Why Wedding Directories and Brochures need to Stop Ripping Off Wedding Suppliers.
That’s a bit of a clickbait title isn’t it. It’s the kind of title you see on AI slop videos and reels these days, but I promise not to use any AI in the writing of this blog post. To be honest, I’m very much against using AI to write content for my website. My thoughts and words need to reflect who I am as a person and wedding photographer. That’s only going to come straight from the source so “Hi, I’m Jaye and I have opinions.”
This post came about after conversations and messages with a few of my wedding supplier friends. People who I trust, who I have a mutually beneficial working relationship with and who have all had similar experience to me when it comes to wedding directories, wedding brochures and even wedding magazines.
What is a Wedding Directory and what are they trying to achieve?
There are quite a few wedding directories out there and the most well-known ones are Hitched and Bridebook. Their business model is to curate an online repository of wedding suppliers that can be searched by visitors to their websites. If you’re looking for someone to do all of your wedding stationery, for example, it’s somewhere you’ll likely be able to find a wedding supplier who offers that service. The bigger the directory the more suppliers they list and the big advantage is that you can find a lot of wedding related services, from venues to dog chaperones, in one place. That’s pretty much what they set out to do and the more wedding suppliers who sign up the bigger and more concise a wedding directory becomes.
Aren’t Wedding Directories a good thing?
Yes and no. For a couple planning a wedding it can be a great resource of information, especially if you are able to create a free profile, or search listings for free. However, you might decide to send an enquiry via the directory to let’s say a wedding photographer, for example. Only the directory might decide, based on your user profile and an algorithm to also send that to other photographers in the same area or who match your preferences.
For example, you’re planning a wedding in Grasmere in the Lake District and you’re looking for a wedding photographer who not only covers that area but also has a relaxed and natural photography style. My listing pops up and you decided to send me a message, only the algorithm also sends that message to 5 other photographers whose profiles mentioned “relaxed,” “natural,” and “lake district.” Even if they’re based in Portsmouth or Inverness, if it all matches they might also receive your message.
From a wedding supplier point of view that really sucks. You either never get any genuine enquiries or you might lose out to someone who doesn’t even live in the area that you cover and live in. All of this also costs money. The listing, the recommendation and being highlighted as a preferred or premium supplier all has to be paid for. This can be anything from £10-£20 per month to hundreds, even thousands of pounds for the most popular categories and wedding venues.
There are also regular discussions in wedding supplier forums and groups about how genuine enquiries are, with many people complaining that they either never or rarely receive genuine leads. This as well as many other shady practices have been well documented by The Knot Whistleblowers. The Knot is a wedding directory in the United States who owns Hitched.
What about a Wedding Magazine?
Let’s be honest how many people go out and buy magazines these days? It’s been well documented that readerships are declining, if not in free-fall in the news and print media. It’s something you would never believe was the case going by the number of cold calls and marketing emails that your average wedding supplier receives on a monthly basis. I had three cold calls in one day the other week. All from mobile numbers and all claiming to be from the world’s most popular magazines for weddings, that ironically you’ve probably never heard of. All of who claimed that my life would change and I stood to make a small fortune from advertising with them. If I’d been persuaded (it was never going to happen) and parted with the best part of £1k+ their commitment to me would have ended. Some even expect you to pay extra for their in-house design team to create your artwork, unless you supply it yourself. There’s no guarantee that your advert is going to get in-front of a couple planning a wedding who are likely to look at it and then pick up the phone to call you. It might have worked in the past but that’s not how the majority of couples search for suppliers in 2026.
What’s so bad about a wedding brochure then, surely that’s more specific?
You would think that anyone producing a wedding brochure would be more focused on a particular area or wedding business? Using a wedding venue as an example and let’s say they get approached by a publishing company to see if they would like them to design a brochure for the venue. Only instead of the venue paying for the brochure they’ll approach local wedding suppliers to pay to be featured in the brochure. Some of those suppliers may already have a good working relationship with the venue, some might never have worked there before, and some might not even be from the same locality. The venue gets a nice shiny brochure that the featured suppliers have collectively paid for. That’s it. There’s never a guarantee that your outlay will generate enquires, and the only thing that is in fact guaranteed is that the venue have a shiny new brochure.
If you have a good relationship with the venue and you already have weddings that are taking place there, why should you pay for the privilege of having your business featured in the brochure in the first place? The money that you’ve paid out doesn’t affect the bookings that you already have, and future work usually comes in because you have that good relationship with the venue that new couples will be able to see from your previous weddings anyway. The sales tactics aren’t any different to the cold calls from a magazine, only they “work with the venue” and there’s always a hint of “if you don’t pay to go in the brochure you’ll never work at this venue again!”
The other thing that comes to mind is why pay to advertise in this hypothetical venue’s brochure when there are other venues that recommend you to their couples for free. Not completely free mind, a lot of hard work and relationship building goes into being recommended by a venue or another wedding supplier. Most importantly they like what you do, the way you do it and the value it adds to their weddings. You shouldn’t ever have to part with the best part of £1k just to get a mention.
So what’s the best way to get in front of couples then?
Firstly and most importantly never pay anyone to market your wedding business unless you are guaranteed to be put in front of couples.
Smaller community driven blogs and directories can be brilliant if they are being run by someone who will actively share and promote your posts on social media, publish articles about your couples wedding day, and work tirelessly to link everything back to your website and social media. It all helps to build your online profile and trustworthiness in the eyes of potential couples, showing you as a real person, running a real business and who is kind of quite good at what they do.
Everything gets linked together in an online network that goes beyond “I’m Jaye and I’m a wedding photographer in the Lake District” to also include “OMG! Have you seen this wedding that Jaye photographed in the summer at this amazing venue near Windermere! Aren’t these flowers beautiful, and the bride’s dress, and what about those photos down by the lake!” It’s supportive and kind of like an online review (speaking of which go and check out my Google reviews if you want to see what my couples really think of me).
Wedding fairs are also great for chatting to couples. Yes, you do have to pay to exhibit at some of the bigger ones but you’re actually face to face with couples who are planning a wedding. Show me a wedding directory that can do that?! I have photographed, and will be photographing, weddings that I would never have been a part of if I hadn’t struck up a conversation with those clients at a wedding fair. You really get to know people and from a newly engaged couples point of view, overwhelmed by the huge task that wedding planning can be, that can be everything.
But it all costs money – is there not anything else I can do to promote my wedding business?
Yes and first and foremost your first port of call should be a website. Even something simple can give couples the reassurance that you’re a running a real wedding business. This can be linked to your social media and any other online presence that you have, such as a Google Business Listing for example. By having a presence and by regularly showing up your potential clients get to see the real you and learn all about how amazing it would be to have you at their wedding.
One of the most important things for me is my relationship with other wedding suppliers. As a photographer I have the one thing that everyone wants, photos of their work and of them at work. I’ve always been happy to share my photos (when a couple are happy for me to do so), and other suppliers then say nice things about me and in return I say nice things about them. It fosters mutually beneficial relationships some of which have developed into some great friendships over the years. There’s a great saying in the wedding industry that I’ll credit to anon – “Community over competition.”
Show me a wedding directory, brochure or magazine that can do any of that for you?
My Final thoughts on Marketing your Wedding Business
Like many other sole traders and wedding suppliers I have fallen victim to the cold calls and sales patter of someone attempting to coerce me into paying for advertising. My personal experience has never been positive and I honestly cannot think of one example of paying out for an advert in print media, in a wedding brochure or via an online directory that has ever generated any enquiries or bookings. When you look back you feel like you have been scammed and ripped off and it can make you quite bitter and affect the way you engage with phone calls. But you have to rise above it and keep faith in yourself and the passion that you have for what you do.
Being a sole trader in a hugely competitive industry that can sometimes be an oversaturated marketplace is really tough. None of us get a free ride and if something sounds like it is too good to be true I guarantee that the only person who is making money, is the person insisting that you pay them ££££ for a so called opportunity of a life time. Only give your hard earned money to someone who is going to support your business. Someone that will promote it, boost your online presence, put you face to face with couples and recommend you to their own clients. That’s where the real value is, and not in a faceless wedding themed corporation whose only interest is their own profit margin and next pay-check.
Invest in yourself and your own training and development in your speciality and work on building those all-important relationships, and friendships, with other wedding suppliers. We are all, after all, stronger together.
If any couples want help finding other wedding suppliers feel free to ask and I’ll be happy to help, and point you in the direction of who and where you can find someone who would fit perfectly into your day. A day that anyone worth their weight wants to be utterly fantastic!
With thanks to Claire from English Wedding Blog for her valued help in proof reading and for checking my spelling and grammar 🙂
