Back in November, I wrote a post announcing my engagement and my intention to use social media as much as possible in the planning of my wedding. Today, I bring you a new blog series — aPRettySocialBride : )

In this new series, I’ll detail how I’m doing in my social media wedding planning, including tips and tricks for you to do the same.

So without further ado, here’s the first post in the series: Crowdsourcing Vendors.

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I’m a big fan of crowdsourcing. Since I witnessed how well in can work in Pyxl’s Help Us Name Us campaign, I’ve been interested in using it in other situations. Some call it lazy…I call it efficient!

When it came time to find wedding vendors, I was a little lost. I didn’t grow up in Knoxville, and I’ve never been to a wedding in Knoxville. In addition, Michael and I are among the first of our friends to tie the knot, so we really had no where to turn — except for social media of course : )

My first priority was the photographer. After the wedding, the only tangent things you keep are the husband, the rings and the photos, so I wanted to make sure we hired the right photographer. But as you may know, photographers are a dime a dozen, and in my experience some of them barely know what they’re doing. In Knoxville, there are 1,077 local search results, so how’s a girl supposed to know where to begin?!

Lucky for me, I’m a twitter-holic and I have quite a few Knoxville followers, so I tweeted a simple question:

“Anyone know of a good wedding photographer in Knoxville?”

I received an outpouring of recommendations. Wedding planners told me who they would suggest. Happy brides told me who they had used. Other photographers offered their services. This was an awesome start!

I created a master list, scoped out their portfolios and blogs – (Hint to photographers: Have a blog! I was really impressed by those that did. It gave me a chance to see recent work, not just the very best work. I ultimately decided I would choose a photographer that ran a blog related to their work.) – and sent an email about pricing to the few whose work I liked best.

After considering what recommendations I’d received, whose style really fit what we were looking for, and the price of each, Michael and I met with our top choice: Jennie Andrews.

Upon meeting with Jennie, we knew she was the right fit and we signed a contract with her the next week…but it all started with one simple question on Twitter.

After finding success with the photographer, Michael and I continue to pose questions on Twitter and Facebook related to our wedding. Whether asking for advice or vendor referrals, we’ve had success so far, and I highly recommend crowdsourcing to other brides and grooms.

After all, it’s just like word-of-mouth, except on social media, your friend-base is much larger : )

All you have to do is pose a simple question and see what answers you receive. Of course, it still requires a little leg-work once you compile a list…but having a list of recommendations is a great place to start!

Have you had similar crowdsourcing success? Do you have questions for me? Let’s chat…

Until recently, I’d never heard the term “crowdsourcing”. My computer doesn’t even think it’s a word…so it must be pretty new, right? Well, it was coined in 2006 but perhaps it’s just taken a minute to get passed down to me.

Anyway, for the sake of those who still don’t know, the all-knowing Wikipedia states: Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call. The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals.

My personal experience with crowdsourcing began about 2 weeks ago when my company launched a campaign entitled “Help Us Name Us”. We designed the promotion to help rename our growing company using only the power of crowdsourcing via web 2.0 social mediums.

We began with a Twitter account and a Facebook group. We Stumbled our home page and used other social bookmarking sites. Our employees blogged about it, and then we moved to forums. We dropped a social media release on Pitch Engine and PRWeb, and then used social news sites to float it around. And finally, we created a YouTube channel and let employees create short promotional videos.

So how well has crowdsourcing worked for us? As of today, we’ve recieved thousands of entries from all 50 states (plus DC), 43 countries and 6 continents (of course Google Analytics doesn’t show Antarctica on the map overlay so we’ll never really know if we hit that continent too). And we are not located in a major city, we’re a small marketing firm in Knoxville, Tennessee. Granted, we have national clients in DC, Chicago, and New Jersey, but we’ve been able to reach the world from the small city of Knoxville using only web 2.0 technologies.

And was it expensive? Not really…aside from taking some time, it has barely cost the company anything. Companies spend thousands of dollars trying to rebrand, and we’ve managed to do it for the cost of a Kindle2 (the prize for submitting the winning name).

And the contest isn’t over yet! We’re pretty determined to reach our goal of 10,000 entries before it ends on Friday, April 3 at 11:59pm. So if you’d like to be a part of this social media experiment, visit www.HelpUsNameUs.com and enter. (You could win a Kindle2!)