Well, the Bellevue Wedding Expo was this weekend, and, at least compared to the Seattle Wedding Show, it was pretty much a bust. We hoped to see more representation of Eastside area venues, but the biggest one there seemed to be Bastyr, which we already knew about. I kind of hoped to see something from some of the hotels on the Eastside, particularly the new Westin in Bellevue, but the offerings were really limited. I think there were maybe two cake vendors, a bunch of photographers and DJs, and a few planners. I would say the Seattle Wedding Show offered probably close to four times the floor space, and a ton more vendors; a lot more effort was put forth by the vendors for the Seattle show as well.

There’s a list of local vendors on the site for the hosts of the Bellevue Expo here, which is nice in that it includes people who weren’t actually at the show, so there is actually a decent amount of information.

There’s a survival guide to wedding shows here. It has information specifically for the Puget Sound area, but there are some good general tips in there as well. Along with having a lot of energy, and having comfortable shoes, the only other thing I would recommend is that you not bring along your whole bridal party. At the Seattle Wedding Show, brides would bring along SO many people that they would crowd other people out of the booths. You don’t need the opinion of everyone to decide who your photographer is going to be; just bring a couple of people that you trust.