The Truth about Chicago Wedding Magazines

April 13, 2006

You can always find a couple of Chicago wedding magazines at the local Border’s book store, or grocery stores like Jewel or Dominick’s.  It’s always nice to flip through them a few times just to get ideas, but there’s no need to buy every single one every month.

Okay, here’s the deal.  Chicago wedding magazines weigh a ton because they’re mostly made up of wedding advertisements from local and national wedding vendors.  There are some very good articles in them, but you’ll probably see an ad on every single page.

I’m not against advertisements, as you can see from the Google ads on this page.  I think that publishing houses need to make money in order to survive and Chicago wedding vendors want to get their ad in front of as many brides as they can. 

Here’s the problem I have with the system.  Some wedding magazines are published several times a year with different fabulous covers and the exact same editorial inside of the magazine.  Some of them only change their editorial twice a year even though they publish four issues.  Couldn’t they get a few wedding vendors to write articles for their magazine?

It really used to get on my nerves when I would buy another issue of the magazine hoping for new wonderful ideas only to discover that it’s the exact same magazine I purchased a few months ago.  That’s a waste of money and I always wondered how these companies got away with that.

Then I became a wedding vendor.  I talked to one of the sales reps and that person told me that their job was to showcase the ads from wedding vendors and a different cover would entice a bride to actually purchase a “brand new” wedding magazine.  And, as a vendor, I have to say that this policy didn’t really bother me that much.  It’s hard being a business owner and I needed to work in order to survive.

As a bride, it took me a long time to figure out this pattern because I bought all of the wedding magazines all of the time.  I got drunk with wedding planning, so I didn’t catch on that the editorial was the same until just before my wedding.

Not all wedding magazines do this, but some do and it really frustrated me as a bride.

I think it’s more useful to purchase maybe one or two wedding magazines a season and that’s it.  I suggest dog-earing the pages in those magazines with good ideas or ads from wedding vendors that you’d like to contact.  There’s so much repetition in those magazines that there’s no need to purchase every single one every month.

Just my thoughts on the issue.

Take care!

Alison
WeddingChicago.com

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