The landscape outside is as white as the wedding dresses hanging on the racks within, but come Saturday there will still be a show. Snow, chilly winds and icy roads aren’t enough to cancel the bridal fair to be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Schweitzer Event Center.

“We have a service that plows for us and we’re going to call them and let them know that we need the parking lot plowed by a specific time for the vendors to come in,” SEC manager Robert Kunze said. “We’re also going to have hot coffee and cocoa set up in the lobby somehow. We’ve put so much money into advertising that we’re at the point where we kinda have to go forward.” Kunze said that so far, only one vendor from Spokane has canceled and that the fair is going to go forward as planned.

The annual fair – now in its second year – will have vendors with booths that cover all the necessities of weddings. These vendors range from bridal gowns and tuxedo stores to wedding locations and hotels, to travel and limo services. There will also be vendors from photography studios, jewelry stores, invitation creators and flower vendors. Wineries, bakeries and catering services will also have booths.

“We sent out invite letters to vendors,” Kunze said. “We took our vendor list from last year and we went to the Yellow Pages for more. We sent out 250 invite letters explaining the event and the spots go first come, first serve. The last two years we’ve sold out.” Sue Jacobs, a cake designer at Creative Cakes in Lewiston, was at the previous bridal fair.

“The fair was a success last year,” Jacobs said. “It’s a very well put together bridal fair and I met a lot of brides last year and picked up a lot of orders.” Jacobs said she enjoyed the fair because it’s an all-day event meeting with people.

“There were about 400 people who attended last year,” said Amberly Boone, a senior organizational communication major and an intern with the SEC. “We’re obviously hoping for better attendance this year. The event center was brand new last year, and on Schweitzer Drive, which wasn’t on any maps at the time so people didn’t know where it was. We’re hoping that people will be more familiar with it this year.” Along with the vendors, the fair will also have ten raffles for gift basket prizes.

Kunze said they asked all the vendors if there was anything they wanted to contribute to the gift baskets.

“What we do is we go back to the vendors who are participating and ask if they have anything to donate as giveaway prizes,” Kunze said. “About 90 percent of our vendors contributed. Right now we’re putting together the 10 gift baskets. We take names when people check in and we’ll draw names for the baskets.” The fair, which is a free event open to the public, was started by Kunze last year because he noticed that Pullman didn’t have anything like it.

“There is no bridal fair in the area and this was a way that I saw to be a benefit to the community,” Kunze said. “It’s also a benefit to us in that part of the marketing of the building is that it’s a nice place to have a reception, so having a bridal fair here is advertising for the building.” Kunze said he’s hoping the fair will be a big success.

“We really want to get people out to it and it’s something we’re going with year after year,” he said.