When I talked to Alyssa of Lowe House Events about joining me at our wedding advice booth at Bold Italic’s Love/Make expo, I think I pitched it like this: “We’ll hang out, answer a few questions, go dancing at the slow-mo photo booth, check out the nail art, and have some bubbly. It’ll be a super fun, laid-back day.”
Right.
The truth was, I hadn’t done a non-conference speaking event since before I got pregnant and was comfortable with the fact that everyone had more or less forgotten about me. (And to be fair, some people had. One super nice lady came to ask me where Maddie was, and I was looking for her, she explained that she “just wanted to meet the person who’d created APW.”) So when three minutes after opening, we had a line all the way to the stairs in front of our advice booth, I wasn’t sure what had hit us. I was just sitting there, with some Oakland Bakes cake samples ready to put into my mouth, when the onslaught happened. It took me an hour to get the cake into my mouth. And then two hours later I had lost my voice.
Our booth was packed with a mix of people wanting logistical advice (which Alyssa happily provided), and emotional advice (there were some teary conversations on my side of the booth). And while lots of awesome readers visited (our people are the best people), what I really learned from Love/Make is that people just… really need wedding help. There were a number of times where I finished up a personal, emotional conversation with someone, and as they were pulling their teary selves together, I’d say, “So you’ve been reading the site for awhile?” And they’d say, “You have a website?” And I realized they had just spilled their guts to a total stranger, simply on the grounds that she was offering free wedding advice. (Though, I suppose the gold sparkles made me look trustworthy.)
It was a good day. I gave away a lot of my books (as a thank you to all of you for the book doing so well). We answered a lot of questions. And we met a lot of awesome vendors.
The Bold Italic is thinking of doing it again in October, and you should totally come.
And who knows. We might just take this show on the road one of these days.
