New wedding website offers local touch
While all eyes are on Britain’s royal wedding, a new McHenry-based website aims to help suburban brides and grooms plan the weddings of their dreams much closer to home.
WeddingLocals.com, which debuts Friday, is designed to help couples more easily select suburban vendors for wedding day events.
Co-founder Scott Stanowski of Wonder Lake says WeddingLocals.com will let people steer clear of the large wedding directory type of site where couples need to sift through too many DJs, photographers, florists and others that may not cater to their area.
“WeddingLocals.com allows the bride and groom to tell the website what they want, not the other way around, or where they are steered toward the highest paying advertiser,” Stanowski said.
Stanowski partnered with longtime friend Tyler Mathews of Longwood, Fla., to create the site after Stanowski, a professional photographer, discovered he didn’t like the options he had to advertise his own business.
“I was struggling to get my wedding photography business off the ground,” Stanowski said. “While mildly successful, I could not afford to pay the high rates to get listed on some of the larger wedding directories. One site wanted over $1,100 a year for their first paid listing tier with two more levels above that.”
He discussed the situation with Mathews, who was having a similar concern helping his clients in the jewelry industry reach the wedding market.
The website currently is focused on McHenry and Lake counties. It will expand in coming weeks to include Kane, DuPage and Cook counties as well as some areas of Wisconsin. Vendors will be listed for free with basic information and expanded listings will be offered for $9.95 a month or $99 a year. The site will be free for brides and grooms.
Surfing: Meijer introduced the Order-to-Store program, where you can order products on Meijer.com and have the merchandise shipped at no cost directly to your local Meijer store. Customers get an email notification when items are ready for pick up. Store locations include Rolling Meadows, Naperville, Bolingbrook and Niles.
Ÿ Speaking of online-store programs, Hoffman Estates-based Sears Holdings this year marks its 10th anniversary of its Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store service.
Ÿ Naperville-based BluePay.com has redesigned its website to provide easier access to information needed for merchants to get secure credit card processing solutions.
Ÿ Data Center company Univa of Lisle launched UniCloud 3.0 software that plugs the Univa grid engine into any cloud management system or service.
Ÿ The 5th annual Web Content 2001 Conference includes content experts, strategists, developers and other industry leaders on June 6 and 7 in Chicago.
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