‘He who knows others is is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened’. (Lao Tzu)
The UK Alliance of Wedding Planners - The leading industry body for the UK Wedding Planning Market | Promoting professionalism in Wedding Planning
The leading industry body for the UK Wedding Planning Market | Promoting professionalism in Wedding Planning
Archive for November, 2011
Pocket Positive
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
Great news for UKAWP Destination Member, Exclusive Yacht Weddings
Monday, November 28th, 2011We are delighted to hear good news from our first destination member, Exclusive Yacht Weddings.
They have recently been awarded the BA Award from UK Weddings for “Unique Wedding Specialists of the Year 2011″. They are also ”highly commended” at the Weddings Ideas Awards Ceremony, London! 2011
Proud to announce their achievement throughout 2011, EYW are growing and expanding now into Mykonos and the Greek Islands! Having 17 years experience as specialists in weddings in Cyprus in Yachts, Beach and hotel weddings.
Manager Sharron Masoura says” We specialize in weddings being unique and give the couples what they want, with all these years of experience we have now decided that we need to offer our services into Mykonos and the Greek islands, demand is there for something a little different from the “ordinary” wedding.”
We make sure that our wedding specialists are fully trained, have experience in our fields and can offer what people want. We are proud to say that nothing is too much trouble for our team, we always will go that extra mile to make sure our couples have the best.
Our team are also based throughout the UK and Scotland too! We have wedding specialists covering different areas and are always ready to come to you!!
Sharron is proud to announce that all their wedding specialists have all been married by the company and want to prove out there that they have the most unique weddings available for their couples.
Good luck Sharron and team for an equally successful 2012.
Your Christmas Wish List
Friday, November 25th, 2011OK, you might fancy a lovely pair of shoes, a new handbag or a day in the spa, but the effects of those are never going to last a long time. How about adding some business mentoring to your Christmas wish list this year?
Our UKAWP Business Mentoring Service and newer Business Support Hotline are available to less than 2 year old businesses who need a boost in those delicate and difficult early stages. Whether it’s more one to one help following our training courses on marketing, advice on your first marquee wedding or being able to talk through client and supplier difficulties and issues, one of our UKAWP Directors is available to help with one of the above services. The annual service is priced at £500 but support is available by the hour at the rate of £60 if you prefer the Business Support Hotline. For full information take a look here
Below is what Stacey-Marie Chalk of Cherry Topped Weddings thought:
“As a new business and new into the wedding planning industry I wanted to have the support of the mentoring service provided by the UKAWP. With 3 mentoring meetings with Kelly throughout a 12 month period and email and phone support, this provided plenty of time for me to go through all sorts of questions, concerns and ideas with Kelly. It also meant that by spanning it across 12 months your business has the opportunity to grow and change which in itself raises new challenges which Kelly was able to support and guide me through. You can talk openly and honestly in confidence about anything relating to your business, the industry, your experiences with clients and suppliers, ideas for progress and development, the list goes on… I found the whole mentoring programme extremely worthwhile, and great for giving you that little extra confidence boost by knowing that you’re not the only one out there who goes through those sometimes challenging early stages of a business. It was great to look back to the first meeting 12 months ago and see how far I had come too - the year really did fly by without even realising! Thank you Kelly and UKAWP!”
We hope to be able to help you in 2012.
Photo credit: PR Photography
WPE ’12 – AN OVERVIEW
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011What is WPE?
WPE ‘Wedding Planning Excellence’ was first established in 2009 and in essence is a training seminar for wedding planners. From visiting websites of our US counterparts we began to get a little envious of the number of specialised seminars open to wedding planners throughout the year. As our industry has grown we felt it was about time the UK followed suit and had an event just for ‘wedding planners’ and thus WPE was born.
I’m already trading so why do I need more training?
Most importantly this isn’t a training course, it’s a seminar. There are 2 days of intelligent, inspirational speakers for you to learn from. If you are ready and willing to push your business further ensuring increased profitability, then take the plunge and commit to WPE. Sometimes we spend all our time working IN the business, i.e. planning weddings that we don’t spend time working ON the business and this is what WPE helps you focus on.
So when is it?
As in previous years WPE is held over 2 days Friday 2nd - Saturday 3rd March 2012, and after listening to feedback we have kept it to central London. The venue chosen for WPE ’12 is the gorgeously luxurious 51 Buckingham Gate http://www.51-buckinghamgate.com/. There will be a Friday night dinner which again is optional, more details to be published on the dinner in the New Year.
How much?
The investment we ask from you for the 2 days + dinner is minimal compared to similar events in the US who charge $2,200! The prices will go up after the 2nd January so we advise you book early to make your pennies stretch even further.
Early bird UKAWP member rate - for one day £160, for both days £290 / Early bird non member rate - for one day - £170, for both days £320 / Dinner is £45
Who is Speaking?
We have a range of business and industry experts confirmed already (see below) and plan to add more over the coming weeks, do visit our website for full schedule information.
The art of negotiation
Looking Fantastic Online
Practical Marketing Strategies for Planners
Etiquette for the Modern Wedding Planner
Luxury Marquees & What to Look Out For
Using cocktails to enhance the wedding design - hot trends for 2012
Business Self Discipline
Wedding Planning business software demonstration
To review the schedule go to http://www.wpe.ukawp.com/schedule.htm
What’s New?
WPE ’12 is going to be even bigger and better than in previous years. Alongside the formal presentations will be more Q&A + some panel discussions for more in depth questions. After dinner on the Friday one of our members is organizing a surprise activity, more details will be announced in the New Year.
We hope to see you there!
Training and Using Your Talents
Monday, November 21st, 2011On 15 and 16 October I trained an inspiring group of ladies all looking to enter the wedding planning industry. Although I’m the tutor I always learn or reaffirm something from every course which is wonderful.
It was fantastic to welcome back 3 UKAWP students who had done our Business Practicalities course previously and are ready to launch after completing this Step by Step training. It was also really great to welcome new students onto the course and what struck me most was the diversity of talent we have entering the wedding planning industry. One student comes from an interior design background, another is an event florist, another an experienced wedding photographer. Now you may well ask, why are these ladies wanting to enter wedding planning too? Everyone has a different focus, motivation and plan but mostly these ladies love the wedding industry they have already seen, recognise that they have talents for the planning and design side and want to tap into them. And good for them.
Although many of our UKAWP member wedding planners focus full time on planning, that doesn’t suit everyone and in these days of flexibility how marvellous that many are choosing to combine multiple and often complementary talents to make a working lifestyle that suits them. We don’t all have to follow the 9-5 plan.
A few planners we know who do this marvelously are:
Liz from Simply Elegant who is a balloon artist as well as running her planning business
Melanie from Cranberry Blue Weddings who offers a bespoke table plan design service.
Both of the ladies above were contributors to our successful The Wedding Sanctuary bridal event which will return in autumn 2012.
Then there is Helen from Bespoken Dreams who is a clever wordsmith and offers a “We Heart PR” service to those in the industry seeking to improve their PR presence so do have a look if you need help on that side of things.
And then we know a range of planners who whilst they don’t formally practice other careers, have very useful backgrounds in law, finance, marketing, PR and design. We really are rather a diverse and talented bunch if we say so ourselves!
Do you combine wedding planning with another business pursuit? Or do you find that wedding planning is more than enough of a day job?
Pocket Positive
Friday, November 18th, 2011‘An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest’. (Benjamin Franklin)
New UKAWP service - Webinar launch
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011UKAWP are delighted to announce a brand new webinar training service.
The webinars will be a combination of topics designed for new planners and for more advanced learning by already established planners. We hope that the flexibility of being able to join a webinar online will appeal to many who cannot travel easily to other training we organise or have missed a previous session.
The topics will include certain key sections of our highly popular face to face Business Practicalities and Step by Step programmes although are by no means a replacement for the face to face learning on our two-day courses. Not all topics in BP and SBS will feature. Initially we are launching one webinar during 2011 and we hope that a series will follow during 2012.
Details below are for our first webinar which we hope you can join. Ideal for candidates considering entering the wedding planning industry who have not conducted any formal training as yet and want to get started with their planning business.
Title: ‘Marketing your Wedding Planning Business including the importance of your website’
Tutor: Bernadette Chapman, UKAWP Director
Date: Weds 30 November
Time: 6pm-7pm
Cost: £60
How to book your place: go to our booking form here
Technical details: you will need internet access with speakers and will be sent an event invitation which will require you to set up a password. At the relevant webinar time you will need to log in. You will be able to hear the tutor deliver the session as well as be able to see a slide presentation on screen. You will be able to ask questions online via a chat page. Further notes will be posted to you also.
Wedding Photo Vault - keeping those photos for life
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011Today, Director, Sandy Moretta writes on a new service that none of us has seen before that is inexpensive and practical and might be worth considering for your business photos as well as recommending to your wedding clients:
Q: When the wedding is over and the planning stages and preparation have all successfully drawn to a close, what is left of the day?
A: The memories shared by the couple, their family and friends…and their wedding photographs.
These days wedding photographs are not just a selection of posed group shots, but often tell the full story of the day from the preparation of the Bride and Groom to First Dance and evening fun that follows. This is how a bride will be able to recall her day for many, many years to come. Or will she?
With the age of digital wedding photography and photojournalism style photography has also come the age of digital storage. It’s great. Neat little USB drives or DVD’s that can be put away safely and last forever. The only problem is that they don’t. These are easily lost in house moves, can be damaged or simply mislaid and then what is left of the day? Those that store them on computer hard drives and possibly have a couple of copies should feel slightly more secure, however all hard drives eventually fail and in the future can they be accessed? Remember tape, or VHS ?
A wedding photographer I know had brides with exactly this problem. In some cases these brides had not even got around to choosing the photos for an album yet and suddenly found that they had lost their photo DVD in a move. All that planning, effort and memories … Lost.
As a solution to this problem the UKAWP was excited to discover this clever company that stores wedding photos, simply and cheaply for as long as you want!
Wedding Photo Vault (www.weddingphotovault.com).
To register the bride simply needs to enter some simple details at www.weddingphotovault.com There is a one off registration fee of £4.95. They will then be sent a DVD to copy their photos onto (simple instructions will be enclosed for those not so computer literate) and then return the disc in the pre-paid envelope provided.
Once received Wedding Photo Vault will then store their precious memories for just £3.65 a year.
If you want more details send an email to (info@weddingphotovault.com) or just go to the FAQ at (www.weddingphotovault.com) the website and see how easily our brides can lose those memories in the digital world.
Photo credit: http://pr-photography.org/
UKAWP blog features
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011Just a short post today to share with you two lovely blog posts we’ve been lucky enough to feature in recently. Both of them share information not only on UKAWP and what we do but go into much detail about our talented members work (check out the photos on Love My Dress!) and demonstrate our diverse creativity with a huge number of planning tips. We hope you find five minutes to grab a cuppa and have a read! And thank you if you contributed.
WPE ’12 – REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN - 2nd & 3rd March 2012
Monday, November 14th, 2011We are delighted to announce registration is now open for WPE ’12. We will be sending invitations out very soon, but if you can’t wait, you can register online here http://www.ukawp.com/booking-form-seminar.php. As in previous years if you register before the 2nd January you will receive the early bird discounted rate.
If you’re a planner and looking to take your business to the next level by way of continued development and learning, then Wedding Planning Excellence (WPE) is for you; tailored to meet the needs of wedding planning businesses only, it’s pretty much one of a kind!
The programme is coming together nicely with a mix of business motivational specialists as well as industry gurus. Keep checking back on the website for details on new confirmed speakers http://wpe.ukawp.com/index.htm
We hope to see you there!
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About Us
Welcome to the UKAWP Blog. The UK Alliance of Wedding Planners was founded in order to promote professionalism in wedding planning. We aim to do this through training, mentoring, membership, business tools and importantly our Code of Ethics to which all members adhere. To find out more about us please visit our main site
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The UKAWP Directors are delighted to be part of the judging panel for the Wedding Industry Awards 2012.
