Personalized wedding gift bag

Byline: brian anderson

I am getting married in October. Yes, someone special has made the ultimate sacrifice of agreeing to become my wife. And yes, she had been drinking at the time.

Anyhow, while it may be a stretch to connect my wedding to promotional products, follow along with me for a minute. The past several months and the next two months have been/will be filled with taking care of countless details involved to make the day go off without a hitch - or rather, I suppose, with a successful hitch.

Aside from worrying about the cost, the planning is the other difficult thing about getting married. Consider the following potential headache-makers:

*Meeting with multiple photographers to find one who won't annoy the daylights out of you on the one day you most don't want to be annoyed.

*Finding not just a band to play the reception but also a soloist to play during the ceremony.

*Actually listening to demo tapes of potential soloists.

*Assisting family and friends in making hotel and condominium reservations.

*Figuring out who does what at which part of the ceremony.

*Trying to express your opinion (or lack thereof) about centerpieces.

*Determining who rates an invite when you can only have so many people attend.

This merely scratches the surface, as I'm sure many of you nuptial veterans out there know.

As my fiance reminds me, I have the "privilege" of being included in finalizing many of the arrangements. While she also has the annoying habit of telling all our friends that "Brian's taking care of everything" whenever they ask how the wedding plans are coming, I really am getting off fairly easy compared to her wedding workload (I didn't have to worry about the cake and flowers, among many other things). But among my tasks is helping in putting together a "Welcome to Estes Park" bag filled with a variety of information about the Colorado mountain resort town where we first met and are getting married. These "goody bags" are also meant to include a variety of small, useful products for wedding guests who will be spending a long weekend in town, many of whom have never been to Colorado.

Bottles of water, packets of aspirin, high-SPF sunscreen, and other items I haven't thought of yet will likely be included, and may be sourced via one of my promotional products distributor friends. Even the bags themselves will probably come from the industry.

That's where the July 16-18 ASI Show in Chicago comes in, for which I am leaving shortly after this column is finished. I have a (now not-so) secret mission to accomplish on the side while at the trade show. I will be keeping my eyes open for the perfect products to include in the goody bag, as well as for the perfect bags themselves.

Then there is the matter of finding a special personalized gift for my groomsmen. Again hoping to spot the ideal item on the show floor.

And perhaps I will also find appropriate prizes for winners of a golf tournament scheduled for the day before the wedding. Heck, it seems like about the only thing I don't expect to find at the show is my tuxedo.

While I have attended dozens of industry trade shows and often been on the lookout for new and interesting products, this time I will also be indirectly looking around on behalf of an end-user customer: me.

Brian Anderson is the Senior Managing Editor of Wearables Business.