Dream Wedding Show

I’m a wedding planner and I buy my Bride’s tickets for the Dream Wedding Show because it’s the best, most DJ’s, Flowers, Photographers, Caterer’s, etc. everything a Bride needs to plan her wedding! Sharon Slater

Let’s just say that The Dream Wedding Show (a bridal expo not related to Sacramento Bridal Show Case) doesn’t cater to my dream wedding.
One plus, the groom is free when the bride purchases a ticket. Bride’s get two dollars off purchased tickets. Sure they have about 60 to 100ish or so vendors in the place. Yes, they have bridal fashion shows throughout the day, they MAY (they totally didn’t have much food here) even carry food samples but BLEH. Oh and no alcohol samples here either!
If you are in the preliminary stages of planning your wedding, I’d say check it out but otherwise if you need a few things just here and there like I did… don’t bother.
I went to Cal Expo around 10:20 am to get some early parking and be first to get into the Fashion Show (I had my bridesmaids with me and wanted prime seating).
First off, Cal Expo staff is totally unprofessional and rude.
If you buy tickets at the door, bring cash and a strong will because Cal Expo isn’t sophisticated enough of an establishment to take credit cards or provide excellent customer service.
Not only do they snap at you (like the lady at the gate eating breakfast while collecting my $ 10 parking fee –saying, «Why are you here so early, the show opens at 11AM» (The Dream Wedding Show website says the first show starts at 10:30 AM). From the guy at the gate that’s like «Where’s your tickets?!»
Second off, I bought mine online and all I got was an email confirmation (no tickets, no ticket pdfs… nothing) I showed him my IPAD which had the confirmation number on it. He got all irritated that he has to scroll on my IPAD but what does it matter he doesn’t have a checklist or anything to see if I am registered or not. Also, when you purchase the tickets on Paypal through the site it limits you to 6 tickets per registered bride. Which is annoying since you WANT the discounted price.
Then when I checked in at the Fashion Show, they just hand you a badge and tell you to sit down. No map layout of the vendors. They do have a listing of participating vendors but they just shove that in your hand and make you fill out a form so they can spam you (new brides: get a new email for bridal junk).
Let’s not even go there with the Fashion Show. Not only were their gowns just ill-​fitting to the models —gaping backs, dirty, and dragging gowns. But most of the models were plus size. I don’t have a problem with that, its just that I am a petite and I was hoping for a mixture of body types, maybe even one short girl so I can see what kind of bridal gowns may go with my type. Also, if you like couture, none of those gowns were couture… they were all crazy colors and cheap looking fabric gowns.
This set of vendors in attendance were mostly rude and pushy. Not only did they not carry samples (which I figure is Cal Expo’s fault) but the vendors would snap at people when they would look up close to their displays to get away from it. I had two vendors snap at my bride’s maids. Don’t have displays if you don’t want anyone looking at them.
I had better luck at the «Wine County Bride» expo in January at Santa Rosa. Better quality bridal boutiques, vendors and they give you souvenir wine glasses (wine free flowing here), tons of food samples (variety of catered food, desserts, snacks) and all the staff is friendly and knowledgeable (plus the Wells Fargo Center didn’t charge me extra for parking). They were also more organized — with a list of vendors, a gift bag for collecting stuff in and a map of the area, tracking email addresses of registered brides and printing information labels for contests. I found three vendors from that expo that I will be using. Although they are from the Napa/​Sonoma area they will vendor in Sacramento at no extra charge to me.
Pretty much, The Dream Wedding Show was a waste of my bridal planning time and money. Luckily my bridal party is a fun group and we got «photo booth samples.» Totally will remember the fun I had with my group but The Dream Wedding Show was not worth the $ 60 bucks I spent on all my attendees.