This past Sunday through Tuesday I attended the Association of Bridal Consultants National Convention held at the Fairmont Hotel in Newport Beach, CA. What a great way to recharge my business and creative batteries! It was worth every penny spent. We had wedding coordinators from 39 states and 14 countries in attendance. I enjoyed all of the networking, seminars, and especially the keynote speech from planning guru Collin Cowie. He. was. FABULOUS. And I mean insanely fabulous. The pictures he showed of weddings/events that he does were practically giving us 300 planners orgasms! Even if I had tens of millions to spent on a wedding, I could never in my life be as creative as that man is. He’s like the Beethoven of parties. (My husband laughed at me when I said that.)
Some of my highlights:
New friends from around the world: Amanda of Giles Sherlock from London, Iris from Hong Kong, and Yoshika from Japan. Fun facts learned from these fab ladies: In the UK, you cannot get married outside–you can only have your ceremony in a room in a building that has been registered by the government. SoCal ladies, can you even imagine????? In China and Japan, they don’t really dance at the reception as they are very formal feasts/banquets.
Fantastic workshops by respected and engaging speakers: below is a picture of myself with the fabulous Lovelynn Jensen of Lovelynn Event Design of Tampa, FL after her workshop on “Branding and Marketing to Generation Y”. Random fact about Lovelynn: she mentored my first mentor Melissa Allen. Small world!
Creative and stimulating exercises: below is a picture of a design concept that my team came up with. We were given a description of an imaginary couple that was getting married Superbowl weekend, were huge Colts fans, having a tailgate type party for a rehearsal dinner, yet wanting a very elegant and classy wedding. We were also given randome tear sheets from bridal magazines, ribbon, etc and we had to design their wedding based on all of this. This picture below does not really look like much, but we won third place for the way we were able to tie it all together to give our imaginary couple what they wanted!
All in all, a great three days. I was inspired to think outside the box, work more efficiently, take care of my clients better, and work on my higher eductation within my industry.
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