Weddings Can Go Green Too

As I've been investigating carbon-credit programs for my new "Green Storage" project over at Vino Veritas, it's interesting to find TerraPass listing a carbon offset program for weddings!

So here's a link to a page from Terrapass where you can (guess)estimate the carbon footprint of your wedding (and conveniently buy a carbon offset for it).

Relationships & Trust

As I mentioned in a prior post, it's an Encantare policy that we don't accept kickbacks or "commisssions" from vendors we send clients to for portions of their event services.

However, there are vendors with whom we have established relationships that we do like to take client to because we have a history of work with them where they have delivered on their obligations creatively & professionally.

Good business is very much driven by relationships and the amount of trust, or distrust within that relationship.

Building trust between human beings (and therefore companies) takes time, and is only proven by the level of work done over that period of time. There is no other way to obtain trust.

That being said, that trust is also one of the reasons that I'm happy to work with Brynn's business. It's not just that I'm her husband "being supportive."

This is also one of the primary reasons that I'm glad to have Brynn's support with Vino Veritas. She has contributed much to the space and resource planning that will help make the event spaces at our facilities highly functional and easy to use for events.

Most people who know me know that I tend to be pretty black or white about whether something is actually good or not good and it's because I think Brynn & her staff are very good at what they do that I support and try to help Encantare continue to grow.

The Time It Takes

For brides wondering why it is that coordinating and design packages cost what they do, a recent article (linked above) puts the time of planning a wedding at approximately 250 hours of work.

Now, hiring a coordinator with some experience, will hopefully trim that number by maybe 50 hours, but it often still does clock in at 250 hours, sometimes 300 hours to provide full coordinating services to a client.

So for anyone who's thinking they're overpaying for their coordinators services, even at a lower range budget of $20,000 for a wedding, and a 15% fee for your coodinator, that means you are paying your coordinator $12.00 per hour.

Even at a $40,000 wedding, we're still talking about only $24 per hour, and if a wedding coordinator was booked year round at that rate, that's less than $50,000 a year for a business owner that still has to pay for their own office, travel time, gas in running clients around to locations, and paying their own healthcare expenses.

Think about that for a minute in the context of all the other money being budgeted for your wedding, where you are paying your DJ $1000 or more for 6 hours of work, or the photographer & videographer thousands above that for many hours less work.

So for anyone who thinks that an event coordinator is an extravagant expense, try to think about it in context when you're budgeting for your special event or wedding.

We try very hard to craft packages for clients that are fair, and save brides time and money, and often times doing that while keeping a real business afloat means that I work extra hours for the company that are never billed, and Brynn works many extra hours so that we can keep providing the service that she's passionate about.

In fact, our full coordination packages don't even bill for hours unless it goes over 500 hours in our full package. On top of that, we do not, and will not ever accept kick backs from vendors. Your $1500 coordinator may only take you to two or three vendors for your location, and they may very likely get money paid back to them by those vendors for taking their clients there, and that's how it works.

Encantare does not engage in this practice in any way as we believe it can only lead to limitation of our clients choices and has the potential to create conflicts of interest.

One of Brynn's recent clients was taken to over 17 different sites before choosing one. This just comes with the territory, but we have to package and bill fairly for these kinds of things.

It's important that we keep our "interest" in our client's event the first and foremost consideration in every transaction and appointment.

We hope that those hours spent result in a memorable and stress-less event for our clients.

Advertising in the 21st Century

As a big Cluetrain believer, I can't help but agree that marketing today is a conversation, and I would rather learn about a companies services and products through something constructive, than from a traditional "pushed" message.

That said, Brynn and I have both checked out forums around the web where we could contribute knowledge and experience to and in those forums we continue to find ourselves moved off the boards for advertising (because our signatures have links to our website or blog) instead of being engaged in active conversation that can either help clients to make their own event go easier for them, or may help them decide to get help with their event or wedding.

We never, ever visit boards and say "HEY, USE OUR SERVICES BECAUSE WE'RE THE BEST." That is a push message. We do not do that. We care for our clients the best we can, and we are here to serve them, and only they can tell us how good we are at providing those services.

We don't have to share tools and knowledge with the brides and grooms out there - we can certainly choose to act like many other "magical" design & coordination companies where we obfuscate everything and tell you "there's no way you should worry or concern yourself with anything, just give us the money and we'll 'make it happen.'"

We share these things because whether or not you are planning your own event or wedding, or you have a coordination company working with you, knowledge is empowering and allows you to make better decisions about your event.

I believe that contributive knowledge and conversation is important and Encantare will continue share as much as we can here on our blog.