Discover Charlottetown promoting P.E.I. as wedding destination

Discover Charlottetown is banking on a new online wedding business directory and marketing strategy to get more people saying "I do"on the Island.

The not-for-profit group whichpromotes the cityto off-Island travellers says it's set out to make envisioningand planning a P.E.I. wedding easier for tourists in particular.

"Right now, they have a whole lot of homework to do, and a whole lot of unnecessary searching because all those vendors, whether it's photographers, or makeup artists, or cake decorators, or venues, all that stuff doesn't exist in one central location," said Heidi Zinn, Discover Charlottetown's executive director.

Goal to register 150 businesses

Zinn says with the help of a graphic designer and a committee of people involved in the wedding industry, Discover Charlottetown's working on anewwebsite IDoPEI.com.

She says more than 50 wedding vendors around the Island have already registered to be part of a business directory on the site. The goal is to grow that to 150.

We're trying to flip the page, so we can market to them before they even search for us- Jamie Caseley,Caseley'sTent and Party Rentals

At the same time, Discover Charlottetown isworking on how to best market the Island as a wedding destinationand draw people to the website.

"We want to make sure P.E.I. wedding pictures are flooding Pinterest, and are on Instagram. Somaybe we host social media influencers that come and experience P.E.I. and see what a great place it is," said Zinn.

"But then we need the directory.... We want to make sure that if we do inspire someone, then when they come for the information, it's not piecemeal and is easy to find."

'The industry is ready for this'

Zinn says the entire project will cost around $25,000.Some of that funding will come from the vendors themselves, who have to pay $99 to be a part of the directory.

She says Tourism PEIhas said it will provide some amount of financial help to hire a social mediainfluencer.

Some businesseshave called on theprovincial government to do moreto market the Island as a place to tie the knot.

Jamie Caseley, the general manager of Caseley's Tent and Party Rentals, says he's hopeful this effort will ultimately lead to more government support.

"What we've heard from the province is that industry buy-in had to be there first," said Caseley. "We've shown that the industry is ready for this now."

Caseley is one of the committee membershelping Discover Charlottetown with its efforts.He says he's confident the work will pay off."I think this willmake a big difference," he said.

"We're living in a world now where if someone does want to get married on P.E.I., they have to find us," he said."It would be great if we could flip the page there ...andmarket to them before theyhave to come andsearch for us."

Discover Charlottetown says the aimis to have the new websitefully up and running in May.

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