I’M KYLIE AND…For the last 12 years I’ve helped launch the careers of over 5,000 new wedding planners, stylists and designers as CEO of the Wedding Academy.
Marketing is my raison d’etre and passion and as part of my second brand, Wedding CEO, I help Wedding Pros master the marketing of their wedding business through my weekly Podcast, Blog and short Courses.
I created this summit to help you survive and thrive in 2021. We’d all love to wave a magic wand and pretend 2020 didn’t happen, but it did. We have no control over that.
What we do have control over is how we start 2021. The mindset we allow ourselves to have. And the way we approach our marketing moving forward into this new year.
We’re all craving community. We want to be part of something again. We want to engage with each other. In short we want our learning experience to be live and experiential.
That’s exactly what we’re giving you. You’ll be learning from 30+ amazing business and marketing professionals who are ALL keen to share their knowledge with you and I’d love you to meet them below.
The Art of Sales & Booking Clients in 2021 and Beyond – Keynote
Jade Jemma works with freedom-focused entrepreneurs to simplify and accelerate their sales success – all while selling with passion, integrity and heart.
With over a decade of experience in sales and business development, Jade has worked with some of the world’s leading brands and is now the ‘secret sales weapon’ behind many successful launches and leading entrepreneurs in the online space.
When she is not working online Jade is often speaking at industry events as well as being a sales mentor and trainer for her favourite brand Virgin.
Jade believes entrepreneurship enables us to have true freedom, live life on our terms and create a positive impact on the world.
How to go viral with Instagram Reels – Q&A
Lauren Goodman, wedding planner, stylist, content creator, mother of two and truffle addict.
After 12 years as a professional ice skating coach, Lauren decided to side step and set up her wedding planning business, Bluebird Creative. She quickly realised the importance for having an online presence and relating to your audience. Creating valuable content to keep your audience engaged and build the know, like and trust factor is key to marketing your business and building a trusted brand.
She jumped into the youtube space and fell in love with creating video content to help all her couples as well as all brides that just need a helping hand.
She is super passionate about the wedding industry and being part of the best day of someones life is never lost on her.
How to Book More Weddings after Covid – Round Table
Hazel has worked within the World of Weddings for the last 18 years and set-up her consultancy business 6 years ago. She has worked on projects for the Carbis Bay Estate, Launcells Barton, Trenderway Weddings, Ocean Studios, Pengenna Manor, Cosawes Barton, Tredudwell Manor, Coombe Trenchard, Camel Studios, St.Aubyns Estates, Trelowarren Estate and Bodmin Jail.
In 2013 Hazel founded the WedMeetup events after recognising a need for high-quality networking events in Cornwall. In 2017 Hazel started working as part of the National Association of Wedding Professionals (NAWP) and was made Associate Director in 2019. More recently Hazel spoke as part of the NAWP at the prestigious Bridelux Symposium at The Savoy, London.
How to Book More Weddings after Covid – Round Table
Kelly Chandler Wedding Consulting helps unique places and spaces to thrive in the modern wedding market and run profitable successful wedding venues via a range of specialist private consulting and group training programmes.
Kelly has a wealth of wedding industry experience of more than 17 years, leading her award-winning independent wedding planning business, The Bespoke Wedding Company, together with a former Directorship at industry body, the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners.
Kelly is proud to eat, breathe and sleep weddings – setting standards, inspiring, mentoring and motivating others. She is a well-respected go-to expert in the business of weddings with a unique grasp of both modern bridal expectations and a venue’s commercial needs. She supports some of the UK’s finest country houses & hotels, as well as barns, farms, charitable trusts, landmark buildings and visitor attractions, with a strong passion for heritage.
Auditing Your Wedding Brand to Give it a 2021 Refresh – Keynote
Martha Tobyn is the Founder and Lead Wedding Planner of Anemone [www.anemone-style.com] specialising in creative modern wedding planning & styling for stylish couples getting married in London and across the UK.
She is also the Co-Founder of branding and website design agency Studio Lunaria. Alongside her graphic designer husband Ally, they create beautiful brand identities and custom Squarespace websites for small businesses owners with vision.
How Couples are Using Instagram Post Covid – Keynote
Kate is the founder and director of The Indie Practice, helping creative, indie businesses, including wedding businesses, get noticed through affordable marketing and PR.
She is also the creative force behind Magpie Wedding – an award winning blog, show, magazine and directory, now in its 10th year, focused on inspiring style led couples to get the day they want, not what they are told to have. Alongside this, Kate writes for national magazines as well as having written a book (where Paloma Faith wrote the foreword no less) and has appeared on TV and radio as a style expert. She is currently Bedfordshire’s Business Woman Of The Year.
How to Become a more Sustainable Wedding Professional – Q&A
Gwenda is the owner/editor of GREEN UNION. She has a lot of wedding industry experience both personally and professionally and has been a floral designer and stylist since 2012 working with over 200 couples. She took over GREEN UNION in late 2018 as she was looking for a new challenge, but also one which had a positive impact on the environment, as well as the industry that she’s long loved being a part of.
This desire came from her developing sense of horror at the impact humanity is having on the world. She eats a vegetarian diet (98% vegan); she buys a good percentage of ‘new to me’ clothes; she recycle fastidiously; has cut down on plastic; and uses an ethical bank (check out www.triodos.co.uk); she uses electricity from 100% renewable resources (check out www.bulb.co.uk); and uses a search engine that gives back (check out www.ecosia.org); and does her best to only buy eco-friendly and cruelty-free household products and cosmetics.
The Editorial Panel: Getting Featured in 2021
Founder of digital publishers Club Media FZE, Rhiannon, first came up with the idea behind Award winning website, brideclubme.com when she became engaged in April 2012, and found she had a barrage of unanswered questions and wanted inspiration and ideas at her own convenience.
After researching the bridal media market in the UAE, Rhiannon saw a gap for a modern, stylish and interactive website. Eight years later, Bride Club ME is now the region’s leading online wedding inspiration website and concierge, for brides and grooms in the UAE, also putting on fun and interactive events for readers and vendors alike.
Rhiannon’s background in print and online media spans 18 years and encompasses some of the largest and most respected publishing houses in both the UK and UAE. Rhiannon is also a professional wedding industry speaker, small business consultant and Co-Founder of high end proposal planning company ‘The Big Proposals’.
She has a unique and valuable insight into the world of weddings in the UAE and beyond, both from the consumer and vendor perspective, her website has assisted overall in the 30% increase in destination weddings to the UAE over the last 8 years. She has contributed to various articles published by global entrepreneur websites, newspapers and wedding magazines, including The National, khaleej Times, Time Out Dubai, Good magazine, Asian Bride and The Media Network and has been invited to speak at several high-profile wedding industry and entrepreneurial events across the UAE and beyond. Rhiannon tailors her talks specifically to the event and audience in questions and utilizes her expertise to bring value to the event’s overall agenda.
Rhiannon was the official wedding ambassador/columnist for Aquarius Magazine and is an ongoing member of the Emirates Wedding Planning Academy advisory board. She launched her second lifestyle digital media platform in September 2019, www.homeclubme.com, a media platform dedicated to all things home life in the UAE.
The Editorial Panel: Getting Featured in 2021
Sanya Percic started Ellwed, after finishing MA in Design and her wedding planning career. As the Founder and Editor in Chief of Ellwed Magazine, the first boutique magazine for destination weddings in Greece, she focuses on community led platform for brides and professionals from all over the world.
Smart Ways to Master Pinterest Marketing in 2021 – Keynote
Rachel is a Creative Content Coach specialising in Pinterest training, as well as being the pink-haired paper artist and wedding stylist behind Rachel Emma Studio. They may sound worlds apart, but actually, they both combine the things she loves the most: creating beautiful, visual things for talented, creative people.
A huge part of the growth of Rachel’s styling business was harnessing the power of content strategy – particularly on Pinterest. That, in turn, inspired a life-long love affair with the platform, which she now loves sharing with other business owners. Her Pinterest training for small businesses focuses on long-term strategies that will work wonders for you time and time again. Rachel is also co-host of The Business Proposal, a podcast for wedding creatives, by wedding creatives.
Proposals that Pop & Help You Book Clients – Keynote
With nearly 30 years in the special event and catering industry, Meryl Snow is on a mission to help businesses get on their own path to success. Meryl travels throughout North America training clients in the areas of sales, marketing, design and branding. She speaks with groups from the heart with warmth and knowledge, and covers the funny side of life and business.
Building great sales teams and growing sales is her area of expertise, but also her passion. She takes a lot of pleasure from helping the small businesses that struggle to find leads and close those sales. It is essential for her to provide attendees not just with actionable strategies, but with the motivation to put those strategies in place and to look at the different stages of the sales process and how to jumpstart each one, from prospecting to booking.
How to Add Passive Income to Your Wedding Business – Keynote
Lisa Johnson is a self-made multi-millionnaire business coach specialising in helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses using passive income from memberships and courses. During the pandemic Lisa had a £1.7m launch as well as several others from £60k to £300k.
After a tough childhood spent in social housing, Lisa went on to have successful careers in law, banking and the entertainment industry. Her background in overcoming obstacles has helped mould her into a bold, straight talking coach, who is never afraid to be an authentic and outspoken truth teller.
She has spoken on the BBC’s Women’s Hour and is a Thrive Global Contributor. She has been featured in national newspapers and magazines including Psychologies, The Guardian and Red. A recent feature on Lisa in Forbes magazine garnered over a quarter of a million views in a week.
Lisa is a huge believer that everyone can become a success no matter their background and is known for her anti-bullying campaigning online.
Lisa lives in Hertfordshire, UK with her Husband and 9 year old twin sons but coaches around the globe.
10 Steps to Facebook Group Success as a Wedding Pro – Keynote
I am passionate about online training and building successful communities, there are so many things you can do to build a loyal network.
I set up my wedding planning business 12 years ago and combined my skills as a secondary school teacher to become part of the academy team 3 years later mentoring students and promoting our courses online. I have seen a big growth in this area and we at the academy have learnt a great deal over the years in terms of structuring content, growing the community and nurturing the audience.
I know Facebook can be such a love/hate place for business owners and I get that. But… it also one of the best ways to build an audience with a global reach and this is where I come in, to help busy entrepreneurs find the balance of time and energy a popular group requires.
Facebook is the perfect platform to make new, and maintain established, connections and each group has its own unique dynamic. There is a definite buzz in finding new ways to engage members, share wisdom, initiate discussion and watch a community grow into a fan base.
How to Write Copy that Creates an Emotional Connection – Q&A
Jen Feroze runs Jackdaw Editorial, a copywriting service for the wedding industry based in the UK. She’s a big believer in the power of language, and works with wedding-business owners worldwide to help them find their voices and tell their stories.
Social Media Prompts to Get you Posting – Round Table
In 2018, we founded Sourced Co. on the belief that building a brand shouldn’t be so (insert expletive) hard. Because, as fellow wedding pros, we get it: not just any stock photos and videos will do in our aesthetics-driven industry. You need effective, engaging wedding-specific imagery to market your business successfully. And, our goal is simple: to offer a low-risk, high-reward solution that lightens your load as a wedding brand builder.
With everything from stock photos, videos, and art—to mockups, templates, and our fan-favorite styling blocks—we offer everything you need to curate an engaging library of the eye-catching, on-brand imagery it takes to book leads and build your business. Because a picture is worth a thousand leads—whether you created it or we did.
The Organic Traffic, Leads & Sales Framework – Keynote
I help wedding pros book more of their ideal clients with strategic SEO, high-converting websites, and to leverage that with systems & automation. The side effects are more profit, more money, more clarity, and an improved work-life balance.
With 13 years of full-time experience, a decade of coaching creative pros, hundreds of coaching clients, and hundreds of respective reviews proving it all works – it’s just up to you to take action.
Diving Deeper into Inclusive Wedding Marketing – Round Table
Brittny Drye is the founder and editor-in-chief of Love Inc., the leading equality-minded wedding blog and print publication. Her inclusive efforts have been celebrated by the New York Times, The Advocate, OUT Magazine, Refinery29, NY Daily News, Cosmopolitan, and more.
She is a founding member of the Aisle Society, a member of the 2020/2021 Advisory Board for the International Academy of Wedding & Events, and a 2020 WeddingPro Educator.
Diving Deeper into Inclusive Wedding Marketing – Round Table
Kunbi Odubogun is a Business Attorney and Publisher with over 10 years in the legal and creative industries. As founder of leading events publication Perfete, Kunbi is personally versed in the needs of creatives and online entrepreneurs.
She is also the founder of Legally Set a template shop offering legally sound contract templates for entrepreneurs and creative business owners.
Starting a podcast to promote your wedding business – Q&A
Started in 2016 by wedding planner Kimberly Rhodes and invitation designer Annie Roche, This Week in Weddings is a podcast for wedding industry entrepreneurs. As one of the first podcasts focused on the business of weddings, This Week In Weddings covers topics ranging from sales to working with difficult clients, and everything in between with the goal of helping wedding businesses improve their bottom lines and not feel so alone during the process.
Known for their signature conversational style, co-hosts Kimberly and Annie chat weekly with guests from both inside and outside the wedding industry, while also sharing advice from their combined 35 years of event industry experience. With over 185 episodes and more than 175,000 downloads, the This Week In Weddings podcast is enjoyed by listeners all around the world.
Understanding Audiences for FB & IG Ads – Keynote
Katelin is a specialist in all things Facebook and Instagram for creatives and Wedding professionals. She specialises in the paid ads side of the platforms and teaches how to use ads so that you can grow your business, get in real quality leads, and book more weddings.
She is all about helping you to learn how to grow your business and create a consistent and predictable lead source so that you never have to worry where your inquiries will come from.
Katelin went to school for marketing and quickly learned how awesome the wedding and creative industry is and has since dedicated her time and business to working alongside and helping you to book more weddings and events.
Harnessing TikTok for Your Wedding Business – Q&A
A nuptial maestro for almost a decade, José specializes in bringing comfort to a process that’s famously filled with tough decisions and mounting stress. After his time at the Foundry, a luxury wedding venue in NYC, José went out on his own with the goal of leveraging his storytelling and relationship building abilities to create emotional and visual experiences for his clients.
He quickly made a name for himself with his chill vibe and generous command, and his planning and design aesthetic has made him one of the top rising wedding planners in NYC. His work has been celebrated with the Best of The Knot, Essence Magazine, Sophisticated Weddings Magazine and New York Weddings. José lives in Brooklyn Heights with his three children, and as a single dad, has learned how to keep his cool under pressure.
Winning Wedding Publicity Strategies for 2021 – Keynote
OFD Consulting owner, Meghan Ely, combines in-the-trenches event experience with a love of public relations to empower her clients to take their businesses to new heights.
A long-time industry speaker and writer, she is a WeddingPro educator with The Knot + WeddingWire, as well as a regular contributor to a variety of industry publications. Meghan represents clients globally and has earned them coverage with the New York Times, Martha Stewart Weddings, The Knot, Refinery 29, Domino, Forbes and Real Simple, among other outlets.
Her team’s publicity efforts are regularly honored by the Public Relations Society of America. Special Events also has featured her as one of the top 25 young professionals in the event industry.
Growing Your Wedding Business with an Email Marketing Strategy – Keynote
Aleya Harris is the founder and owner of Flourish Marketing, an agency dedicated to helping wedding, catering, and event professionals reach their full potential through fresh, cutting-edge marketing strategies that get and keep a consistent stream of clients. She is a firm believer that business owners should make good money doing what they love and she spreads this message through her role as a thought leader in the industry.
Aleya has made it her personal mission to support catering and event businesses in their growth and help them to reach their definition of success. Her decade-plus long career as a chef and catering company owner, paired with her wealth of expertise in marketing, are matched with a remarkable work ethic, providing her clients with an engaging and interactive experience that inspires them to take action. As a professional speaker, she fosters valuable discussion about actionable marketing strategies and profit-driven storytelling in an effort to inspire her audience to take charge of their businesses’ financial futures.
Algorithms and How to Beat Them – Keynote
Christie Osborne, proud data nerd, is the owner and founder of Mountainside Media, a consulting firm devoted to using market research, data, and analytics to support event professionals as they develop scalable marketing strategies to grow their business.
Christie is dedicated to guiding the industry in a direction that ditches tired, old sales pitches and turns its focus on what really matters: turning data into dollars.
Apps & Tools to Supercharge Your Marketing – Round Table
As an event industry veteran and owner of Fantasy Sound Event Services, Kevin takes pride in his leadership of and involvement in industry associations. He is a past chapter president of the Silicon Valley NACE as well as the national president for WIPA. Recognizing a need for networking in his own region, Kevin founded the Tri Valley Wedding Professionals in 2010 and the association has now grown to a membership of nearly 700 pros.
A respected thought leader and national speaker, Kevin was recently ranked as one of the top 3 speakers at NACE Experience. He is an ongoing contributor to Catersource and SpecialEvents.com and has been featured in BRIDES, Martha Stewart Weddings and the Travel Channel, among others. He recently received the Certified Professional in Catering and Events (CPCE) designation from NACE.
Apps & Tools to Supercharge Your Marketing – Round Table
Melissa Megginson is the Sponsorships & Community Manager and resident Cat Lady at Tailwind, the leading visual marketing tool for brands. As Community Manager at Tailwind, it is her job to make Tailwind’s members look GOOD and find success in their marketing efforts. In her 7 years at Tailwind, Melissa has won an ADDY award, worked with major brands like Adobe and JCPenney, and recently graduated with an MBA from the University of Oklahoma.
Effective Sales Funnels for Wedding Pros – Q&A
Margaux Fraise is the owner + creative director of Harmony Creative Studio, an award-winning boutique wedding firm in Los Angeles, CA. Since moving from retail consulting to events in 2011, her goal has been to design weddings with intention, infusing celebrations with her signature organic and minimal style yet still tailored to each couple.
A Stage IV breast cancer survivor, she has a unique perspective on what is truly valuable in love, life and weddings – and brings that viewpoint to help her clients hone in on what matters to them. As a result, her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Style Me Pretty, Brides, and Green Wedding Shoes, among others.
Margaux serves as a wedding business educator, frequent podcast guest and motivational speaker. Her meticulous onboarding, planning, design and execution procedures have also caught the attention of her peers, and she shares insight regularly on efficient systems for creatives.
The Secret to Generating Consistent Leads for your Wedding Business – Keynote
In my early 20s, some well-timed career advice from Sir Richard Branson propelled me into my first entrepreneurial venture, producing high profile vintage style burlesque hall events around the world including The Burlesque Ball, The Ruby Revue, Dr Sketchy’s Sydney and Bijou Cabaret.
After 10 years in that business, I moved on to found Business in Heels, an international women’s professional network. Within 18 months, we had grown to over 50 branches across Australia, New Zealand, Spain, United States, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Nepal, Canada, and Thailand.
After selling Business in Heels in 2014, I chased a childhood dream to be a radio announcer. I redeemed every stored up favour, went to numerous courses and within a year started my time with Grant Broadcasters as Drive Announcer with Mix 104.9 in Darwin.
I now help others in a consultant or digital management capacity – including roles with Grant Broadcasters, NewsCorp, General Assembly and Thymebase while pursuing my own business interests – Including Darling Don’t Panic – a wedding planning, styling & on the day business in Australia which combines my love of events with my passion for digital marketing & ecommerce.
The 101 of Facebook & Instagram Ads for Wedding Pros – Keynote
Katija Vlatkovich has been working in digital for the past decade, focusing on the areas of digital marketing strategy and advertising for retail/hospitality brands.
Due to Covid-19, she has been sharing her knowledge with business owners helping them to change their business strategy during this time of chaos, by providing free advice and training in the newly established Ecommerce Training & Advice Facebook Group. She has leveraged her global network of digital marketing and eCommerce experts to provide value to business owners who need some assistance and don’t know where to begin.
She’s worked across the social and digital advertising strategies for some of Australia and New Zealand’s largest retailers including Coles, Kmart, Target, Spotlight, Anaconda, Kathmandu and Blackmores.
She started her current agency, Misfit Digital, in order to start creating digital advertising strategies that actually made a difference, working with businesses that are centered at adding value to their customers. She believes in looking under the hood of a business and finding real ways that digital can actually help impact the bottom line. She believes in creating real connections with customers, rather than a short term gain.
Katija is one of the leaders in the industry, providing honest, strategic marketing advice that truly gets results.
How to Thrive in the Wedding Industry after a Pandemic – Round Table
Bernadette understands the importance of flexibility in order to not just survive but thrive. As the original founder of the UKAWP back in 2004, Bernadette recognised the demand for excellence in an unregulated industry.
She is endlessly passionate about the wedding industry and endeavours to empower others with the knowledge, expertise and support they need to succeed in business. She has seen the industry go through incredible changes since launching her own businesses and thrived even in the recession.
Since the launch of the UKAWP, she has trained over 750 wedding planners, many of whom are now among the highest calibre of planners in the UK. Alongside owning the UKAWP, she is a Creative Business Consultant (Bernadette Chapman Consultancy) and is in the process of selling her wedding planning business (Dream Occasions) est. 2002.
With her undeniable reputation within the wedding industry, Bernadette is now a sought-after speaker at events, published author (Wedding Planning for Dummies) and regular contributor on news and national press features.
How to Thrive in the Wedding Industry after a Pandemic – Round Table
Since launching her on-the-day coordination company, Jump the Broom, back in 2016, Kate Hirons has carved out a name for herself in the industry as a non-traditional, dry-hire wedding specialist. With the major knockbacks of 2020 and the reality of having much less time to dedicate to work amidst school closures and limited support, Kate focused her energy into diversifying her business and striving to create relevant and reactive content that spoke to potential clients, as well as continuing to build strong relationships with fellow suppliers, all whilst juggling the realities of the shutdown of the wedding industry.
She has recently been awarded an exclusive contract with a brand new wedding venue alongside a busy event diary this year, as well as building a thriving community and training platform for alternative wedding suppliers which is set to grow further into 2021 and beyond. She’ll be sharing her experience of bouncing back during the pandemic and changing gears to find other ways to use your skills when bookings are low, the importance of networking whilst setting realistic boundaries, as well as how to start creating meaningful content that your existing and potential clients will love.
Nailing Your Blog Content in 2021 – Q&A
Laura Charles is the founder of The Business of Weddings providing an online membership and courses to help wedding business owners create wildly successful businesses.
With 30 years experience in the events and wedding industry Laura has trained some of the top wedding planners in Europe.
Laura’s vast experience and knowledge of the wedding and events industry combined with more recent business coaching has enabled Laura to empower other business owners with the knowledge, skills and support required to create their dream businesses.
What seduction can teach us about marketing – Q&A
Laura Payne-Stanley also known as the Brand Seductologist. She is a Speaker, Relationship Therapist, Mindset Master Coach, Entrepreneur, Wife with a forever curious mind. Laura’s energy, passion and powerful expertise enable her clients to unlock the power within and rise to legendary success. Laura addresses limiting beliefs and upper limit problems with swift action and techniques as a Master Practitioner of NLP.
A true ‘mindset ninja’ and secret weapon, Laura’s clients are ‘killing it’ from selling out exclusive international events, to becoming floral designer in residence at one of the most iconic hotels in London.