Hello all,
As part of our business, we are establishing a professional industry body for Wedding Planners. It's a very young and small industry here in Australia, but professional standards and education are something that we strongly believe will contribute to making it a viable industry not just a bunch of hobbyists. The focus for this body is the business of running a wedding planning business, not the logistics of planning a wedding itself (although we do teach courses in this as part of our services).
We are planning to hold our first professional development day in Melbourne in June 2009. We expect it will be quite small with about 20 people in attendance. We are currently discussing our overall theme, but believe from our research and knowledge that it will be something along the lines of "Surviving & Thriving In An Economic Downturn".
We will present much of the day ourselves as between the two owners we have 20 years experience in wedding and event planning. However, we are interested in having a couple of Melbourne based people present for up to 1 hour each. We are currently considering external speakers for the following topics:
* Sustainable Business Practices - how to set up your office physically as well as your systems and processes to ensure you are productive and focused on doing the things that will generate income
* Marketing & PR on a Shoe String - how to spend your limited time and money wisely to generate enquiries that can then be converted to clients
* Making Your Website Work For You - Creating a wedding planning focused website that maximises conversion from browser to enquiry
We have a seriously tight budget as this is our first attempt at creating an education forum for the wedding planning industry and we expect attendance numbers to be small. However, we're not asking anyone to do it for free! If you are interested, shoot me an email and let me know, and I'll be in touch to discuss the possibilities further.
Thanks,
Fiona Wilkinson, Director
fiona@aawpc.com.au Australian Academy of Wedding & Event Planning www.aawpc.com.au