Last weekend on Saturday 16 March I blogged a wonderful event in the Devonshire countryside. Awash with colour, flooded with rain yet utterly brilliant from start to finish, The Fabulous Wedding Festival was one of my favourite and most memorable event blogging projects to date.
When organiser and photographer Becky Joiner approached me late last year to see if I’d be interested in live blogging her festival wedding event, I jumped at the chance.
The opportunity to meet loads of rustic, free-spirited wedding suppliers? A chance for me to spend an entire day outdoors in a pair of wellies? An excuse to visit my parents in Exeter? I’m THERE!
I had an amazing weekend doing what I love and got to meet some lovely familiar faces as well as lots of gorgeous new ones!
The brief
The Fabulous Wedding Festival was positioned as brand new, creative, exciting, fun and alternative. Becky looked to create a vibrant, contemporary feel to proceedings with on-site real-time blogging and news reported from the festival frontline. Her aim was, like all my organisers, to get as many people as possible on board with the Fabulous Wedding Festival brand. Exciting!
After several emails and phone calls we decided to focus in on a plan of volume updates specifically via Twitter, Instagram and Vine. We also agreed to go for 3 manageable round-up blog posts created on the day.
Activity
The hashtag #FabWedFest was used for the event and included across all of Becky’s marketing materials from an early stage. This helped to sow the seeds of social interaction with suppliers and visitors from the word go. On the day itself, I was joined by three bloggers (the gorgeous girls of Bespoke Bride and Dotty Vintage) who worked with me to keep the timeline topped up and textured with a mixture of photos, live observations and Vine videos.
I worked on producing content that captured the unique festival vibe (e.g. muddy boots, dramatic landscapes, al fresco drinks and food) whilst making sure we’d covered off the key sells of the event; the catwalk show, wedding exhibition and a beautiful banquet that took place in the evening. I also curated the timeline of mentions and hashtagged content to ensure a) everything was being tagged correctly and b) everything was being retweeted via the main @FabWedFest account for maximum impact.
I live tweeted and blogged news every few minutes from 9.30am to 9.30pm – phew! Our blogging basecamp was the cutest little wooden hut by a pretty lake, so it was great to have somewhere to retreat to for uploads/sheltering from the rain showers!
The full story, including my coverage: The Fabulous Wedding Festival on Storify
All hashtagged Instagrams: #FabWedFest on gramfeed
Blogged news roundups: Fabulous Wedding Festival blog
The results
Despite the rain and cold, the #FabWedFest timeline was really lively and active throughout the entire event with visitor and supplier conversations!
As I mentioned before, I think Becky did a grand job of making sure everyone was on board with the hashtag and social media efforts early on in the planning process.
In terms of overall reach and social media impact, #FabWedFest was a huge hit! Even several days after the event, there are still some 16K people being reached by hashtagged content on Twitter alone: see more on the latest Tweetreach report >>
More details, photos and blogger opinion
- Live Blogging at the Fabulous Wedding Festival by Dotty Vintage
- Fabulous Wedding Festival by Amy B Photography
- Fabulous Wedding Festival at Muddifords Court by Jessie Thomson
- A Fabulous Weekend at the Wedding Festival by Knots & Kisses
- More Pictures of Fabulous Wedding Festival by Knots & Kisses
Well done to Becky for organising such a brilliant, inspirational and refreshing wedding event. I can’t wait for the next wed fest!
Photo Gallery – With grateful thanks to Leonie Hill, Photography Student
Bride Electric aka Celia Lacy is a live event blogger and social media planner to the UK wedding industry, providing professional coverage for shows, parties and exhibitions
