4th of July and wedding fireworks

As we approach the 4th of July weekend, the Wedding Industry Insider and Dallas Wedding Planner wish each of you a happy July 4th.

Enjoy a cold drink, some fun with friends and family and a great fireworks show.

If you have a bride getting married this weekend and they are having some fireworks on their wedding day, send us pictures.  We would love to post them.

Is the Knot undermining your wedding business?

What’s your opinion of the Knot? Some of you have heard me say, “the Knot is taking over the world” trying to market to everyone out there. In today’s economy, where there are many unemployed and even more in fear of losing their jobs, theKnot.com is trying to juggle keeping their advertisers and give advice to the DIY bride who wants to plan a DIY wedding.

Here’s an excerpt taken from the Examiner:

In the interest of keeping its hold on readers in a budget-conscious market, The Knot (along with a zillion other wedding outlets) is publishing articles targeted at the bargain-seeking bride–those downscaling their plans and/or undertaking their weddings on a DIY basis.  But now-ubiquitous media recommendations like “don’t buy a cake from an independent baker” and “use an iPod instead of a DJ” are putting knots in some advertisers’ knickers.  Why? Because many are bakers and DJs, and this advice undermines their businesses–especially when it’s printed by the very publications they are paying big bucks to help them attract customers.

The Knot wrote an article on how to plan a wedding for less than $10k. I am all for a bride being responsible with her money, making wise choices and not going into debt to plan her wedding day but as I have said before, a bride should not be working on her wedding day.  It is her day to relax and enjoy.  If a bride needs to cut back, then cut back on her guest list and eliminate tons of the cost and prioritize what is important to her. But don’t cut out all of the wedding professionals who will make their wedding day easier and fun to enjoy.

To all of you wedding professionals out there who are advertising with the Knot, does it bother you when they tell a bride to not have their bakery make their wedding cake and just order a sheet cake from the local grocery store for the wedding reception?  Do you feel like you are getting thrown under the bus or not?

Inspirational ideas provided by Wedding Style Guide

Wedding Style Guide offers its readers numerous creative ideas.  It strives to be the ultimate design and decoration magazine for weddings.  No matter how creative we are, it is always nice to have places to provide inspirational ideas as well.  Wedding Style Guide has a section called “Downloads”.  They provide a idea and then a downloadable file to you to carry through with the idea.  Here’s an example.

Kudos to Wedding Style Guide for sharing!

Quote: Building your business and your reputation

Here’s some great advice for every business owner.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
- Henry Ford

Michael George a 2009 Modern Bride Trendsetter

Today the Wedding Industry Insider wanted to feature Michael George, one of the 2009 Modern Bride Trendsetters. Michael George performs his passion in New York.

He predicts because of the economy a return to a more practical natural look  in blooms. He says he likes flowers in abundance, advocating that brides use five colors of the same flowers, like mini calla lilies, and you have a beautiful composition – simple and unpretentious.

We enjoyed reviewing Michael George’s website.  We selected our favorite bouquets that he had displayed which we believe definitely tie in with his idea of using flowers in abundance concept. Here are our favorites.

Congratulations to Michael George for your efforts in the industry and receiving the honor of a 2009 Modern Bride Trendsetter.

What’s a DIY Bride?

We have some discussion about a DIY bride and DIY weddings on the Wedding Industry Insider.  If you are curious about what others would term as a DIY bride, see this excerpt from TheWeddingMarketingBlog.com.

* DIY Bride: (Budget: under $5000) Someone who probably doesn’t have the resources to get married just yet and is likely to turn most of her wedding into an Arts and Crafts project.
* Low Budget Bride: (Budget: $5000 – $14,900) Has the resources, but will have to make some tough decisions on the reception. The big conundrum is whether to economize across the board or cut in specific areas, and not others.
* Statistically Average Bride: (Budget: $15,000 – $34,999) Has the resources to do a nice job on the reception. Her biggest decision should be ‘How many guests can we invite to have a nice reception?’
* High Budget Bride: (Budget: $35,000 – $60,000) Has more than enough money to do great things. Her biggest challenge is not to make bad choices among wedding vendors, irrespective of money.
* Luxury Bride: (Budget: more than $60,000) Daddio has wads of cash and she wants to be awash in greenbacks. Not all brides in this financial category are Bridezillas, but the risk and tendency is greater than in any of the lower tiers. Bridezillas almost always make bad decisions. It’s in their DNA.

You can continue to read this blog discussion about bride’s making wedding decisions in it’s entirety at TheWeddingMarketingBlog.com.

Bridal Guide shares the hot 2009 wedding trends

Bridal Guide published a great article on the hot wedding trends being seen during 2009.  There is a ton of information on the current trends to keep you up to date. Here’s just a short list of some of those trends:

What is in for 2009:
Custom trays are a trend for the cocktail hour
The ‘it’ alcohol is tequila
Mini is still sizzling hot—mini hamburgers, fries, mini grilled cheese
Pomegranate mojitos
Regional food – local ingredients native to an area you live
Beef is back for dinner
After dinner signature bar
After parties
Colored Glassware
Lighting
Patterned graphic prints
The couple’s monogram on banners hanging from trees, tents and entrances
Black is back
The Mokara orchid
Color, color and more color!

What’s out in 2009:
Martini bars and martini glasses
Plain silver and gold-beaded chargers
The color brown
Checkerboard dance floor
Roses, ginger and birds-of-paradise

Read the entire Bridal Guide article to get the full list of hot 2009 wedding trends.

Lovebirds making history getting married in zero gravity June 20, 2009

A Brooklyn couple, Noah Fulmor and Erin Finnegan will become the first on the planet to say “I do” in zero gravity when they tie the knot this week on June 20, 2009.

The couple will board a modified Boeing 727-200 operated by Zero Gravity Corporation departing from the Kennedy Space Center. The 90-minute flight includes 15 drops from 36,000 feet to 24,000 feet, creating up to 30 seconds of zero gravity inside the Boeing 727.

The lovebirds had their wedding wardrobe especially designed for the occasion. The bride will wear a space wedding gown by Japanese designer Eri Matsui. The bottom half of the dress is secretly pants. You can read lots of details about the cost of this wedding on their website.

Dallas Wedding Planner wishes the happy couple fun and memorable times on June 20th.

Source: NY Daily News

DIY Bride Projects offered by Today Show useless

Did you see the segment on the Today Show yesterday morning called Do It Yourself Wedding? I don’t normally even have the television on in the morning but today I was taking it slow and enjoying having a leisurely summer morning before the day got really busy.

There has been a lot of talk lately about DIY brides and there are many websites devoted to helping brides finding some DIY projects for their wedding day. Personally, I believe there is a big difference between a bride who does some DIY projects to compliment her wedding day and her paid wedding vendors vs. a DIY wedding. I consider a DIY wedding to be a wedding that the bride has no paid wedding professionals at their wedding. She is doing all of the work herself and asking family and friends to pitch in and make it happen.

The Today Show segment suggested brides do their own bouquets and centerpieces to save money. They suggested doing a bouquet of carnations or baby’s breath. You got to be kidding? Baby’s breath. People throw that away in the trash. Why would a bride want to use baby’s breath or carnations? Whatever it would cost to buy the carnations or baby’s breath, the floral tape and the ribbon to make the bouquet, why not use that money on something that will be pretty and look good in your photographs.

They also suggested a DIY centerpiece of doing small pictures of the bride and groom they called “a photo time line”  in frames glued on a continuous satin ribbon and lay them across the tops of the tables where the guests will be sitting.  I think that is a ridiculous idea because that is not a centerpiece. Those ribbons are placed on top of the entire table where your glasses, silverware and plates will be. That makes no sense.  How ever much money is used to print the pictures, buy the frames and ribbon and glue and put them together can be spent on something more worthy of being called a centerpiece.

I am not a florist, but I don’t believe a bride should be making her own bouquet or centerpieces for her wedding day. When is the bride going to have time to do them the three days prior to her wedding when she wants to be spending time with her family or out of town friends, getting her nails done and packing for her honeymoon.

I am not a photographer, but if I was I would want to have some great details in the wedding to take some shots of.  You need some great florals,  a great table setting, and some unique details designed to reflect the bride and groom’s personality. You only can look at so many images of people at your wedding.

I applaud a bride who is creative and can come up with an idea that is unique and different to add to her wedding that is a DIY project. But these ideas given by the Today Show in my opinion were just a waste of money.

I would love to hear from you.  Wedding professionals, tell us what you think about the DIY projects that you are seeing brides doing for their wedding. Do you love them, hate them or just indifferent? Has the DIY concept gone to far?

Organizing Twitter for your business

Is your business on Twitter or are you still trying to decide if you want to tackle another social media opportunity? I must admit, I often wonder if there is enough time in the day to do everything necessary for your business much less the things that you haven’t decided if they are adding value to your business.

If you like Twitter, then you might like some of these Twitter related tools. The one thing for sure that I can tell you is I like to be organized so these tools certainly help accomplish that.

On Tweetbeep you can keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly or daily updates. You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like bit.ly or tinyurl.com). Tweetbeep is like Google Alerts but for Twitter.

Twitter Monitter lets you monitor the twitter world for a set of keywords and see what people are saying.

Tweet Deck is a customizable browser that helps you stay on top of your Twitter feeds and contacts at one glance.  I am been using Tweet Deck for a few weeks now and I definitely love having everything all together to look at so nice and neat.

Are you using a Twitter tool that you find useful?  If so, please share it with us.

Is your small business struggling?

CNN Money recently published an article entitled the “Seven Deadly Sins”.  The article shared the business killing traps that entrepreneurs must avoid in their small business. Here are those seven deadly sins:

1 – Sloppy accounting
2 -  Unrealistic pricing
3 -  Naive hiring
4 -  Fear of firing
5 -  Lack of standards
6  – Lack of controls
7 -  Poor branding

As a small business in the wedding industry, I believe the sins of sloppy accounting, unrealistic pricing and poor branding would make the list of so many wedding professionals businesses.  As the article stated,

Done properly, accounting is a diagnosis of everything that’s right and wrong with your company. You should be able to complete a pro forma income statement at the beginning of the year that shows your recipe for making money.

When it comes to pricing your product and services in the wedding industry, there are way to many people who do not do market research to determine the best price for their business.  They just draw a number out of a hat that sounds good. What is logical about that?  Dallas Wedding Planner just spent the last month researching the wedding advertising market and where we fit in.

The last area that I related to is poor branding.  So many wedding businesses exist with absolutely no branding at all and they wonder why they are not making money. Dallas Wedding Planner just completed a branding project of their Dallas Wedding Planner Training Program called Roots.  We are very excited about the new look and look forward to seeing how the branding will help continue to make the Training Program a success.

It’s a full time business plus to work with your clients daily and then take care of all of your business details as well. Entrepreneurs often tend to concentrate on what they love and ignores their financials and the behind the scene work.

How about your business?  Are you struggling with one of the deadly sins CNN Money reported in their article? Let’s hear from you.

Take the Cake amongst the 2009 Modern Bride Trendsetters

Mary Winslow of Take the Cake was amongst the Modern Bride’s Top 25 2009 Trendsetters.  Take the Cake is located in Chicago so I guess it should not be any surprise to anyone that Mary has been recognized by Oprah. Mary says:

Cake patterns and designs don’t have to be uniform on every tier. Mix things up and stack one design on the next.

Mary Winslow encourages brides to think beyond floral decorations to other icons of their life together which is a great idea so the cake actually becomes more personal. I enjoyed looking at their website and wanted to share with the Wedding Industry Insider blog readers my favorite cakes of Take the Cake.

Dallas Wedding Planner loves Take the Cake’s saying,

…cake is what’s served on the happiest days of our lives.”

Congratulations Mary for making the list of Modern Brides 2009 Top Trendsetters!

Business Tip: All work vs play time

Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund was featured in an issue of Pink Magazine. I thought her tip to Pink Readers was also a great tip to pass along to wedding industry professionals to help them stay on focus, not burn out and have good boundaries.

She claims one weekend a month just for her or her family.

In a business industry where most everyone is working weekend after weekend, having a good balance of work vs family/home is essential to the success of your business and your personal relationships. Having a weekend off helps keep perspective.

Beauty Industry Icon, Essie Weingarten a Modern Bride 2009 Trendsetter

I enjoyed reading about Essie Weingarten, a beauty industry icon of Essie Cosmetics in the Modern Bride issues awarding her one of the Top 25 Trendsetters of 2009.

She has a keen eye for color and a flair for names. Essie Cosmetics sells to more than 250,000 salons and spas worldwide, from Denver to Dubai.

My father died in 1965, one week before I turned 16. My mother had five kids and never worked a day in her life, and yet she took over his party rental business. Back then, there were no women in business, so she was a great role model for me. She’s also the reason I went into the nail polish business. If I was a good girl, she would take me to the beauty salon with her every Saturday. That started when I was 6 — there were only a few boring colors, and I remember wondering, as a kid, Why can’t I paint my nails blue?

She has been going to the same manicurist for the past 20 years and unless she is traveling, gets her nails done every Friday at 5 p.m.  Wow, that’s a lot of manicures in one lifetime.

Weingarten is the mastermind behind Ballet Slippers and Blushing Bride, which might be the most popular bridal color worn.

I pick colors that made your hands look classic, so when you look at your photos in 20 years, you’ll say; “Yes, that was the right choice!”

That’s a great tip for a bride.  Another tip for brides is she encourages a pre-wedding manicure to play with shades. She says you should layer colors to find your perfect look.  must admit with over a decade of working with brides, I have suggested trail runs for the hair and their makeup, but not once did I think about a trail run for their manicure. I don’t know why I never thought of it but it’s a great idea.  When I look at wedding pictures, there are so many images showing the bride’s nails so it is important that they  look just as good as their hair-do and makeup.

From the view of a business professional, something interesting about her business is she answers her own phone and often on the first ring.

She says that personal touch is important to me; I like to know what people are saying. When your company grows, it can become impersonal.

That is a great business tip for business professionals to remember as their company continues to grow.

Photo Source: Oxford Entrepeneurs

Source: Modern Bride and Inc.

Who does your business impact?

I read today an advertisement for Frito Lay. The headline on the ad said:

The biggest impact we can have is not to have one.

The article continued stating that is the goal of Frito Lay. In the last ten years, they have been working to change almost everything they do at Frito-Lay to minimize their impact on the planet.

Their headline statement made me stop and think. What impact am I making on the people that I come in contact with, personally and professionally. Throughout my day I tend to notice those people are are extraordinarily gracious.  You know the kind: those who make a special effort to hold the door for you, the person who says thank you and really means it, the stranger who lets you move over in traffic when everyone else on the road is too busy getting somewhere and the person you see in the elevator at the doctor’s office or hospital who appears to be having a harder day than you are and still finds a way to smile in spite of it.  None of those people know me or probably even know that I noticed their kind spirit and how it affected me that day. But people and businesses have an impact on use daily – good and bad.

One of our goals at Dallas Wedding Planner is to help the new wedding/event planners. We hope the Dallas Wedding Planner Training Program will impact each participant who goes through the course to make their business stronger.

To learn from our challenges and mistakes, so it is not as hard for them.
To provide them with knowledge that little or no one else in town is willing to share.
To provide them with the self confidence to pursue their goals and passion with their head held high.
To not be afraid of the unknown.
To challenge them to step outside their comfort zone.
To challenge them to continue learning about their trade and never be satisfied that they know it all.
To challenge them to be people who share and pay it forward.

As 2009 continues, Dallas Wedding Planner will continue to hopefully do our part and impact those in the wedding community. We are thankful for the opportunities we have had to meet new wedding planners and hear about their dreams.  We look forward to meeting more people, looking to fulfill a dream and goal in their life.

What impact is your business having?