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Reception Locations  |
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ALERT! YOUR CURSOR IS ON THE BRIDES' LOG-IN! If you are a current advertiser, use the form to the 
right to log in to your vendor account.
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Reserve space
soon
for upcoming Winter-Spring 2010-2011 Sale of advertising space begins in August for the next edition of Cape Fear Wedding. Sign on early and get immediate online presence to bridge the months until the next handbook is published. |
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3. Frequently Asked Questions What wedding vendors want to know about our advertising services
I want to start advertising. How soon will my ad appear? My cash flow is tight. Can I spread out the payments on my ad? I'm on a monthly payment plan. Can I pay off my balance early? I don't have an ad ready. Can you help? Can you print an ad I'm already running in another publication? I love the ad you designed for me. Can you send it to another publication? Can I change my ad in the middle of a two-edition contract? What is a 'bleed'? Can my ad 'bleed'? I don't have a website. Should I start advertising now? I've changed my email address. Can you update my online listing? Are you affiliated with 'Cape Fear Bride?' How about 'Carolina Wedding Guide' or 'Perfect Wedding Planner'? I'm an advertiser. Why am I not listed as a Wedding Association member? I want to start advertising. How soon will my ad appear? We create the online listing for a new advertiser as soon as the contract is processed. That includes links to your web and email addresses and access to sales leads. We'll post your advertisement as soon as we can design it, or you submit it. Sometimes we'll use a temporary ad -- as simple as a scan of a business card -- to get a client's website presence started. We'll replace it with the more permanent version as soon as the advertiser approves the design. The Cape Fear Wedding book is published twice a year. The print edition of the ad hits the streets in late May for the Summer-Fall edition, and late November for Winter-Spring. Bottom line: An ad can start working for you immediately, without waiting for the print deadline. For an advertiser who signs on early, those extra months of website exposure and access to sales leads is free, compared to waiting until the last minute to complete a contract. More on rates and deadlines:
Website advertising:
How we deliver leads:
Return to top My cash flow is tight. Can I spread out the payments on my ad? Absolutely. We offer monthly and quarterly options, so you don't need to come up with a lump sum immediately. You can become a Cape Fear Wedding advertiser for as little as $45.50 a month. On the other hand, if you want to minimize your total out-of-pocket investment, we offer discounts for pre-payment. See detailed payment options: Return to top I'm on a monthly payment plan. Can I pay off my balance early? Yes. An early pay-off will save you the handling and finance charges built into our monthly and quarterly rates. For example, paying off the balance on a quarter-page ad six months early will save $23 compared to continuing to make monthly payments. Call or email us and we'll give you a pay-off balance. Return to top I don't have an ad ready. Can you help? We are known for our advertising design, which is free for our clients. We'll work with you to create an ad that effectively communicates what you want brides to know about your business. We believe it's important for every business to have a consistent "brand." We'll help you coordinate your ad's look and feel with your other marketing materials, including your website, business cards and brochures. If you don't have a consistent branding strategy, we can help create one. Once we've designed your ad, we can adapt that design to other collateral materials like postcards, brochures and business cards. A word about do-it-yourself ad design: Although we do have some advertisers who are talented graphic artists, most are not. Our clients are experts in event planning or cakes or flowers; we're the experts in graphic design and advertising. Let us use our skills for your benefit. We would much rather take the time to help you design an attractive and effective ad, than to have a client who's disappointed with the results. More on advertising design: Return to top
Cape Fear Wedding's handbook format means our pages and ad dimensions are different from most other publications. An ad designed for a magazine-format page won't fit properly. Merely shrinking an ad won't work. The proportions will be wrong and type often becomes illegible. But we can adapt an existing design to fit our pages. To do this, we need the original artwork (photos and logo) and fonts used in your ad. Or if you work with an ad agency or graphics firm, their artists can re-work it to match our specifications. An important fact to remember: For the same visual impact, a half-page ad on an 8.5-by-11-inch magazine page should be a full page in Cape Fear Wedding. A quarter-page magazine ad is the same size as a half page in our book. Return to top I love the ad you designed for me. Can you send it to another publication? Because of our page format, ads in Cape Fear Wedding don't fit in most other publications. So any design we do must be revised to work in other magazines, newspapers, etc. Our advertising design is a big part of what sets Cape Fear Wedding apart from our competition. But as a service to our clients, we are happy to offer re-design service and reprint permission to advertisers who are in good standing. There is a nominal redesign charge for this service. We don't charge our clients for the original design, but we must cover the cost of adapting our creative work for use in competing media. Our advertising designs are copyrighted. Any use in other media requires our express written permission. Return to top Can I change my ad in the middle of a two-edition contract? No problem. A number of our advertisers submit a new ad design for each issue. We'll be happy to redesign or update your ad for you at any time, at no charge. New ads can be posted online at any time. It's also easy to change the size of your ad. We have clients who start conservatively, with a small ad. As they use the ad and our sales leads to develop their business, they upgrade to a larger size for the next edition. The cost is simply the difference in rate between the old and new ad sizes for a single edition. See detailed rate chart: Return to top
An ad that runs to the very edge of the paper is said to "bleed" off the page. By contrast, most ads are surrounded by an empty frame of white paper. We encourage full-page advertisers to design their ads to bleed, because it makes a much stronger visual impact. Bleeds are the standard for national magazine ads. When you're paying for a whole page, you might as well take advantage of every available square inch. In designing a bleed, it's important that background colors or images be sized larger than the finished page. When the ad is printed, the ad is slightly larger than the page dimensions. After printing, the page is trimmed to its final 5.5 by 8.5-inch size. The extra eighth of an inch image area on each edge is discarded. This ensures that no slivers of white space appear at the edge of the page. It's also why it's important to keep any type, or critical portions of an image, well within the final "trim" line. We've seen badly designed ads in which logos, phone numbers or web addresses have been partly cut off when the page is trimmed. If you or an agency will be designing your ad, please be sure it's correctly designed for a bleed. Return to top I don't have a website. Should I start advertising now? We strongly recommend against it. A website has become an essential business tool, especially if you're selling services to young adults. We've had new entrepreneurs tell us they aren't sure what to do first: advertise or build a website. Our advice: Invest in your website first. (And while you're at it, get yourself a supply of essential "collateral" marketing materials: business cards, brochures, price lists, etc.) A new business is unlikely to get a good response from potential customers who can't find it online. And the sales leads we sell as part of every ad contract aren't much use if a vendor has nothing to send to brides who've asked for information. When you're ready to advertise, you'll get good results from Cape Fear Wedding. But until you're ready, we don't want to take your money. You need it for other things first. We have detailed advice about essential steps for setting up a new business. This includes some recommended web-design firms if you need help creating your site. Go to "Business basics" page: Return to top
Yes, but you can do it yourself, right now. All Cape Fear Wedding advertisers have a username and password that allows you to log in and edit your online vendor listing. You have complete control over such details as your business name, address, phone numbers, email and web addresses. This also updates our records, to ensure we have the best current contact data for all our clients. You can even post more than one website link for your business. Some clients use this feature to direct customers both to their main website and to their blog. Or if you're part of a national franchise, You can set up links to your local site and to the parent company's site. Advertisers can also update their business categories. For instance, a florist who's indexed under the "Florists" and "Decorating" categories might want to add "Attendant Gifts." Any changes made through your vendor admin page show up instantly on the website. Return to top Are you affiliated with "Cape Fear Bride"? No. That title is a start-up magazine published by a company in Norfolk, Va., which also publishes similar magazines in other communities. A large proportion of the vendors represented in that publication are not based in the Cape Fear region. Its online listings include dozens of vendors who have been out of business for years, have relocated or changed names, or are deceased. We regret any confusion caused by an out-of-town competitor's decision to use a name so similar to ours. Cape Fear Wedding is owned, written and edited by long-time Wilmington residents who are active members and supporters of the local business community. We are members of the Greater Wilmington, Greater Topsail and Southport- Oak Island Chambers of Commerce and the Cape Fear Wedding Association. We are financial supporters of Wilmington Downtown, Inc. Advertising dollars spent with Cape Fear Wedding stay in our local economy. More about us and our affiliations: Return to top How about 'Carolina Wedding Guide' or 'Perfect Wedding Planner'? Those magazines are locally published competitors to Cape Fear Wedding. We have a friendly relationship with their publishers. Both are established businesses in the Cape Fear Region and active supporters of local causes and organizations. Both are charter members of the Cape Fear Wedding Association. Return to top I'm an advertiser. Why am I not listed as a Wedding Association member? The Cape Fear Wedding Association is a separate organization, distinct from the Cape Fear Wedding handbook and website. Its members include many of our advertisers, but other members do not advertise with us. Some even publish competing wedding magazines. 
Membership in the Association requires a wedding vendor to submit an application,
agree to follow the Association's code of business ethics, and pay $50 annual dues. The Association's monthly
meetings are networking opportunities, and usually have an informative program of interest to small business people.
Twice a year, in January and July, the Association has a sit-down luncheon meeting.More information about the Wedding Association: Return to top
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Published by Cape Fear Images, Inc. | 5621 Athens Lane | Wilmington, N.C. 28405