Wow, thanks past Details Details brides! We were not aware of this. Knot.com and Knot Magazine representative Shannon sent us this info:
You have been chosen as a top wedding professional in The Knot Best of Weddings 2010!
What sets this honor apart from others is that it’s not just your colleagues (or even The Knot) bestowing this award on your business—the recognition comes from real brides who were thrilled with the level of service you brought to their wedding day.
The Knot surveys our brides right after they get married, asking them about their experiences with their local wedding pros. They get an email after the wedding and through controls we have put in place, they can only complete the survey once. This prevents stuffing of the ballot box which is so common with other surveys. Harris Interactive, a well respected leader in the survey industry, conducts our surveys and we had over 20,000 brides complete them. That’s a huge number of completed surveys compared to others which get a fraction of that response. As a matter of fact, we have such a large survey response each year that it’s considered statistically accurate for the wedding industry as a whole, a claim no other survey can make.
So, what does this all mean? The Knot Best of Weddings is a compilation of the reviews and ratings of 20,000+ brides. They are not chosen by us, they are chosen by our brides. This is ratings and reviews by brides, for brides. We do not purport to, nor do we have to, check out or investigate these vendors, as we are going by the word of our brides who actually used them for their own weddings. That’s the best checking there is, asking their actual customers!
Contrary to what one responder said, these ratings and reviews are not for sale. No one can buy their way into the listings. They can buy advertising, as that’s our business model, but the ratings and reviews are not for sale. There may be many other “best of” accolades, by other media, that do not share our integrity or credibility, but ours are not for sale.
To determine who gets listed, we look at the number of reviews, the ratings and other factors. Some vendors, especially those that are new to the industry, may not get enough reviews to make the cut. That also can happen to some very high end vendors who don’t do that many weddings each year, compared to the more mainstream vendors. We weigh all of the factors and list the companies that rate the highest. In some cases our editors will look at the results and determine that there are other factors that justify a vendor being included, even if they don’t make the first cut. That’s part of the editorial process, which is key to the integrity of the magazine.
Being listed is not dependent upon whether you pay The Knot for advertising. That would not be reflecting the true opinions of our brides. Besides, we have way more brides in each of our local markets than our advertisers can handle, so it’s natural that some who are listed are not currently advertisers. (We did not advertise)
Brides are the consumers here and it is incumbent upon them to check out any vendors before they book them. These survey results are after the real weddings of real brides, so they are true ratings, not the conjecture or rants of a handful of disgruntled brides. You don’t have to agree with what they say, but it is their true opinion, 20,000 of them!
