Archive for the ‘Life as a Planner’ Category

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Seeing double

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Life as a successful wedding planner is never an easy one, despite the well-documented (and false) image of glamour.  Sadly, to add to our already demanding workload it is a requirement to check that you’re not being plagiarised by a ‘wannabe’. We hope that by posting here to planners, we can make everyone more aware and start to rid the industry of this practice. 

For clarification a simple definition of plagiarism is as follows:  a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work

 Sadly week in week out we are hearing and seeing blatant plagiarism going on of wedding planners work.  We are talking about word for word copying of company names, images, and most commonly text from a planner’s website. Anyone who runs a successful planning business knows that it takes A LOT more than copying somebody’s work to make a successful business; it takes years and years of slog, effort, dedication and talent and good planners think long and hard about their website and promotional materials writing them in their words and their style to reflect their brand; it’s vital that we each do our best to protect our work and come down hard on individuals who think they only have to whip up a website and ‘wow’ they have a business!  

 How can you protect yourself?

A great website where you can check for copies of your company website (or large chunks of text copied) is www.copyscape.com - put your web address into it and it’ll quickly pull up copies - make a note to do this once monthly to make sure that your site is not being plagiarised.

 How to react if you have been plagiarised?

Contact the company owner directly (by email or letter preferably) informing them of the plagiarism (and demonstrating it with copies of your text and their text) and asking them to remove the offending text within 7 days. If that does not succeed then legal advice should be sought - naturally take copies of the offending website pages as it could be taken off-line at any moment. None of us want costly legal bills but we must stand up to thieves and stamp it out of our industry. UKAWP and the individual companies of its Directors have all sadly encountered plagiarism both here in the UK and from overseas and have a very strong policy towards it.

 What do you think? Have you encountered this yourself?

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Posted in Industry News, Life as a Planner, Scams | No Comments »

Posts We Love

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

I thought I’d share with you a couple of posts which we Directors of the UKAWP founds ourselves nodding at behind computer screens and humming with ‘how trues’?. It’s of course comforting/daunting (depending on your mood) to know that our peers in the USA, a much bigger, sophisticated and well established wedding planning market, encounter the same issues, difficulties, activities and frustrations that we do. 

We often refer to Think Splendid but this post in particular struck a cord entitled “You Didn’t Invent Weddings”. Let’s take our hats off to those in the wedding business who have gone before.

http://www.thinksplendid.com/2010/03/you-didnt-invent-weddings.html

And on a different note entirely, take a read of ‘Sell the Sizzle’. It’s affirming to know that “downbeat venue sales person” goes on the world over, not that it’s right in anyway. And we also had a giggle about “venue torturing planners”; nice to know we’re in the good company of Marcy Blum with that too!

http://adventuresofwedhead.com/2010/04/08/569/

Enjoy the sunshine!

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Posted in Becoming a Planner, International Planners, Life as a Planner | No Comments »

Mentoring – A UKAWP service for growing wedding planning companies

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Do you struggle to really get going with promoting your company? Are you worried that your efforts are not going in the right direction? Would you like to talk to someone who truly understands your ‘day to day’ because they do the same job as you and are likely to have encountered similar obstacles/objections? Are you at the very beginning and would like some honest feedback on your materials?

 

If there are any ‘yes’ answers to these questions and your business is less than 2 years old, you might like to consider our UKAWP business mentoring service. Launched last year, it’s been quietly successful and the feedback from planners has been excellent from those currently benefitting from the scheme.  

 

The package is priced at £300 per year and includes 3 x 2 hour sessions over the course of one calendar year; the sessions can be arranged at a mutually convenient time and the time is entirely for your use and to discuss and iron out any specific issues or help you need. This is backed up with email/phone support throughout the year.  Your mentor would currently be one of the 3 UKAWP Directors each of whom have over 7 years experience of running their own wedding planning businesses.

 

For more information and further details/requirements do take a look at  http://www.ukawp.com/planner_business-tools.htm

 

The Directors of the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners

The Directors of the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Business Development, Life as a Planner, Training | No Comments »

Step By Step Course Last Weekend

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Last weekend I trained a wonderful group of ladies on our Step by Step training weekend in London; half of the group had already attended our Business Practicalities course either recently or over the past year so it was lovely to see some familiar as well as some new faces. Our courses are always very honest and open and full of interaction. I do notice a trend in the questions which are asked time and time again by students so I thought I’d write about the top three that always crop up.

  

How many weddings should I aim to plan a year?

An established wedding planner working full time, might reasonably manage 10 weddings per year and earn a good income although the number of weddings will vary according to the budget of each wedding also. It’s not sensible to aim for that level in the first couple of years though, a good start would be  2 or 3 full planning weddings in year 1, increasing that gradually over the years.

 

What uniform do you wear on the wedding day?

Always a tricky one as you want to look smart and respectful to the fact that it’s a wedding yet be comfortable enough. The job generally entails lifting, packing, sticking and carrying of some form or another so comfort is key, as are flat shoes in my opinion. The Directors of UKAWP generally wear black trousers, a coloured shirt (not white or you look like waiting staff) and flat smart shoes. A comfortable black dress might also be a good option.

 

Will I get any clients without a portfolio to show of past work?

Yes, you won’t get every client as some will prefer to use a tried and tested planner who can demonstrate their work but people never think the same and some clients will see this as a benefit that you don’t have any pre-conceived ideas and have bags of enthusiasm; think of ways around not having a portfolio that can still demonstrate your creativity and past working experiences.

 

For more information on training courses  go to http://www.ukawp.com/planner_training.htm

Posted in Becoming a Planner, Life as a Planner, Training, UKAWP News | No Comments »

The wedding game?

Friday, February 5th, 2010

We couldn’t resist a light hearted post for the end of the working week.

We came across this new game dedicated to guess what? the career of wedding planning via photographer and blogger extraordinaire  Lloyd Dobbie http://lloyddobbie.com/blog/. Having now finally had a go at the game myself, I thought I’d share it with you other planners out there.

You can download Wedding Daze here

 

http://www.gamehouse.com/online-games/wedding-dash-online

 

wedding planner app

 It’s a real laugh as you work your way through the demands of the wedding day. I have to say I found it thoroughly exhausting keeping an eye on everything I had to do on screen but ended up pretty satisfied when I got to the end and found I’d got ‘expert planning’ scoring!! So, pretty like a real wedding then with lots of hard work, juggling and multi tasking but very rewarding on the day. I must admit though I haven’t worked on a wedding where the guests were served dessert at the same time as others on the table were having starter but hey ho!  

What score did you get?

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Change

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Today we hear from Master business coach, Ray Hutchin of Action Coach www.actioncoaching.com.  Ray is a regular guest blogger for us here and we are really looking forward to his words of wisdom at the forthcoming WPE ‘10.

Over to Ray:

I have just finished presenting a two day workshop for business owners, packed with great practical ideas to grow their businesses and a big learning for me from the attendees was, as usual, they will struggle to find the time to plan and put the new ideas into action (their words not mine).

Which is a huge shame as we all need to change, otherwise, as you know, if we keep on doing the same things we keep on getting the same results (if we are lucky, because now quiet often you don’t even get the same results, they tend to be worse).

I believe planning also has a big part to play in changing, I have spoken about planning before; check out the July Archive which covers the 9 Steps to Success. I will also be running through this at the Annual UKAWP Wedding Planning Excellence seminar http://www.wpe.ukawp.com/, with lots of practical advice and a fun exercise to lock in your learning’s, so don’t miss this event.

I also know that Bernadette has covered the importance of time and using a default diary (March 2009 Archive), which if you haven’t read or implemented I suggest you go back and read.

For me the biggest thing we need to do to change is to have a compelling reason to change, otherwise things conspire against us. Like staying in your comfort zone, not being able to break old habits, not being able to create new habits, not have the motivation to change, finding change too hard and not persevering, etc.

So we need to take time out every once in a while to understand what we want to achieve, what we need to change and what desire (compelling reason) we have to do it. The compelling reason will always be tied back to an emotional reason, so understand this and you will achieve far more.

And one last question regarding change, “have you kept your New Year Resolutions or didn’t you set any, because you knew what would happen?”

We can all change, we just need to understand ourselves better and have a compelling reason to change. So for me three of the key ingredients to change are Planning, Time and a Compelling Reason. Try it and see what happens!

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Posted in Business Development, Life as a Planner, Tricks of the Trade, WPE 10 | No Comments »

Making space for PR

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

 

We know we talk PR a lot here at UKAWP but every planner who’s been in business a while and used PR well,  knows that it works. Today we hear from the highly practical and ever-insightful Paula Gardner  of http://www.doyourownpr.com, who shares more of her tips with us;  Paula is one of our expert guest speakers at WPE’10 next month and we look forward to her tailored talk on enhancing our PR strategies as wedding planners.   Over to you Paula:

The first step to running a PR campaign is to actually make time for it. Let’s face it, many of us have lots of good intentions PR-wise, and maybe even some fantastic ideas, but somehow they don’t all quite come to fruition. One of the frustrating things about PR is that journalists rarely call you up asking for stories. The momentum is all self-generated, and you have to keep on top of it to stop PR falling to the bottom of your to-do list.

 So, I am going to with share you a little exercise I do every few months and find to be really valuable.

Ditch Delegate or Do!  

When you’re doing your own PR one of the most important things you need to master is time-management so that you have the time and space to devote to it.

 And, as the old saying goes, if you carry on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll carry on getting what you’ve always got (or something like that!).

 So, here are a number of steps that will help you free up some time that you can put to building your own buzz.

Step One

 Make a list of everything that you do on a regular basis for your business. This should include everything that you literally do and how much time you spend on it. This could be checking your emails every five minutes, writing your newsletter for a couple of hours twice a month, posting to syndication sites, carrying out your actual business, or cleaning the office and making sales calls.

  Step Two

 Make a list of everything else that you do in your work time that isn’t work orientated. For me that includes emails to friends, playing Spider Solitaire when I need to turn off for five minutes (and those five minutes inevitably end up as twenty!).

 And now the fun bit…

Ditch

 What tasks or activities can or should you say goodbye to? Take a look at what results you’ve been getting - if you regularly write for a site that brings you in a grand total of five newsletter sign-ups each six months then can your time be put to better use? Can you turn your Outlook or email provider off and only check twice a day? Can you sack any clients - you know the pain in the proverbial ones that bring you in hardly any money but take three times more time and energy than all the others ones? Is there a pet project that you’ve been trying to get going but know, in your heart of hearts, just doesn’t justify the time you’d need to spend on it (boy, do I have plenty of those!)

  Delegate

 Is there anything on your list that you can delegate? Perhaps you can get your assistant to write your PR tips (good experience for them too), get a VA to send articles to syndication sites, or an intern to upload your regular press releases to all the free press sites out there (at least half a day’s work)?

  Do!

 

 Here come the plans…think of all the PR activities you could be doing (or doing more of). Here are just a sample…

     * Writing Press Releases

    * Writing Tip sheets

    * A regular newsletter - or writing your current one twice as often

    * Posting on forums and blogs with links back to your website

    * Blogging

    * Twitter

    * Writing articles and posting them on syndication sites

    * Networking online

    * Networking offline

    * Arranging meetings with journalists

    * Approaching features editors with ideas for articles you can write

    * Posting press releases to newswire services

 

If you’re already doing some of these, look at the results you are getting. Do they justify spending more time and ramping up the activity? Or perhaps you’d like to add something new to the mix.

 What one thing from this list could you do that you know (gut instinct!) would raise your visibility? Or alternatively, what appeals and piques your interest? What do think you’d enjoy (because enjoyment is such a large part of getting it done regularly).

 You should now have some spare time in your diary as a result of the projects or actions you’ve got rid of or passed on. Fill that time with your new PR activity and make sure it is in your appointment book, just like any other.

 Finally, make a date with yourself to do this exercise in another three months. and add another PR activity to your mix.

 

 Get your own starter PR resource pack plus a free trial of our media request service at:

  http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0018aaLHdu4GfSgHuhbQI8XADfgnJ0W-pKZ

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Posted in Life as a Planner, PR, WPE 10 | No Comments »

UKAWP to help brides marrying abroad

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

We have launched a new form of membership aimed at wedding planning companies who plan weddings outside the UK.

 Many couples choose to marry abroad and often struggle to find planners who understand local law and know the best venues and suppliers in their market.

 An increasing number of brides look to the UKAWP to find professional planners in their area as all our planners are vetted and have suitable training and experience. However, when they wish to marry abroad we have, to date, only been able to give general advice rather than specific recommendations, except in the few cases where our UK members work outside the UK.

From 19th January 2010 foreign planners will be able to apply for membership and will undergo the same, rigorous vetting procedure as those in the UK. Our new Destination Member category is already of interest to a number of non UK planners who have travelled to England to undertake our training courses. We also know that planners in key destination markets are interested in a link with our organisation.

We pride ourselves on all Directors and Members adhering to our Code of Ethics - something which brides cite as a reason for choosing one of us, therefore Destination Members will also have to abide by this Code.

UKAWP Code of Ethics

  • Respond to enquiries within 48 hours
  • Respect client confidentiality
  • Disclose all suppliers that you have a vested interest in
  • Always pass discounts and/ or commission onto the client
  • Ensure your Public Liability Insurance is up to date
  • Never give client details to any third party unless for the sole purpose of the wedding
  • Respect copyright of all planners, co-ordinators and related suppliers
  • Represent each client fairly and honestly

For more information on the UKAWP’s membership categories, please contact membership@ukawp.com.  

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You and Your Wedding magazine at WPE

Monday, January 18th, 2010

We’re really delighted that we’ll be joined by the lovely Vanessa Mason (née Gore) at WPE ‘10. Vanessa is Style Editor at key bridal title You and Your Wedding and is a creative genius whose job on a daily basis is to come up with and style the beautiful ‘Receptions’ sections that grace the pages of the magazine. She’s a trend setter with a great creative eye and we are very much looking forward to hearing from her on trends in design for 2010.

She will also cover how we planners can work best with editors such as herself to get maximum press exposure for our businesses. What she is looking for, what’s the best way of working etc etc. It’s sure to be unmissable.

For more information on this and other subject speakers go to WPE . We hope to see you at the seminar.

yayw-logo

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Posted in Business Development, Life as a Planner, PR, Training, UKAWP News, WPE 10 | No Comments »

INTERNATIONAL PLANNERS

Friday, January 15th, 2010

 Today we continue our series on wedding planners across the globe. I was fortunate to meet with Kiri Munetoshi and Yutaka Maeda of Can-D-Tuft wedding planners late last year in London and it was fascinating to discuss weddings and wedding planning in Japan. Here is just a taste as they answer our questions. 

 

Kiri - owner of Can-D-Tuft

Kiri - owner of Can-D-Tuft

Yutaka - assistant and interpreter

Yutaka - assistant and interpreter

 

How does a typical wedding day run in your country?

There are 5 different styles of weddings in Japan. 1.Western style wedding, 2.a wedding ceremony held at a Shinto shrine, 3.civil wedding, 4.a Buddhist wedding, 5.a wedding ceremony held at a house. The most popular wedding is a Western style of wedding and it accounts for 70 percent of all weddings in Japan.   

 It was common to have a wedding ceremony held at a Shinto shrine 20 years ago, but presently, the majority of Japanese wedding ceremonies held are as a western style.

 

A typical timetable of the day.

To start the ceremony, a bride comes into the venue  2 hours before a wedding ceremony is held to get ready and do  make up and hair. A groom comes into a venue an hour later than the bride does. 

 We have a rehearsal of the wedding ceremony half an hour before starting the actual wedding. A wedding ceremony takes approximately 20 to 30 minutes, and then, we have group photographs taken after the wedding.

A break of half an hour is taken between a wedding ceremony and a reception, meanwhile guests are invited to a welcome drink, and during the break, a bride changes her wedding dress to a party dress and her hair style. Some grooms change their suit in the same way as the bride. 

 A wedding reception lasts for 2hours and a half. It is held always after one hour later than the wedding ceremony. This is the formal wedding ceremony and a reception, but usually, people have a private party afterwards for two hours at a different venue. A bride and a groom change their formal clothes to ordinary clothes for a private party.     

 

What type of location do most wedding ceremonies themselves take place?

There is a chapel at a Hotel, a wedding hall and a guest house. These chapels are used only for weddings, it may sound strange, but no religious activities are on the go.

 We also use a chapel for a civil wedding. In this case, the cross is kept out of sight or covered and the ceremony is conducted without a religious overtone. There are also fictitious shrines at hotels, wedding halls and guest houses. We used to have a wedding ceremony at a Shinto shrine, but there is no reception hall, and it can be inconvenient for guests, for that reason people have a wedding ceremony at a fictitious shrine at a hotel, a wedding hall and guest house at present. 

 A Buddhist wedding takes place at a temple but it happens on rare occasions.

 

What type of location do most wedding receptions take place?

We usually hold a wedding reception in a hotel or a wedding hall or guest house or restaurant.

＊ Guest house is like a manor house in Europe or some resort mansion which is built only for a wedding ceremony and a reception.

 

 How many guests are usual to such a wedding?

A national average is 76 people.

 

What customs/traditions are most common in your weddings?

Cake cutting, first bite, candle service, a bride’s (and groom’s) change of dress during a wedding reception, a bride reads a letter to her parents and gives a bunch of flowers as a thank you for bringing her up at the reception, gifts for guests at a wedding reception to take home and so on.     

 

What does a typical wedding cost?

3,000,000yen~4,000,000yen (3,000,000yen is just over £20,000)

 

How important are independent wedding planners in your country?

An independent wedding planner is absolutely not respected in Japan but has a degree of recognition.

 

Any anecdotes/comments/tips on planning a wedding in your country

A wedding in Japan is very westernized and it’s still a very popular style of wedding, but recently, Japanese styles of wedding also have become popular for the young generation and you may see a bride wearing a Kimono during a reception.     

Recently, every bride and groom tries to have “an original wedding” which is a very unique way such as having a wedding at a beach but still most of the weddings are held uniformly in Japan.

 There are many wedding magazines which give many hints to creating “an original wedding” to brides and grooms. I think we can as wedding planners in Japan discover business opportunities from this trend of customizing.    

 

 

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