Wedding Website Update: Same Old Story, Just like the Wedding Business

By Paul Pannone

It’s the time of year when wedding websites run their Best of part of their program to hype themselves and try to convince wedding vendors how important it will be to renew their advertising for another year. Members of the Wedding Water Cooler are active this week punching holes in some of the most culpable websites saying they’re weary of listening to the same old song and dance. Many of the Coolies say they’re amazed at how many wedding vendors still support some of the tired old sites, despite repackaged pitches and revamped pages.

According to Wedding Water Cooler experts the lies are all the same but they’ve gotten better at lying.

 Wedding website whistle-blower, David Fuhrer updated his 2011 statement denouncing the practices of some websites which, in his view, remain relatively unchanged for the past five-years.

“What is remarkable is the lack of innovation upon websites such as The Knot, My Wedding, Wedding Wire. It is remarkable in the sense that a complete lack of value-incentive-propositions have been derived that increase the value of what they offer vendors. From a vendor foundation perspective all of the aforementioned haven’t evolved an iota, they remain circa 5 years ago. This is the fundamental rationale for why my perspective was, and has remained unchanged, that these sites possess a finite shelf-life. In essence their “roads” do not lead to “forks”, they lead to “brick walls”. The concentration has been wholly upon the user-experience & augmenting that experience. The means by which they have augmented is via pilfering off of each other.

The Knot was not a “review” website, it was an exposure website, they now offer user reviews. Wedding Wire was a review website, yet they now offer personalized websites. My Wedding was a personalized website offering that now has reviews. Instead of innovating, they are all supposedly enhancing, via broadening their offerings to the demographic with what can be found on the other websites. They then, pass along, these value-add’s, to prospective vendors in the form of “yes” we do that & even better & more intuitively than other competing sites,” he told the Water Cooler.

The website discussion stemmed from an ongoing story involving a 20/20 segment that got the wedding business to stand up and announce they’re not a bunch of crooks, opposing the way they were depicted in the segment. In an ongoing eWedNewz investigation about wedding marketers in the business, wedding websites and the fairy dust purported are part of the same story, giving vendors misinformation on how to treat consumers.

Chris Evans was interviewed for the 20/20 segment and mentioned his Boot Camp approach to selling. Evan’s business view of marriage is discussed in the Wedding water Cooler and singled out due to the attention it gathered in the 20/20 segment. Members of the group along with other wedding sources being interviewed for an upcoming eWedNewz story say the hard selling and lack of bedside, emotional approach is what’s giving the wedding business a bad name.

According to the Wedding water Cooler discussions wedding marketing and websites need to undergo a major overhaul to appeal to new wedding consumers who no longer turn to websites and older methods– replaced by Social media and referrals from their friends.

What do you think?

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