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JA Ross Salon and Spa in Granger Closes

Both WNDU and WSBT have announced that JA Ross Salon and Spa in Granger has suddenly closed it’s doors and all the equipment has been removed from the premises. The closing came with no notice and evidently customers were confirming their appointments as late as Saturday and given no indication of the closing.

If the closing has left you without a wedding day stylist, we recommend you check out either Pure Emerald across the street from Ja Ross or the Beehive in downtown South Bend.

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CPI Owner of Bella Pictures Closes Three Divisions

CPI Corporation that operates Sears Portrait studios, PictureMe or Kiddie Kandids portrait studio, and Bella Pictures announced that all of their U.S. store located portrait studios are now closed. This message is on their Web site:

After many years of providing family portrait photography, we are sad to announce our PictureMe Portrait Studios are now closed. We appreciate your patronage and allowing us to capture your precious memories. If you currently have an album or have had a recent portrait session, you can order products at myonlineportraits.com thru April 18, 2013.

If you have had a recent session, your portraits may be available at your local studio.

Now this closing right now appears to only affect brick and mortar studios located in Sears and Wallmarts under the names Sears Portrait Studio, PictureMe and Kiddie Kandids, the Bella pictures website is still up and running. Bella Pictures provides photography and videography for weddings across the nation.

While it does not appear that Bella is closing at this stage, it is very obvious that the parent company is going through some major financial turmoil. At Michiana Weddings we have never been a fan of the company being that they take events in a market and then send out emails trying to find local vendors, usually inexperienced college students or people just entering the market. Our recommendation always meet your photographer, cinematographer before even signing a contract and check out their specific work.

Being how important wedding photography and video is for brides, grooms and their families, if you have hired Bella for your wedding we would recommend developing a back up plan in case Bella Pictures suddenly vanishes too. For those looking at hiring Bella we would recommend giving it a lot of thought and have them tell you who the local photographer and write it into their contract before you sign the contract. This way if the company suddenly vanishes you can return to the local photographer and still get copies of your pictures.

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Company Information New York Times:

CPI Corp. (CPI) is engaged in the professional portrait photography of young children, individuals and families. As of February 4, 2012, it had 3,058 studios. throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico, under lease and license agreements with Walmart Stores, Inc. (Walmart) and license agreements with Sears, Roebuck and Co. (Sears) and Toys R Us – Delaware, Inc. (Toys R Us or TRU). The Company also offers wedding photography and videography services and products through its subsidiary, Bella Pictures Holdings, LLC (Bella Pictures or Bella). The Walmart studio operations are operating within CPI under the trade names PictureMe Portrait Studio in the United States, Walmart Portrait Studios in Canada and Estudios Fotografia de Walmart in Mexico, collectively PMPS or the PMPS brand. As of February 4, 2012, the Company operated 1,895 studios in Walmart locations globally.

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South Bend Bridal Show Bridal Spectacular

Northern Indiana’s best bridal show the Bridal Spectacular is taking place this Sunday at Century Center! Stop by and check out over a hundred wedding professionals from all over Norther Indiana. The Bridal Spectacular is Indiana’s oldest bridal show and is sponsored by Act II Modeling and Century Center.

Some of our favorite wedding professionals who will be there: Fun Zone Photo Booths, Music Machine, Girly Girl Gifts, Knowllwood Country Club, Swan Lake Country Club, Music To Go, Bernardo’s and many more! Fashion shows take place at 1:00 and 3:00. If you are a bride and groom planning your wedding, this bridal show can no be missed! In our opinion it is far better than the show put on by Sunny 101.

 

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Wedding Planning Pitfalls For Michiana Brides

There is an old saying ‘if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is’, the applies doubly with the wedding industry, especially with vendor pricing. Over the years we have seen so many brides burned by purchasing services that are way under priced because it was such a great deal. Most of the time the brides and grooms were booking vendors a year out only to find their “deal” of several hundred dollars less than most of the competition has disconnected their phones and disappeared.

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is’, is more true in the day and age of the Groupon and Living Social websites:

Website’s like Groupon, Living Social and Deal Find have exploded in popularity in recent years by offering products and services at greatly reduced prices. With these deals have come problems for both the consumer and the business. Many times the businesses are overwhelmed by the response and simply cannot “fill the orders”. In particular service companies like maid services and the aforementioned photo booth rentals seem to have been privy to this issue. Consumers find themselves stuck repeatedly trying to contact the business to get the service delivered or contacting the website they bought the coupon through only to have to jump through hoops to hopefully get their money back or some sort of website credit to future purchases.

You can read more at the Wired News Website!

We recommend that you avoid the questionable deals advertised on groupon and go with companies that have great long term reputations in Michiana Weddings.

If you are looking for photo booth rentals check out:

Fun Zone Photo Booths, originally known as River City Music before they got out of being DJs, the company started in 1988 and has been renting photo booths since 2007. 574.307.3652

Tivoli Photo Booths, a division of Music Machine a DJ company that has existed since 1974. 574.233.3100

Gene’s Camera Store in downtown South Bend also rents photo booths for Michiana Weddings.

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Jessica & Justin, A Colorful Wedding!

Our first look at the wedding of Justin Timberlake and Jessical Biel’s wedding is here!

Loving the petal pink Giambattista Valli Haute Couture wedding gown from what we can see here. For years colorful wedding gowns have been seen at the edges of the wedding trends. Do you think as an A list celebrity couple that Jessica’s petal pink gown is going to start a movement to colorful wedding gowns, for Michiana Weddings and away from the traditional white?

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Michiana Weddings, Ceremony Locations

Wedding Ceremony at the Morris Performing Arts Center in the atrium. Provided by www.musicmachine.com DJs for South Bend Weddings!

Here at Michiana Weddings we get emailed questions, here is our latest:

Hi – I am getting married August 10, 2013 and was hoping you could suggest some different ceremony sites. I prefer that they not be outdoors.Thanks for any/all help!
-Leigh

Dear Leigh,

There are several wedding ceremony locations to choose from in South Bend and Mishawaka that are not outdoors.

If you are having a small wedding we have seen a very elegant and wedding ceremony in the upstairs ballroom at Tippecanoe Place in South Bend. Very intimate, classic elegance in a historic local, it was a very nice ceremony.

For larger gatherings one of our favorite DJs, Music Machine this past weekend played the wedding ceremony music at the Morris Performing Arts Center in the atrium, in downtown South Bend. How about a ceremony outside of the box. The Morris Performing Arts Center has hosted, in the few years, several wedding ceremonies on the theater stage! Another breathtaking place to get married in at the Morris is the Palais Royale. A beautiful ballroom with classic elegance.

There is also the Scottish Rite in South Bend, that has a very nice looking room for wedding ceremonies.

If you are expecting a large wedding with lots of guests, there is the Century Center in downtown South Bend. The Century Center has several rooms available for hosting various sized groups.

For Mishawaka Weddings, there is the Bieger Mansion on Lincoln Way. Also check out the Riverside Terrace in Mishawaka.

We hope this helps, and thanks for contacting Michiana Weddings!

Amy

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Eventective Questionable Planner’s Choice?

We have unfortunately written about Eventective.com’s questionable business practices before.
1 If you try to use their services to contact a specific company listed on their website by clicking their “contact” button, your message will at some point be sent to the vendor but before that happens your contact information will be sold to other similar vendors to contact you and sell you their services. It is far better to go to the company’s website and use their contract system.
2 Many of the companies listed on their website in their early days were mined from the internet and listed without the company being aware of the fact they were being listed. The benefit to Eventective was that it looked like they had more vendors than they actually had and there are benefits in doing this to gain SEO ranking. This early practice of theirs has led to many “dead” companies still being listed on their website. In the South Bend DJs listing we found 3 defunct companies. You can see our other Michiana Weddings articles here and here.

Here at Michiana Weddings we believe that an informed consumer is a smart consumer who won’t fall for more questionable practices of some wedding vendors. Eventective is full of questionable practices and their latest is pictured below:Eventective Questionable Practice

Yes they are now issuing honors! The question here is what is the criteria for winning the Planner’s Choice? Is it like Wedding Wire that bases giving vendors website icons because the majority of reviews score a 5? NO! From Eventective’s own announcement: were selected for the award based on many factors, including the number of times their Eventective listings were viewed by planners.

Yes you read that right, the Planner’s Choice is based on “many” factors but the only factor that Eventective is willing to tell you about is the one based on how many people clicked one of the listings on their website!

Remember those companies in the old yellow pages that used to be called “A DJ” or “AAA DJ”? People chose to call their companies such inance names because decades ago marketers realized that most people would go to the category they were searching for and mostly call the first 3 vendors listed under that category. So if you were in the yellowpages, from a marketing standpoint you wanted to be listed first and the yellowpages based everything on alphabetical order so it ended up full of companies that had strange names starting with “A”.

The internet is no different, people go to google and call the first 3 vendors they see listed under a specific search. So many companies are battling it out with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to be listed in the top 3.

Eventective knows this and not just any company can get listed at the top of their city listings, you have to some way purchase that spot. From what we can tell they don’t just “sell” the top spot our bet is that they give that to the companies that buy the most contacts from them.

So what does this award mean to you as a bride or groom or wedding planner? It means don’t take a vendor who is promoting the fact that they are an “Eventective Planner’s Choice” very seriously. The only criteria that Eventective.com will acknowledge that is required to receive this honor is that the vendor listing was clicked on within their site many times. The ones that will be clicked on the most are the listings at the top and to get to the top it appears that the vendor needs to buy lots of leads and that is how they get to the top of their city searches. From there normal consumer behavior will make you an honor recipient because the average person only clicks on the first three vendors listed usually, according to marketing studies.

And if as a bride and groom you decide to use the Eventective search services, please be aware. Take for instance the South Bend DJ listings. Out of the top three companies that rotate to the top of the listings not one of them is based in Indiana! Two of them say they are from South Bend on the listing but two are from Michigan and one is from Florida, yes you read that right Florida! There are many fine, locally based wedding vendors in the Michiana Area including South Bend, Notre Dame, Mishawaka, Elkhart, LaPorte, Plymouth, Michigan City etc. If the vendor doesn’t have an office in your state or isn’t close by we would recommend skipping down the list until you find one that is. An out of state vendor, especially one several states away can be difficult to deal with, has no idea about local restrictions or traditions and in our experience have been very unreliable. If you are seeking relief from a vendor either not showing up to your wedding or sending in someone that did not live up to what you were sold, getting relief from an out of state vendor is very difficult. It is very expensive and very difficult to take legal action against an out of state vendor.

It says two of these companies are from South Bend, IN. But if you go to their websites you will find they are from out of state and don’t even have offices anywhere in Indiana.

Services besides Eventective to look out for such things on are Gigmasters, WeDJ.com and even Wedding Wire.

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Michiana Wedding Floral & Decor

In the Michiana Weddings region there is one wedding floral and decor company that excels past all the others, in our opinion. MichaelAngelo’s “The Event Company” sets the bar high with creative, lushious stylings of floral, decor, up lighting, fabric treatments etc. They truly are “The Event Company”. Check out some of their gorgeous work below!

South Bend Wedding Floral

MichaelAngelos “The Event Company”

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South Bend Weddings Photo Booths From The Past

Portable photo booths are one of the must have entertainment options for weddings these days. Photo booths at weddings became an affordable option only about 5 years ago when light weight, portable photo booth designs that can be broken down for easy transport became available vs the traditional arcade style photo booths that weighed into the hundreds of pounds and didn’t break down.

But did you know that back in the 1970′s the video game company Atari came out with what they considered an easily transported photo booth for parties and such? Neither did we until we stumbled across an article on Gizmodo about an ASCII portable photo booth that was rented out for weddings, corporate events and other events. Check out Gizmodo’s article here.

It is a cool blast from the past but we think we will stick with the modern portable photo booths that produce really high quality traditional photo strips. If you are looking to rent a photo booth for your South Bend and surrounding area wedding reception check out our favorite photo booth rental companies:

Fun Zone Photo Booths 574.307.3652
Tivoli Photo Booths 574.232.2003
Gene’s Camera 574-234-2278

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Groomsmen Music Video

We love wedding videos! Over the years we have seen so many activities and heard so many toasts that were lost to time because the bride and groom did not have a wedding video produced. Wedding video in the modern age is something that should be just as important as the photos, to preserve the words, the emotions, the events in their entirity. Wedding video can also be fun and silly as exampled in the clip below.

A few years ago one of the most popular requests at wedding receptions as the song parody from Saturday Night Live “I’m On A Boat”. This best man a groomsmen decided to do their own version and called it “I’m In A Wedding”.

Like the original WARNING STRONG LANGUAGE

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