Back to School – Places to Learn and Be Inspired this Autumn
Back to School – Diary dates for an inspiring Autumn September always has that back to school feeling, doesn’t it? Whilst you might still be incredibly busy delivering the last of the summer’s gorgeous wedding celebrations, there’s an element of looking ahead and planning for the next season and next year (with hopefully a little bit of rest and recuperation thrown in). I’m a big believer in constant learning and...
Hosting extra events to boost your wedding revenue
Luxury weddings, often with a very international client base, have long been thinking of wedding weekends. But it’s becoming much more of a trend for mainstream weddings to extend beyond the day itself, particularly as more and more guests are travelling greater distances to be at wedding celebrations. Also because younger couples are tending to favour spending more time with their nearest and dearest in less formal settings over the...
The power of the recommendation – are you working it?
Everywhere I go at the moment recommendations are the talk of the town! On a weekend away with Mr C at a gorgeous “restaurant with rooms” the owner was telling us that Trip Advisor & Facebook recommendations are pivotal to his business and whether it sinks or swims. Every day my Facebook feed pops up with requests for recommendations from wedding colleagues for products & services and that’s not even...
What are my training events really like?
In today’s blog, I intend to give you a little personal insight into what my training events look and feel like and what you should hope to gain as an ambitious wedding venue. The training series kicks off again (for the 3rd year) on 20th September and runs until 17th November with lots of options for helping your teams improve either the wedding volume you host or your wedding quality...
Creating that powerful first impression with paper goods
So, you’re ready to welcome couples to your beautiful venue and everything is perfect. Of course, first impressions count and you probably have less than a minute for that first impression to leave the right mark. Imagine yourself in your couple’s shoes. What does that first impression look like? Does it start when they arrive for a show round? Or, does it start from the moment they contact you? The...
Targeting the “older” couple?
This is a topic I’m asked about by quite a few of my venue clients, as it’s a highly desirable sector to market to. So I thought a post on my tips for making your offering most relevant to older couples would be useful: First up, who is the older couple? There's no specific age range here. Bearing in mind that the average age to marry is around 30, we...
Ask Good Questions
I’m rather a big fan of face-to-face and there's nothing like winning the opportunity to show couples your wedding venue possibilities via a show round or site visit. There is no greater chance than to leave them in no doubt you are the PERFECT venue for them. I’ve written, Conducting a brilliant venue show round, for some key tips on conducting a really successful show round and I’m continuing that theme by...
Why invest in wedding co-ordinator training?
Today’s film tackles the subject of training of wedding co-ordinators and the benefits of investing in this for great returns. 1. Hire for Passion, Train for Skill – this I wholeheartedly believe in. You can’t teach a passion and enthusiasm but I don’t think our industry is short of the enthusiasm, but it is short of the practical knowledge! 2. Young, capable wedding co-ordinators make up 90% of the industry...
Our Latest Wedding Showcase Project
Today’s post is dedicated to our most recent event project which we were thrilled to produce with and on behalf of the events team at Chiswick House & Gardens Trust. This quiet oasis of landscaped Italianate gardens located in west London, with its stunning 18th-century villa, has long hosted beautiful weddings but had not, to date, hosted a wedding showcase to really demonstrate its endless possibilities. I’m a strong believer...
Wedding business resources
In today’s post, I’m sharing some of my favourite wedding business resources to help you with increasing your knowledge, learning and understanding of the brilliantly diverse and super-fast moving wedding industry that we work in. I strongly believe that it’s really important that as both businesses and individuals that we never stop learning and we always seek to educate ourselves in as many ways as possible to really best...