Just had a lovely day with my MOH at a wedding fair over in Bexley :-) It was quite small, but as we got there early, I managed to get round and spend quite a bit of time chatting to the suppliers before they got overwhelmed with other brides. And being early, I was one of the first ten brides to register, I got a free bottle of bubbly which was a nice surprise!

Also, the layout was really good too as they had quite a few of the hotels conference rooms open and with about 5 or 6 suppliers in each room, which loads of space to wander around and plenty to room to look at the stands and browse the products if the suppliers were already chatting to other brides.

If anyone hasn't been to a wedding fair before, my best tip is to a) get there early and b) see if you can look at the exhibitors list beforehand so you know who you want to talk to the most (and have a look on their websites to look at prices etc so you don't waste your time talking to people that are beyond your budget). I had a list of about 8 or 9 suppliers I wanted to chat to and I managed to speak to all of them!

Got loads of advice on rings and flowers and spoke to a lovely husband and wife team who are photographers - I must have chatted to her for about 20mins!! She was so lovely and went through all the albums with me and showed me the proof albums they provide and they also had a book of photos from all the surrounding registry offices and venues which was really good to see what they can do. And she went through what they would do if it rains etc etc. Just so helpful and lovely! And the photos were just amazing! And the albums just gorgeous. Definitely high up there on the photographers list!

And the best thing was, that whenever I mentioned our ceremony and reception venues, everyone said that we'd picked two great places with beautiful gardes and surroundings and everyone said that our reception venue was lovely and the staff were really good and helpful. One of the florists had even had her wedding there and she said they were brilliant and she couldn't recommend it enough!! Which was great to hear, as we hadn't found any reviews of our venue online (it's not a hotel or very well known - but they do own a restaurant too which had amazing reviews on the food!) so we had practically booked without knowing much about the place apart from what the wedding coordinator had told us and what we'd seen, so was such a relief to know that we'd made a good choice!

Sorry, just had to share!!! xx

Sounds like you had a really useful day! How lovely to hear such good things about your venue too : )
I went to a fair in Redditch today and it was pretty rubbish to be honest! Only had about 10 exhibitors there and most of them were not what I was looking for, although I did chat to a lovely photographer who I would love to book but she's twice my budget! Oh well, it was a little trip out at least!

I went to a fair in Hereford today and it was pants considering it was at one of the top venues. There was no goodie bag or freebies, the cake stands didn't even have samples, only a few of the exhibitors seemed interested in helping us out or offering any advice and the layout was terrible. There was an exhibit with some girl sat looking bored selling invitations and I walked over and said hello made some comments about the beautiful invitations and she didn't say much, so my mum asked if we could have a leaflet and I said don't bother mum she clearly doesn't have any interest in us and I'm not interested in her invitations when you buy them anywhere. She wasn't impressed but nor was I with her non existant sales pitch.

I did find a nice place for flowers and table decorations and they were really keen to send me a full brochure with prices and if I contact them they will decorate a table with everything I want so that I can view it before hand.