Wedding Vendor Mixers & Networking

California Vendors Rule!
On the scene at the AFWPI N. California Regional Conference

June 10, 2010 by Jayne Leigh Hallock

I’d never been to Sacramento… but boy is it a cool little city. Two rivers, one historic district and lots of very nice people. (My shuttle driver might have been the most informative tour guide I’ve ever met!)

Not that I had a chance to actually tour much of Sacramento.

The Irrepressible Richard Markel, President of AFWPI, greeting some attendees.

I was too busy shaking hands with and listening to Northern California vendors. At the personal invitation of Richard and Julia Markel, the owners of The Association for Wedding Professionals International, I flew in last week to attend their North California Regional Conference.

In this full-day event, The AFWPI put the emphasis on education – which is FANTASTIC.

Here at WedLock, we beat the “educate and empower yourself” drum, over and over.

And so have the smart folks at AFWPI featured excellent educational speakers, teaching things like:

  • Using Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media to Market Your Business
  • Speaking Her Language: The 4 Dialects of Speaking “Bride”
  • What Does Your Marketing Material Say About You?
  • Effective Methods of Following Up With Leads
  • Boost Your Website Rankings
  • The SPIN selling method
  • “What’s Missing from Your Contract?

I met some great new vendors and hugged some new friends I’d previously only met over phone and email (Hi Deb Moody!)

I can’t thank the Markels enough for inviting me to this educational and gorgeous event. If I’m lucky, this won’t be the last time I’m able to attend – and blog about – one of these AFWPI events in person.  Here are a few shots from the conference and the mixer that followed…

Waiting for the instruction to begin...

AFWPI puts on so many great shows & events, it's hard to keep track!

Lunch was gorgeous and catered by a local Indian food caterer...

Big ShoutOut to Mehran's. Such delicious food!!

The mixer was outside and had a "Bombay Nights" dreamy theme.

Julia addressing her vendor/members.

They gave us a great, sundrenched table of our own. :)

Here's Deb Moody with the ACPWC and the Markels. (And yes, Richard is just seated...not tiny.)

Categories: Wedding Marketing Events, Wedding Vendor Mixers & Networking • 1 Comment »

WedLock is on the scene!

June 2, 2010 by Jayne Leigh Hallock

The pretty, yummy PWG
birthday cake

Hello.

Welcome to our shiny new WedLock blog. Here we’ll cover not just the latest news in wedding marketing – but the latest happenings in the wedding industry.

We’ll be on the scene, all over the country. And we can’t wait to meet you!

Stay tuned for a longer post in the coming week. But for now I’ll leave you with a few shots of the fantastic party the Perfect Wedding Guide threw for it’s vendors two weeks ago. They were celebrating their 10th anniversary in Atlanta and put on the most delicious of parties!

There we met loads of great Atlanta-based vendors, many of whom were able to ‘show off their wares’ at the event itself. Fully catered, the party featured gorgeous custom cakes (see photo for proof), exceptional hors d’oeuvres and even an “adult snow cone” machine.

Basically – PWG knows how to party.

(Pardon the photo quality. I already gave my camera a stern talking-to.)

The gorgeous venue
that hosted the party, The Mason
Mazur Gallery

So check back in a few days. We’ll have much more to talk about then!

Categories: Uncategorized, Wedding Industry Parties, Wedding Vendor Mixers & Networking • 1 Comment »