Believe it or not, ChicagoWeddingServices.com is almost 20 years old. I started the site back in 2001 while I was still trying to launch a DJ business. While the first iteration of Chicago Wedding Services had a great run and helped many visitors/businesses for many years, I only did it as a side hustle while pretending to be a full-time operation. During that time, competition increased significantly and SEO algorithms became much more sophisticated. I wasn’t keeping up and traffic to the site dropped off a cliff.

I decided to stop charging vendors for listing their businesses on the site, but kept the site up and let it run on autopilot. I did overhaul the site a few times to either revamp the look-and-feel or to make the site more mobile-friendly. Life went on, though. My focus shifted towards family and moving up the corporate ladder.

This continued for more than a decade and the site continued to degrade. I kept the domain and the site live thinking that someday I might do something with it again.

Fast forward to 2020…

At the end of April 2020, I had some extra time. (So did the rest of the world, but that’s a whole different story.) I took the opportunity to revisit the dilapidated site and rebuild it from the ground up. Welcome to the remodel. I hope you find it user-friendly and helpful in even a small way.

What’s New for Visitors Planning a Wedding?

1. Improved site search functionality
2. Better organization of categories
3. New focus on quality services with good reputations and staying power. Yes, businesses can pay to play, but the best businesses will rise to the top. (You can help by writing reviews.)
4. More details available about each business
5. Maps integration to find resources that are closest to you
6. You can now share your reviews about any businesses you have direct experience with

What’s New for Chicago Area Businesses?

1. I’ve switched the site backbone to WordPress. This allows me to better leverage existing technology instead of trying to maintain and improve the site manually.
2. Existing vendors who do have listings on the site (grandfathered in from earlier) will be able to “claim” their listing and maintain/update it themselves without me having to be in the middle as a bottleneck
3. New vendors can easily be listed with a free trial period.
4. Writers can register and post relevant content and original articles. In the past, this was a much more cumbersome process.
5. I hope to soon allow the posting of upcoming events (e.g. bridal shows). Again, self-service with some moderation to mitigate spammy posts.
6. Better usability for mobile devices. Previous “mobile-friendly” design wasn’t very friendly