Martha Stewart Weddings Luxury Expo – Live and Online!
Posted By Suzanne Carvlin on March 15, 2011
Today, Martha Stewart Weddings hosted “Martha Stewart Weddings Luxury Expo,” an online wedding expo that was live!
It was a really fun idea and I enjoyed visiting a virtual wedding expo. Many of my favorite vendors were interviewed and they did live Q & A forums throughout the weekend.
If you missed it, you can still visit the MSW Expo “on demand” through April 22nd, 2011! After that, you are out of luck!
Go to:
Martha Stewart Weddings Luxury Expo
Here are the highlights:
A picture of an event space that had different doors/areas to click on such as greeted me: “Ask the experts,” “Pavilions,” “Bride-to-bride lounge and chic mini people. They even had a help desk with a virtual helper standing at a desk.
Darcy Miller, Editorial Director for Martha Stewart Weddings, then popped up with a recorded welcome message explaining the different areas. Nice touch, Darcy!
Martha Stewart Weddings online live Luxury Expo's welcome landing page.
In the Bride-to-Bride section, you could live chat with other brides as well as chat with guest moderators who were listed on a schedule. Brides would post questions in a public chat plus a live “ask the experts” page. Pretty cool.
You could also post tweets from the expo to Twitter and even send personal messages to other attendees. If you want to catch the buzz that was on Twitter, just search for the hashtag #mswluxuryexpo.
Pavilions included: Registry, Details, Jewelry, Fashion and Travel. My favorite was the Registry Pavilion. The Registry Pavilion featured: Bloomingdales, Crate & Barrel, JC Penny, Kohl’s and Macy’s.
Martha Stewart Weddings Luxury Expo - Pavillion Hall. Featuring: Wedding Registry, Wedding Details, Jewelry, Fashion, and Honeymoon Travel.
The integration between the MSW online expo and the participating registry stores was really quite impressive! I love how the registries were set to music and had a layout that resembled a live store. Really neat idea!!
As you panned around each store, items displayed (such as plates or towels) opened links directly into that section on the store’s online website.
Here is a picture of the Bloomindale’s Registry “booth.”
Items shown in color were clickable. If you clicked on the wood bowls, you were taken to the Bloomingdale’s website highlighting their wooden bowls. Likewise, clicking on the Kitchenaid mixer took you to the mixer on their website.
Bloomingdale's Boutique "booth" in Registry Pavilion of the Martha Stewart Weddings Luxury Expo. I like the "real store" design of the page.
Bloomingdale's Registry "booth" with clickable wooden bowls that direct you to the Bloomingdale's website.
Clicking on the wooden bowls in Bloomingdale's Martha Stewart Weddings Expo page took you directly to the wooden bowls on Bloomingdale's Wedding Registry Website.
In the Details Pavilion, two websites were represented: Martha Stewart Weddings and Wedding Wire. Both had a virtual “booth.”
I am a member of Wedding Wire and won the Bride’s Choice 2010 Award. I am featured and rated under their “wedding planners” section and I am also featured on Martha Stewart Weddings’ list of vendors. It was particularly fun for me to see myself represented in the online booth.
The Wedding Wire "booth" in the Details Pavilion of the Martha Stewart Weddings Luxury Expo.
Clicking on the Wedding Wire links and entering a city in Central Oregon took you to my listing on Wedding Wire.
The Martha Stewart “booth” even had a full episode playing from her show.
Martha Stewart's TV show streamed in her expo booth. Clicking on the links took you to the Martha Stewart Weddings website.
Clicking on the Vendors section of the Martha Stewart booth took you to my listing and client reviews on the Martha Stewart Weddings website.
I do wish that the Martha Stewart Weddings and Wedding Wire sites were more integrated into the expo booth. Really, a link just took you to their sites. It would have been fun to see a slideshow of highlights or even mini “how to” videos.
For the most part, the website worked. I only had a few issues with the player for the live Q & As as well as some poor sound quality. Once the website caused Safari to crash, but it loaded back up after awhile. One complaint was that the live Q & As overlapped by a few minutes, so after leaving one Q & A, I would log onto the next only to find that I missed the beginning of the introductory webisode. I was so relieved to find that I could replay the Q & As.
I was most interested in the Main Stage because the different live Q & As were hosted by well-known experts: Cheree Berry of Cheree Berry Paper, Sylvia Weinstock of Syvia Weinstock Cakes, Matthew Robbins of Matthew Robbins Design, Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig, designers of Marchesa and more.
You can catch them here (but only until April 22nd!):
Martha Stewart Weddings Luxury Expo
Click on “Main Stage” and “Replay” your favorite topics.
Check in later this week for details on my favorite Main Stage topics: The live Q & A’s with Cheree Berry, Sylvia Weinstock, Matthew Robbins, and Jeffrey Selden.
All photos were taken as snapshots during the MSW expo: Martha Stewart Weddings Luxury Expo.
Suzanne
I am THE Party Girl! I love celebrating life, love and accomplishments! I have over 10 years of experience planning parties, fashion shows, and windows for Nordstrom, a specialty retailer. Now I plan and coordinate parties for my own company, Suzanne The Party Girl. I have a genuine passion for parties that capture the spirit of my clients while ensuring that a rockin' good time is had by all! I would love to share your happiest moments!
Comments
Leave a Reply