With my wedding less than a month away, many people have been asking me who will do my hair, who will do my face, where I am getting married, who is making my gown, and if I have something blue (I do…my fiancé’s beautiful eyes…I know, gag, but cut me some slack…it’s this month!!!)

 

As much as I and other brides-to-be enjoy talking up our favorite band, stylist, or designer, equally discussed is the long list of rejects (and I don’t mean ex-boyfriends) that met us before our journey down the aisle.

 

Catch a bride-to-be on a bad planning day, and prepare yourself for a miserable tirade of the trials of the search for the perfect wedding vendor. Before we made our choices for the big day, a frustrating search for the right venue, photographer, videographer, gown salon, invitations, and much, much more nearly got me unglued. Thank goodness for the bitter brides who posted their experiences on local message boards, warning others of bad businesses.

 

On the other hand, exuberant newlyweds, still high from their recent weddings, frequently post their stories, listing their makeup artists, venues, and other professionals who made their big day its most magical. Complete with photos, these reviews are usually peppered with letter grades, and we chose our venue confident that after at least 10 brides had rated it “A +++++++++++!!!!!” we were in good hands.

 

While research shows that females consumers are more adept than men at exercising the power of word of mouth (WOM) to make or break a business, brides-to-be are a particular breed. Emotions, expenses and expectations make us a special kind of crazy, and we own it.

 

In a research article entitled “Why it is Particularly Bad to Upset Your Female Customers:
Gender Differences in the Effects of Satisfaction on the Spreading of Word of Mouth,”  Michal Ann Strahilevitz, PhD examines the differences between men and women in terms of how they practice and react to WOM. The San Francisco-based marketing expert and Golden Gate University professor predicted that, “compared to men, women are more likely to spread WOM about a purchase experience. However, the greater tendency for women to spread WOM is found to be significantly higher with purchase experiences that lead to negative emotions such as disappointment, sadness or frustration.”

 

The magnitude of “disappointment, sadness or frustration” infinitely multiplies when planning and experiencing the biggest day of your life, so you can imagine how loud the words can be when exiting the mouth of an unhappy bride.

 

One of my favorite WE channel Bridezillas, Antonella, justifiably let at least two wedding vendors have it on camera, bellowing that she would “tell everybody” how poor their service had been. To be fair, when pleased by a kind and patient jewelry shop owner, Antonella happily announced that she would spread the good word to encourage business.

 

And as for grooms? They are more likely to handle issues directly, and less likely vent to loved ones. “Survey results suggest that although men may be more comfortable expressing anger to a service provider, women are more likely to share the story of a bad experience with the people in their social network,” Strahilevitz writes. And with brides uniting on message boards to share their stories, that social network has expanded, and women do take them seriously, since “women pay more attention to word of mouth” than do men, and depend on WOM more than do they do on objective, third party consumer reports than men do.

 

The message is clear. Help create one of the best days of a bride’s life, and you will be assured of the best free advertising available. But do the wrong thing, and word will spread faster than you can say “bridezilla.”