06 Jul

Wedding Blog Search Engine

categories: Wedding Blog Search Engine,Wedding Technology Tags: brides, iPhone App, RSS, tech tuesday, Wedding Blog Search Engine, wedding bloggers, Wedding Search Engine, Wedding Technology, wedding vendors —

I want to formally introduce to you, our wedding blog search engine! We’ve been working incredibly hard on bringing to the wedding community, the most comprehensive blog search engine available. Search for anything your heart desires – type into our homepage’s search box “pink gray” and all relevant search results that have pink and gray in the title or text will get pulled up. So, search for colors, themes, letterpress invitation ideas, diy projects, wedding gown designers, and more. Our engine will search through a TON of blog posts to bring back the most relevant posts to you first.

We are currently developing an iPhone and iPad app for the search engine. You’ll be able to find inspiration on the go through these apps. We do the work so you don’t have to! Search through hundreds of wedding blogs for ideas without leaving our site and when something finally catches your eye – then click through! We index nightly, so make sure you bookmark our site and come back daily for new fascinating finds! If you’re a wedding vendor or blogger and want to be included, email me at: info {at} my-wedding-concierge {dot} com for more information! We’re always on the lookout for great blogs to add to our engine.

P.S. Here’s a hint on how to get indexed high up on our search results. Make sure your blog title is keyword rich as well as your first paragraph that is fed into your RSS feed.

02 Mar

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iPhone App: My Wedding Concierge Vendor Guide

categories: Wedding Technology,iPhone App Tags: custom illustrations, iPhone App, wedding planning, Wedding Technology, wedding vendors —

We have a brand new redesigned iPhone App that just got approved tonight by Apple. We’ve rebranded it so that it matches our website. The gorgeous illustrations were illustrated by the talented Astrid Mueller. It is available for download in the iTunes store for free. Just simply do a search for My Wedding Concierge and it’ll pop up. For those of you that already have our app downloaded, simply run an update from the App store and all the new graphics and user interface will change over to the new one. Setting up your app only takes a minute and then you’re ready to start searching for vendors in your area!

The My Wedding Concierge Vendor Guide is an iPhone App that allows brides to search for wedding vendors on the go. Because the iPhone doesn’t support Flash, if a bride look at a wedding vendor’s website that’s in flash, all she will see is a box with a question mark in the middle. Also, our iPhone app loads about 10 times faster than a website.

Our vendors essentially have a mini website when they are showcased on our site. All of their contact information is available as well as their company information. Vendors are able to upload up to 36 full size photographs and brides can save their favorite photographs by tagging them 1-5 stars. One touch email, phone call, and visit to their website from within the app are all available. It doesn’t get any easier than this!

Brides can very easily request information from wedding vendors by simply tapping the “Request More Info” button. There are two different screens where the bride can request information from the vendor. Since the bride had already set up her information during set up, there is no need to re-enter her information. The lead is sent immediately to the wedding vendor via email.

We are adding new vendors to our site daily. If you don’t see very many vendors in your area, make sure to check back often and feel free to click on the + sign on the upper right hand corner to suggest new vendors to be added to the site.
If you get a chance, we would really appreciate it if you wrote a review for us in the App store. Just as an FYI, any app that you delete or reinstall without rating it, becomes an automatic 1 star to the developers. It’s been a battle with Apple that has fallen on deaf ears. Thank you SO much!

09 Feb

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Technology Tuesday – A Bride’s Guide to twitter

categories: Wedding Technology Tags: iPhone App, twitter, Wedding Technology —

What is twitter and why should brides use it? Twitter is a microblogging site that allows you to convey your thoughts in 140 characters or less. It’s free of charge and easy to use once you get the hang of it. If you’re planning your wedding, I’m sure you already know how many people want to help you plan your wedding – your parents, future in-laws, sisters, brothers, cousins, bridal party, friends, co-workers, etc… It seems like everyone has a say in helping you plan your wedding. There you go. 140 characters or less to tell them what you’re up to.

Click on the Find People button at the top of the screen and you can either 1. Invite people you know by email, 2. Find them by searching for their business name or name, 3. Enter your email address and twitter will pull up all your contacts and see who has a twitter account for you to follow.

Your tweets are seen by people who follow you, and your homepage includes a feed of the most recent tweets of people you’re following. It’s almost like an ongoing Facebook status update. There are also programs to help you manage your social media life via downloads or iPhone apps.

How to use twitter. It’s very simple. Once you are following somebody, just type the “@” symbol in front of their username (@iwedding) and then your message. Don’t forget – you only have 140 characters to get your point across. If you are including a link, use bit.ly to shorten the URL. That will give you more room for your message.

Your followers can jump into the conversation by clicking a “reply” button that appears when you put your mouse on the lower right hand corner of the message box. When they click “reply” your username is automatically populated in the reply box.

If you see a tweet that you think your followers would like to see, you can “retweet” it by typing RT @username and then either copying and pasting the message (tweet) or by clicking on the “retweet” button that appears when you scroll over the bottom right corner of the message box.

Why you should follow wedding vendors. A lot of wedding vendors are on twitter these days. Follow them for special offers only available to their followers, for special announcements, links to their most recent blog posts or real weddings, or advice.

The most common things you’ll see and use on twitter:

tweets: messages posted by user
RT or Retweet: messages reposted by another user
DM: a message sent directly to you (not seen by other users)
Follow Friday or #FF: A tag used on Twitter as a way to tell your followers about other Twitterers that are worth following. This is done most often on Fridays. Put the #FollowFriday hash in your message to let others know you’re sharing knowledgeable people that they should follow.

If you’re interested in following us on twitter, our username is: iwedding – Click follow and you’re done!

02 Feb

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Welcome to Bridal Fascinations!

categories: Wedding Technology,iPhone App Tags: iPhone App, Search Engine, Wedding Technology —

I’d like to start off by welcoming all the Brides, Wedding Vendors, and Fellow Bloggers that are reading my blog for the very first time! My name is Phyllis and this site was built by both my husband and myself over the course of the last year. By the way, his name is Philip. I know…what were the chances?! We’ve been head over heels in love for almost 11 years and married for nearly 8. I’ve been in the wedding industry for almost 8 years having focused on ad sales and marketing consulting before we created My Wedding Concierge. Here is one of my favorite pictures from our wedding day:

A few things about our site – it’s the ultimate wedding search engine. You won’t need to go to any other site to search for information. And that includes google. You will be able to type in a keyword and have returned to you, the most relevant wedding vendors in your area that matches your search terms. All of the wedding blogs indexed are hand selected for relevant content. Real soon, we’ll be working on keyword expansion technology. When you type in shoes, we’ll also return in our search results: heels, stilettos, pumps, flats, etc. Images that are tagged with your keyword will also be returned as will articles in the news.

We have an iPhone app available for free to download in the iTunes store. My Wedding Concierge iPhone App – a second generation app will be released soon to include the search functionality as well. For those of you without iphones, we will be on every web enabled smartphone in the next few months.

What can you expect to see on our blog? We aim to bring you real weddings, our favorite things, the latest trends, celebrity wedding guest bloggers, and many more fascinating things that you’ll just have to stick around to find out. Subscribe to our blog. I promise that you won’t be disappointed. We aim to be on the forefront of wedding technology and welcome any ideas any of you may have. Shoot me an email. I promise to personally reply to each and every one.