Keeping Budget Truck and Auto General Manager Aaron Polzin’s wedding bus wrap under wraps was no easy task.
Especially since his company did the work.
Fortunately, the operation was headed by Jack Kaufman, of Timi’s Tours, and in-house with Sandie Marquis, the company’s Graphics Sales Manager, and Polzin’s dad, Mark.
The plan was hatched shortly after Polzin reached out to Kaufman to rent a bus from Timi’s Tours for the wedding. Kaufman and Marquis decided they wanted to do something special for Polzin.
“We were all kind of thinking we would just do a graphic on the side, something small,” said Kaufman, explaining that the design grew from there. “Mark called me and told me I was trying to bankrupt him,” he said with a laugh.
Keeping groom out of the loop
The biggest challenge was keeping Polzin out of the loop.
One of Timi’s Tours employees mentioned the wrap, so Kaufman told him to say he was confused and that the wrap was for another client.
When Budget Truck and Auto printed the graphics, Mark Polzin arranged to have the security cameras taken down for the day so his son couldn’t see the wrap.
“We have cameras all throughout the shop, and Aaron has his eyes on the monitors so he can see what’s going on,” said Mark. “We were, like, how are we going to get this through so he doesn’t know?”
He called the company’s IT firm to ask that the cameras come down for two days. As soon as the cameras were down for five minutes, Aaron called to ask what happened.
“Usually, the IT guy is on top of everything. But he told Aaron, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ and Aaron got busy and forgot about it,” Mark said. “That Monday, when another IT person showed up to put the cameras back on, he told Aaron that the cameras were scheduled to go off. His boss had to quickly cover up and explain the firm was doing an update, and the cameras were shut off inadvertently, which made sense to Aaron.”
A fun surprise
Then there was the time the wrapped bus drove past the shop, but everyone made sure Aaron was somewhere else so he wouldn’t see it as it went by.
“It was a lot of very close calls, but we pulled it off,” said Kaufman. “It was really a lot of fun to organize. I wasn’t sure even up until he saw it if he knew or not. But when I saw his face, I knew he was surprised.”
Aaron didn’t see the bus until it came to the hotel to take him and the groomsmen to the church.
In addition to taking the wedding party to the church, the bus was used to shuttle people from the church to the reception.
A full bus wrap for a wedding is a bit of an extravagance. Fortunately, Mark was able to provide the gift at cost.
The wrap was put on one Wednesday and off on that Sunday, before the bus returned to Timi’s Tours in central Illinois.
The wedding was held in Janesville, Wisconsin, with the reception at the business’ shop.
A popular feature
Kaufman designed the graphic that incorporated the couple’s engagement photo and wedding colors.
The graphics were popular with wedding guests and strangers alike, who took lots of photos.
“It’s probably the most photographed any of our buses have been, like, in a 24-hour period. Every person who went to the wedding was taking a picture of the bus or selfies with it. It was really fun to watch,” Kaufman said.
He’s now thinking about offering the option of smaller graphics on buses for wedding rentals.
In addition to graphics, Budget Truck and Auto also does bus and car collision repairs.
Mark says it was nice to be able to give his son a unique gift.
“It was just really something cool. We can give the kids something that nobody else gets,” Mark said.
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