of everyone else... which can make her seem intimidating. That is, until she shares all her secrets with you! :) I HIGHLY recommend taking her full course she is offering next month, called Bridal Blog Camp. There are 3 different sessions on 3 Sundays in August. IF you already have a blog and know enough to "get you by" like I did, then you may skip the intro course (suprisingly, I was advanced compared to some of the other attendees) but TRUST ME - there is a lot to be learned in this area! When your business counts on something, you are going to know a whole lot more about it than other people and Ashley truly does! You can learn more about the August Bridal Blog Camp by clicking here.



So - what did I learn? The coolest things I learned was how to REALLY use social networking in an efficient way. I learned how to set up these different areas of networking and then link them all (RSS feed for most) so that they are all working for me with simple singular posts. I learned how to surf networks to get my name out there (what my SEO was doing for me). I learned how to surf for new brides to get them information at the very beginning of their engagement process. I learned what areas to spend more time and what areas are really not worth the time. I learned how to schedule the time and your blogs so you are incorporating this part of business into your weekly business routines. I learned that "social networking" doesn't have to take a lot of time and energy as long as you have a good plan. I learned that in order to rank at the top, this is truly going to be the key!!

[Stephanie (me) from Relish on the right & Austin of Last Minute Planners on the left, towards the end of the class, when we were feeling much more confident!]

If you are ready to learn, CLICK HERE to register for the August Bridal Blog Camp. Take it from me, Ashley will have you learning with laughter and leaving with confidence! And if you're a bride, don't miss out on your social networking, starting with Ashley's Bride Guide! TRUST ME - You will RELISH IT! ;)

Bridal Show Memories!

Happy Monday, all. Nashville's weather is looking pretty promising this week... Time to get outside and enjoy it! Right now it's still cloudy and gray... good blogging weather :)

I was just reminiscing about this past January... We were thrilled to be part of Weddings the Bridal Show in our hometown, Nashville! We got to dream in color with hundreds of brides and their friends at our Invitation Station! Our booth was hoppin' all day long, and we loved seeing the different combinations that were created by everyone. Even the guys were excited to participate! (Well, a few of them, at least!)

If you came to our booth and haven't had a chance to try our online Relish Invitation Builder, we invite you to go create and play and dream up something lovely! (Be warned, it can get addicting!)