Co‑founder Christy Nelson, owner of The Benison co‑working and event center, said the district is “a collective of all different people who serve brides and grooms and their families.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
“We’ve come together to form an initiative that’s going to help to serve the greater Butler County area and to kind of work together to pull our marketing resources and educate brides and to also form good, meaningful relationships,” Nelson said.
Co-founder and marketing director Matthew Peterson, owner of marketing firm The Grow Agency, said the district and its website, www.hamiltonbridaldistrict.com, amount to “a one-stop shop for brides and grooms to find out every vendor they want to meet with.”
“They can book those meetings directly through the website, contact the vendors independently,” Peterson said. “So if they would just like to reach out to one vendor or all 26, they can do that.”
“If they’d like to reach out to every vendor and just start to get some quotes in or ideas or thoughts or tours or book tours for the venues. They can do that by just filling out one form as well.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
The Hamilton Bridal District includes everything from dress shops, reception halls, florists and salons to caterers, photographers, videographers, wedding coordinators and more.
“The vision really is to not just serve brides and grooms in their wedding time here in Hamilton, but to pull new wedding business into Hamilton,” Peterson said. “A lot of people that are newly engaged in ... Butler County, Hamilton County, even Warren County and Indiana, as they look around for unique and beautiful places to have their wedding, Hamilton needs to be top of list on there, and so the hope is that we can pull weddings into Hamilton and really grow the community.”
Hamilton already hosts several major wedding venues, including The Benison, Events on Main, the Fitton Center, and Champion Mill Conference Center. The Bridal District has built on that foundation by recruiting additional vendors, launching its website and coordinating marketing efforts funded through membership dues.
Tom Pate, who owns Narratus Media, said many other bridal districts can feel overwhelming, with a barrage of promotional emails and text messages being sent, plus the downside of traveling many miles away to navigate a neighborhood that might feel unfamiliar.
With the Hamilton Bridal District, “they’ll be able to deal with vendors they most likely already met, might even know outside of the bridal district, into an area that they’re familiar with,” Pate said.
The district plans to enhance its visibility throughout the city via signage and online via search engine optimization.
Local officials lauded the effort.
“Hamilton has succeeded recently because of partnerships and collaboration,” said Hamilton Mayor Pat Moeller. “This Hamilton Bridal District is all about partnership and collaboration, not necessarily competition, but the collaboration so that multiple companies and businesses can succeed if they work together.”
Greater Hamilton Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Dan Bates, who said he has great hopes for the district, said he thinks “everybody sees the value of what this could be.”
“Bridal business is big business and it’s in high demand and that demand is not lessening at all,” Bates said.
From the chamber perspective, “this is all about bringing additional traffic to Hamilton,” he said.
“Hamilton’s collaborative to begin with ... but when they can all get on board with a concept that benefits everyone, that makes the collaboration not only make sense, but it also makes it easier, and I think makes people more willing,” Bates said.
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