Life in Weddings

Your Legacy

A recent challenging experience with a church caused me to think a lot about what I contribute to the wedding industry, who has come before me and who will follow. And it occurs to me that if more of us thought that way...about the legacy we leave with every event...we would have fewer challenges all around.

Policies that seem crazy to us (professionals) were earned by someone. While it's unfair to judge every wedding planner, or every DJ, or every florist based on the actions of a vocal minority, which of us wouldn't feel it was the only way to stop bad stuff from happening again in the future if the tables were turned?

We can't fix what happened to our venues or churches in the past, but we can model the standard that we hope everyone in our industry will follow in the future. We're the uncomfortable "present". How we handle the situations that we think should change today will impact opportunities tomorrow.

So, today, as you wade out into the world of weddings and you encounter challenges that are the result of someone else's bad behavior, remember the legacy that you leave. Handle every situation with dignity, and endeavor to leave the circumstance better than when you arrived.

Baby steps - we'll get there!

~Shayna

 

"Glee"-ful About Weddings

Confirming that this business drives us insane, I embraced my own special nuttiness Monday and published the following post. I know that more than one of you is a Glee fan, so get ready to decide who would make a better wedding planner...Rachel or Quinn and let me know what you think!

Choosing Your Wedding Pros - "Glee" Style

And don't forget: Tuesday is Prom Night!

Shayna Weddle Walker, Life in Weddings

Evaluating Educational Opportunities in the Wedding Industry, Part 1

Have you ever read my biography on this blog, or one of my websites, or my resume on LinkedIn?

If you have, you’ve seen a line item that I almost always list: a 1997 certification in Tour Guiding Management.

Weird, right? It’s not an event planning certification, a “best of” designation or a frou-frou accomplishment that makes me sound like a super-cool wedding planner.

In fact, it’s the result of an intensive, two-week course that I took from the International Tour Management Institute 14 years ago. By intensive, I mean that all of the course participants – I think there were about 30 of us – slept in the same hotel (unless we lived locally – in which case we commuted to the same hotel at ungodly hours) for 14 days, including weekends. We attended classes for more than 8 hours each day. When we weren’t attending classes, we studied our out-of-class materials. We went on the road in the kind of tour bus many of us would end up working on for the months and years following the class, drove from Los Angeles to Mexico and back, and took turns giving presentations to the group and to alumni of the class who were IN the tour industry between visits with suppliers and future career contacts.

The two-week course was a condensed version of a longer one that was offered in the institute’s home city of San Francisco. To attend the condensed course, students literally committed to abandon their lives for 14 days and focus exclusively on a career in tour management. We were not permitted to go back to day jobs, had to make arrangements for our loved ones and had to be completely invested in the experience. Those who weren’t stayed home.

Getting into the class wasn’t even easy – there were actual selection criteria above and beyond “who is willing to pay?” There were interviews, essays, applications and what seemed to me at the time to be a huge investment of multiple thousands of dollars. People who weren’t qualified or who didn’t seem to have what it might take were turned away.

And some who made it into the class did NOT graduate.

The two weeks of seminars were taught by 3 or 4 instructors, all of whom were actively engaged in careers in the tour management industry (and still are). They derived their income from the very skills that they were teaching. In fact, after I graduated, I worked for two seasons with one of my instructors operating educational tours. They didn’t just wake up one morning and conclude that there was money to be made in teaching people who liked the travel industry how to be tour managers.  They were the industry leaders with the chops and the records to support what they taught.

The other thing about a certification from the International Tour Management Institute is that once you graduate, you become a member of their organization for life. You have the opportunity to attend an annual symposium and meet potential employers. You can continue the educational components and networking for life. There is real career support.

For life.

If my life circumstances changed and I wanted to go back over the road again next summer, I could brush up on my skills, go back to the institute, invest my time and work with them for career support; 14 years later.

Why do I still list my 1997 certification in Tour Management on my resume? I list it because in a compact amount of time I worked just as hard to attain that certification as I did later to earn my degree with honors from one of the nation’s most prestigious small universities. And I got a lot more jobs from that certification than I ever have from my degree.

Have you ever taken a wedding “certification” course? Compare your experience in that course to what I’ve described above – from the admissions process straight through the career support on the other side. Then come back later this week ready to discuss, because I am by no means finished with this topic.

Shayna Walker, Life in Weddings

Online Technology and Your Wedding Biz

Websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, autoresponders...strategy, marketing, publicity, lead generation, keywords, search engine optimization: it's downright overwhelming, right?

And to top it ALL off, we have actual businesses to run!

If we could, each of us would hire an in-house expert to tell us which technology to use, which upgrades were worth investing in and which tools would yield actual results; you know results that turn into paying wedding clients?

That's where Matt About Solutions comes in.

Matt About Solutions, a technology toolbox and online community, launches today. Guess what? Yours truly, (lil' ol me), is a Matt About Solutions "content affiliate" which means I'll be contributing articles, webinars and courses to the site (my specialty is offline businesses using online technology - in other words, the stuff that you and I do!). So, if you just can't get enough of Life in Weddings (or you just love me) the cost of admission will be worth it in "face time" with Shayna alone! (Kidding!) 

Too much of me already? Even better news - Matt has a slew of amazing small business and technology experts lined up to contribute as well. All available to members only.

Matt About Solutions will be the place that members go every time they have that frustrating "what should I choose" or "why isn't this working" moment with their online tools.

- Trying to launch a blog and can't get Wordpress to play right? You need Matt.

- Want to start using an autoresponder sequence to drive more traffic to your awesome existing blog? You need Matt.

- Wondering what your competitors and their tech gurus know that you don't? You. Need. Matt.

So, here's your chance, and my pitch. Go check out Matt About Solutions - take the tour and give it a whirl. There's a satisfaction guarantee and everything. The links in this post are affiliate links, which as a fair disclosure means that I profit if you join - but so do you. You profit from kicking wedding business "tail" and maximizing the time you spend online.

 And as always, please comment here and let us know what you think!

I have some fun topics on tap for the next couple of weeks, thanks to some Twitter-put (input via Twitter?) I received last week. If there is something you'd like to see addressed here, give us a shout. I'm @weddlady on Twitter!

You Are Who You Eat With

Okay, that was a lame title, but if you're reading it worked.

You really are who you associate with, though. At least in perception, and since perception is a huge part of why people do or do not hire you, it's something of which you need to be super-aware.

I don't mean that you should only lunch with cool people, or that you should make a list of folks who you won't talk to. I AM saying that you're being watched. If you're constantly pairing your business with a colleague who has earned a lousy reputation, you're guilty by association.

If you only work with known "commission" mongers, people are going to think you're bribing them for their allegiance.

If you spend all your time working at that venue that expects kickbacks and slashes your rates in order to maximize their profit margins, people will think you're a tool.

If you consistently show up in magazines and on blogs with an A-list crew...guess what, folks take something away from that as well.

I think that people either get complacent and don't care what damage their nasty associations are doing to their reputation, or they start marketing from a place of fear (#1 Business Mistake) and grasp on to anyone who will work with them...whether or not they actually believe that person delivers the kind of product they would want their name on.

Don't lay down with dogs - sometimes those flea bites are fatal to your business' good name.

Shayna Walker, Life in Weddings

Referrals vs. Advertising

Today's post is really just a random thought - the lead that you receive by way of a genuine referral is 1000x more powerful than any you can hope to get from a random advertisement.

When you place an ad, you really ought to be carefully considering who will see it. Sending something to 10,000, or even 100,000 people is nice - unless there are no engaged couples among those people looking to hire "a you".

Are you investing more time and money in littering the planet with your ads, or getting your message into the hands of people who need what you sell?

Food for thought.

Shayna Walker, Life in Weddings

Blogger's Day of Silence - For Japan, With Love

I'll be observing a Blogger's Day of Silence on Friday in support of Japan during this terrible crisis. You can read about my personal experiences with Sendai and the Japanese people, as well as the day of silence on the Weddlady blog: http://www.weddlady.com/2011/03/bloggers-day-of-silence-for-japan-with-love.html.

Shayna Walker, Williamsburg Wedding Design

Chatting with Perfect Wedding Guide in Greensboro, North Carolina

  
 
Images courtesy of Stesha Warren, Seed Sower Images.

 

Recently I was asked by Gail Golloway and Jaime Gilliam of Perfect Wedding Guide Triad/Triangle to speak with one of their networking groups on a topic near and dear to my heart: "Bridal Shows and Bad Behavior". We shared some laughs, as well as some looks of pure wonder as we talked about the different ways that exhibitors sabotage their brands and their marketing investments by doing bizarre and unholy things at bridal shows.

Pure fun.

 

You could ask me to speak in a delivery bay at a warehouse and I would be delighted to oblige. But that's not Gail and Jaime's style. I knew this because their bridal show that I visited late last year in Greensboro was awesome. But truly, they blew this one away. Most people are happy when their networking meetings have some decent food and places to sit. This went WAY beyond.

 

On what turned out to be a kind of cloudy, gloomy day, the team turned an "ordinary" tented event into a "Welcome to Spring Garden Party", complete with (harmless, pretend) bees. They hauled in grass, fountains, live plants, pretty florals, gorgeous tables and a group of fantastic, warm and friendly wedding professionals. Totally worth the drive from Williamsburg (and the twins had a superb time at the Children's Museum while I spoke...thank goodness for babysitters).

 

Thank you SO much to Stesha Warren of Seed Sower Images for sharing these photos. Also, to all of the wonderful Triad/Triangle professionals who contributed to the event including:

Caterer: Culinary Visions Catering, Edie Lutz

Dessert: Create A Cake Catering, Roberta Pearson

Host/Linens: Happy Rentz, Teri Hodgin

Lighting: Firefly Events Lighting, John Haskins

Designer/Coordinator: Sharpe Pursuits, Shayla Sharpe

Flowers: Green's Flowers, Beulah Green

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Professional Courtesy: The Life in Weddings Guide to Acting like a Wedding Industry Grown Up

As a planner, I get to work with amazing professionals every day.

In turn, I get to work with some real choice (expletive deleted)s. Conglomerate experience with the latter over the past several years leads me to the following post. Consider this your official sarcasm warning, because this post is plenty full of it.

I Was Not Put on Earth to Ruin Your Day (Even If You Were Put Here to Ruin Mine)

Let me clarify some things about the way a professional planner works, and about minimum expectations by clients for the way all of their vendors will act:

The Event Timeline: contrary to somewhat popular belief, I do not sit around dreaming up timelines randomly, and very rarely do I get to craft a timeline specifically to ruin a colleague’s day (only at Christmas). In contrast, I create event timelines based on (in this order):

1. The client’s expressed wishes and our in-depth discussions of the feasibility of those wishes
2. A review of vendor contracts
3. The input of participating vendors
4. My professional experience

Really, if I want to ruin your day, I’ll just come out and ruin it (and not on OUR client’s time). My timelines are professional tools, not instruments of torture.

Note: you may wonder why I keep capitalizing the word “OUR”. For those who haven’t picked up on the subtlety, it’s because they are in fact “OUR” clients; not “MY” clients and not “YOUR” clients. We share responsibility for their happiness. What we do together (or to each other) impacts their experience.

A further note, especially to my planner colleagues – that’s one reason we have to be so careful about the way we communicate. If you shoot off a hateful email to a baker, and that baker decides to say “to He** with your client’s cake”, you better be darn sure that your client wanted you to take that route. Better to act consistently in your client’s best interest, even if someone sorely deserves to be called all of the names in the book – besides, it makes wedding planners as an industry look a whole lot more professional.

The “Here’s Your Chance to Disagree” Email: That email that I send that says “if you have concerns, changes or questions about the timeline, please don’t hesitate to contact me”…I actually mean that. So, griping that something isn’t to your liking because “I” constructed it that way is really lame.

If you’re unwilling to take me up on the opportunity to have a professional conversation that could easily end in doing things a little differently (perhaps even entirely the way you envision it), than you’re complicit in your own misery when the rest of us attempt to stick to the plan.

The moral is, the plan for an event is supposed to be collaborative. If you’re too stubborn to collaborate, though, then you’re going to have to go with what the rest of us devised. End of story.

Everything You Need to Know about Being Professional You Should Have Learned in Kindergarten: You have to be 5 years old to not get the “There’s No ‘I’ in Team” concept. Your role is NOT the most important in the whole wedding, no matter how critical your functions are. I don’t care who you are: planner, caterer, guy with the camera, lady with the cake…doesn’t matter. There are 2 people who get the title “VIP”: the bride and groom. Everyone else either acts as a team, or destroys the event.

When you take a diva-like (that’s not Diva with a capital D) approach to a wedding, and make it all about your shooting schedule, or your 15 appetizers that all have to be served individually in 15 minute increments, no matter how long a cocktail hour that creates (hint: 2 hours is too long!!!), or your 7-hour long “how they met” story that no one is listening to after the first 25 minutes, you’re screwing things up for everyone else around you.

• You’re making the client uncomfortable while she waits to see her friends.
• You’re making the caterer’s food cold, mushy or late.
• You’re making the guests super grumpy leading them to snap at the bartender, who snaps at the DJ, who snaps at the video guy who decks the planner who ends up suing you for being stupid.

 The point is, you have a job to do, but not at the expense of everyone else around you. If you can’t grasp that, weddings are not for you.

And as far as “but I promised the client that I would do x, y or z and by goodness I’m going to do it” – I expect you to be professional enough to present a plan to said client that works in harmony with the 9 other folks who also promised perfection. If that plan doesn’t work in real life, I expect you to work with the team to figure out how we’re going to remedy it.

Again – can’t handle it? Then maybe there’s another line of work, like Tyranny or Dictatorship or Narcissistic Self-Worship that you might be better suited to. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation.

I Don’t Have to Like You. You Don’t Have to Like Me. We DO Have to Pretend Though.

I try so hard not to work with people I don’t like, but the reality of this big, professional, grown-up world that we operate in is that it happens. I may question the sanity of the bride who wants to hire you, and you may do the same when they hire me. If we don’t fix it before contracts are signed, though, we have to pretend to get along.

That means we have to operate with professional courtesy.  From my side, I will do everything in my power to take into consideration your requests and requirements (until you become insane and unreasonable, of course) and in return, I expect you to follow the chain of communication that OUR client indicates is her preference.

In plain speak – if she asks you to get the info from me, get the info from me. Don’t undermine the process intentionally – it’s transparent and she will understand what you’re doing. I won’t even have to point it out…because I’ll be acting with professional courtesy. She’s smart enough to know the difference.

Furthermore, we’re going to play nicely on the wedding day (note that I’m not asking). I’ll do my best to stay off of your toes and out of your turf if I can. You can do the same for me. We won’t be bad-mouthing each other to other vendors, we won’t be shooting “I hate you glares” at each other from across the room, and we won’t be making snide remarks under our breath within earshot of each other either (I may text my mother about you, and I’ll grant you the right to text yours too if that makes you feel better).

My 1^st graders know better than that, and it is our mutual responsibility to our clients to act with more maturity than 1^st graders.

Heck. I’ll probably go out of my way to be courteous and polite to you. Maybe I’m killing you with kindness, but it’s what OUR client deserves and that’s how I roll.

Is This a Rant?

Yes. It’s a rant about no one in particular caused by years of experience dealing with stuff exactly like this.

The vast majority of the time we work with grown-ups; folks with priorities who can make the best of any bad situation, and who know how to work as a team. A benefit of working in the wedding industry is that we get a fresh chance every weekend (or with every contract) to make the experience better for all involved.

Unfortunately there are always a tiny handful of children dressed up like grown-ups who ruin it for the rest of us. For those people, I urge you to read through this guide (though I suspect you won’t) to acting like big kids in a big-kid world. If you can’t do it based on maturity, do it because your client deserves it.

If you can’t do it for the client, go to work in some other industry. Please?

By Shayna Walker

Warning: You Might Not Be Ready for My “List”

Professional wedding planners, especially established ones, are asked almost daily if they will put someone “on their list”. These requests come from experienced and new wedding service providers alike.

From the perspective of a planner, the decision to refer my client to a service provider is not one that is made at all lightly. There is so much more to gaining my confidence and professional referral than adding your name and website to a list. In fact, the issue is so multi-layered that one post could never cover it. Consider, for example:

• How an experienced, professional planner establishes a database
• How recommendations are tailored towards the needs of individual clients
• The product and service expectations a planner has of a vendor she has referred
• The potential liability exposure a planner has when referring a client to a service provider
• How providers and planners relate throughout the planning process and on the wedding day
• The vendor’s expectations of support and clear communication
• The planner’s expectations of support and clear communication
• How prepared a service provider is to work within the planner’s guidelines as far as communication and procedures are concerned
• What happens if the client is legitimately unhappy with the provider? What steps are taken to ensure fair remedy?

The “List” of “List Issues” goes on and on.

First, there is No “List”

The first thing I explain to someone who is asking to be “added to the list” is that there is no list. I maintain a database of contact information and details like performance results and communication history on providers in all categories. When I am working with my clients to match them with their vendors, I take into consideration their budgets, specific requirements, requests and needs.

If I send my clients a list (and certain planning levels warrant sending contact information over contacting the providers directly), it’s customized specifically for each couple’s unique situation.

What I’m Thinking

Here are the first things that I think about when approached by a service provider who asks to be added to my database of referrals:

1. Have we ever worked together before?
2. If yes, what was the process like and what were the results?
3. If no, have I ever heard of the vendor before?
4. If not, is someone really, really compelling and trusted referring the vendor to me?

I will freely admit that it is extremely rare for me to refer someone who has answered “No” to question #1.

The rare circumstance arises when I need to fill a need with someone who I do not know. In those cases I almost exclusively rely on referrals by trusted colleagues. Otherwise, to get on “my list” we have to have worked together before. You might be awesome, and that might be unfair, but it is how I protect my clients and my professional reputation.

There is always a chance that we will work together on an event by coincidence. That’s how great relationships in this business begin. Patience is a virtue.

If it seems impossible to get into a planner’s database…you may very well be looking at a good planner.

What are you getting yourself into?

Those service providers who I regularly refer have several traits in common:

• They are clear, effective and timely communicators
• They respond to my initial inquiries immediately and enthusiastically
• They go out of their way to accommodate my clients’ schedules
• They do not offer or pay commissions to wedding planners – if a commission structure is in place in their company, they offer it to my clients as a benefit of working with me
• They receive constructive criticism professionally and seek it out
• They respect my process and my methods for communicating with our mutual clients
• They resolve issues fairly and quickly
• They provide outstanding service at all times

In return, my providers know that they can expect me to:

• Regularly refer them to qualified prospective clients
• Defend their value
• Communicate professionally
• Identify sources of concern when they can still be addressed
• Act as a partner in our mutual success and mission to create outrageously happy clients

If you’re unwilling to embark on this kind of partnership with your planner at each and every wedding, no matter how hard it might be, then you’re not ready to be on “the list.”