TT: Your Favorite Emergency Kit Item

I’m packing up my emergency kit for my New Years Eve wedding tomorrow – and it brought to mind my favorite emergency kit items!

For today’s ‘Talk Tuesday’ section, share in the comments section with us your favorite emergency kit item – the one you use the most or the one you just can’t live without.

I have two favorites – besides the bucketload of pins and safety pins, I love my old crochet hook – that has to be the absolute best for dealing with those pesky bustle loops. My nails can never get those loops over, so a quick swish of my crochet hook through the loop does the trick all the time!!

My second favorite is a new item, that I can’t wait to test out. It’s a flat pocket knife set – where each piece comes out completely – so it’s easy to carry and I’m not fighting with my nails again to get it open (a problem with my last pocket knife). It has a knife, scissors, file, tweezers, mini screwdriver and a couple other items. I found it while at a conference in the USA and it’s only about 1/4 centimeter thick and the size of a business card – I love it – so easy to carry and handy.

And for fun, here is a quick picture of the inside of my emergency kit – it’s a shoulder bag that’s been with me for over 4 years now…and I still love it, although some changes are in the works this year for that old bag!!

 

I can’t wait to hear about your favorite wedding day emergency kit item!! So please share!

I’m off to finish packing my emergency kit for my gorgeous winter wedding tomorrow! Happy New Year to you and yours!

Planner Jo | Wedding Coach

Godiva Favour Couture

Have you seen the luxurious little chocolate wedding cakes that Godiva has available? These are luxuriously placed in an ivory box with satin ribbon and gold detailing.

These are a delicious favor alterative that is beautifully packaged and ready to be placed at the placesetting.

Visit a Godiva store near you for all the details and options!

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach

Favour Fridays

Looking for some great inspiration for wedding favour ideas – aren’t we all.

So feel free to email me favour ideas from your weddings or just great ideas you find on the internet and I’ll be pleased to showcase them.

Watch for our first Friday Favour coming next week!

Planner Jo | Wedding Planner Mentor

TT: Your First Couple

Now it’s time to spark up some controversy and hear someone else’s point of view.

If you are just starting out – do you want your first couple (paid or free) to be someone you know or a complete stranger?

If you are already in the industry – was your first couple a friend or stranger?

Anyone who knows me, knows about my ‘policy’ (just ask my staff how passionate I am about it – LOL) – but I want to hear from some of you first, if you thought you picked well or if you would have chosen the other alternative in hindsight…

After a couple of comments – I’ll comment and tell you about my first wedding couple!

Talk Tuesday

I love comments in my blogs, and so in order to bring all you wedding planners and wedding professionals out from behind your computers (wink wink), every Tuesday I’ll post a topic of discussion…and I’d love your input and see what side of the fence you sit on.

There is no right or wrong answers, just professionals sharing their point of view!

And remember, a link in a blog to your wedding website helps with your search engine optimization (SEO), so get posting comments (with a link to your website)!!

Watch for the first Talk Tuesday (TT) to be posted tomorrow!!

Planner Jo | Wedding Planner Mentor

Did you miss out??

Wedding MBA 2008 (Wedding Merchants Business Academy) was held in Pheonix, AZ this past September. If you haven’t attended the Wedding MBA conference before, the academy has published a quick 5 minute overview of the 2008, so you can see what you missed out this year…

I bet now you want to go to the 2009 conference? Better mark it on your calendars now!

Wedding MBA 2009
Las Vegas Convention Center
September 21-24, 2009
www.weddingmba.com

Everything has aligned well for me to attend the 2009 conference – as I’ll be in Las Vegas for a destination wedding on September 19 – so I’ll just stay a couple extra days to take in this great conference…it’s always a great source of continued inspiration!

Planner Jo | Wedding Planner Mentor

First Website – A Blog

Sometimes it is tough to get a professional wedding planning website up and running – either waiting for a graphic designer to complete the work or to get all the content laid out for a website. If you find you are ready to start, but not ready to launch your website, then you may want to consider a wordpress blog, with a magazine style layout.

This blog is made in that format – although it’s a blog, the first page has more of a magazine look to it, so it looks more substantial then just a blog.

You can get your own template just like this one - Click here to visit Revolution Theme website!

First you will need to have wordpress blog software installed on your website, then you can add one of these templates to give your blog a fresh and clean look. I find them easy to navigate and edit to match your own personal style. You can edit not only the layout, but the colors, and even the header navigation.

There are cons to relying on a blog for your website – the first being it’s vulnerability to hackers. Make sure you know how to backup your website files, but more importantly, your database – so that if something does happen to your website, you can quickly restore the files.

A definate pro, is that many blogs are getting more weight, more quickly by search engines such as Google – so you may be able to start getting ranking fairly quickly.

Definitely worth checking out if you are anxious to get a professional website up and going until your website designer can have yours finished.

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach
Secrets of a Wedding Planner

Webstats: Your Visitors

Knowing your website visitors is one of the most important aspect of monitoring your website statistics.

Before we begin, let’s clear up a couple terms:

Visitor (also called Hits) – this is ‘any’ visit to your website – could be a real person, could be a search engine robot, could be an email harvester, or could just be a quick blurp of your website on the internet. Although these numbers quickly get high, it’s not the numbers we care about. And depending on your statistics program, a hit on your website may count each item on your page that is opened…so opening your home page on your website could result in as many as 2-35 hits being registered with that one single action.

Unique Visitors – are the visitors we care about. It counts each ‘real’ visitor one time a month – so if that same person comes back 6 times in a month, they won’t squew the unique visitor logs. This is the number that essentially tells you how many real visitors you had visit your website.

Website Challenge: Look at your unique visitor listing and answer the following:

• How many unique visitors to your website this month
• How many unique visitors to your website last month?
• Did the number of unique visitors go up or down?
• If it went down, can you use the rest of your statistics to find out why?

Unique visitors will have a big play as we move through more and more website statistic analysis, but for now, the important thing to know if the difference between your site visitors and your unique visitors – so you can concentrate on the unique visitors.

Call Jolyn today at 780-486-5310 for a website statistic analysis to quickly get you understanding your website statistics and what you should do based on the information it reveals.

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach

Attending a Conference?

With all the great conferences coming up – do you find yourself ready to attend your first conference? If so, I’d love to give you some pointers on making it a great experience for you!

• Registration – if you can, go to the registration table early to sign-in. Sometimes there may be a problem with your payment or they can’t find your name tag, or worse yet, they run out of materials. Going early allows for details be rectified earlier in the day, instead of just before your first workshop or lecture.
• Conference Program – read through this carefully. Over the years, I’ve discovered some programs are well written, others are not. So go through, mark the sessions you want to attend and figure out some second choices in case one room gets overcrowded. And don’t forget to take note of what meals are included or not.
• Business Cards – bring lots, and give them out to everyone you meet and talk to. I usually like to put some of my business cards on the back side of my name tag, so that I don’t have to fumble through my bags when I need to find one.
• Pack Light – I honestly don’t carry much with me through the day other than a notepad, pen and camera because you’ll usually receive lots of materials and by the day, your bag is going to be very heavy!
• Camera - bring it, but use it with precaution. If you want to take a picture of a product or vendor booth, be sure to ask their permission first. Otherwise, try to keep your flash off (it’s disruptive). You’ll never know what inspiration you’ll find at your next conference.
• Cash or Credit Card – be sure to bring one or the other or both! At many conferences, you’ll find incredible deals books, audio books and other resources – so if a deal is too good to refuse, you’ll be prepared and not miss out.

I’ve attended my fair share of conferences, and I’m always learning a new tip or idea to make the next one that more enjoyable…so be open minded, introduce yourself to those around you and have fun participating in all the conference has to offer. Afterall, sometimes one big ‘light bulb’ moment will make that confrence worth going to!

Please share with me any of your conference attending tips!

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach

But I have the look?

High end clients are nearly every wedding professionals ultimate goal…we want the clients that give us the freedom to give them our very best as professionals.

Recently, I’ve had opportunity to speak to a number of wedding professionals across the country, and I kept hearing one thing… “I have the best website, the best business cards and the best testimonials…but I still don’t have the number of couples I want”.

And the first thing I do, is go to their website and then I type into google how I’d find that professional…so I may type in “New York wedding photographer” for a New York photography company. And guess what? After 4 pages, I still haven’t found their company…

If you aren’t on the first page of google, then you need to find a way to be seen! I often encourage my mentoring clients, if they don’t have the time, money or skill to invest in search engine optimization, then at least google your most relevant search term, and purchase advertising on the first 3 directories you can find in that search. Why pay to be listed on a directory that doesn’t show until page 9 of Google??

Firstly - being listed on such prominent websites will give your website a higher recognition by the search engines, even if not a higher ranking. Secondly, hopefully the engaged couples will see your listing and stop looking at the rest of the websites on that page.

Don’t let your website be on page 10 of google..the couples will never find you that way. Make some efforts to get your website recognized…because it doesn’t matter if you have the best – if no one can find your website to see it’s the best!

Jolyn | Wedding Planner Coach
Secrets of a Wedding Planner

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