23 February, 2010

My Wedding Concierge




About 5 years ago when I was knee deep in wedding magazines and swatches, I was the typical Bride-to-be: lugging around a 15lb notebook {that's roughly 30 kilo's for all you Aussies out there} everywhere I went, & dropping clip outs here; there; and everywhere...like little Gretel dropping her bread crumbs to find her way home. It was not pretty. I used the internet as much as I could, but, even that was a patience tester given the fact that much of the planning for my American wedding, was done after I moved to Australia. No. Easy. Feat. What I needed was a "1-stop-shop", if you will. I needed someplace to go, where all of the wedding resources that I needed, in the town I was getting married in {The Seelbach Hilton, Lousiville KY, FYI}, was available at my fingertips. Sadly, in 2005/2006, I knew of no such place.

Almost 4 years after my wedding, I know of a place now:

My Wedding Concierge. *cue angels singing in harmony*

Imagine you're a bride at the infant stages of planning. You have no idea. You are swamped. You are overwhelmed with information overload. You need help. Imagine you're walking down the street with your 15lb. notebook and all of your clip outs are falling out of said notebook, flying around, you're desperate to catch all of them, etc. Got that visual? I do. And it's scary. So you're walking down the street and you happen to spot a cute little wedding boutique on the corner with a sign reading "My Wedding Concierge". It's cozy and it's welcoming, and you know that they serve the best latté around. Now, we all know what a concierge does right? They greet you with a smile at your favourite hotel; they carry your bags; they show you the way, and they are a great resource for all of the local "hot spots" that you're after. Do you see the emerging pattern? Imagine that in the Wedding Industry. Pretty awesome huh? This is precisely what My Wedding Concierge is in a nutshell: your wedding resource for local vendors right at your fingertips.

A little information on this Bridal Godsend:

My Wedding Concierge was launched in September 2009 by Founder and CEO Phyllis Cheung and is based on the "emerging market of mobile wedding marketing..." Essentially, it allows Brides who are on-the-go, the ease of on-the-go wedding planning. One of the core components of the My Wedding Concierge marketing tool is the "My Wedding Concierge" iPhone App, which is available free of charge, from the Apple App Store {or iTunes}. The only iPhone App that focuses solely on wedding vendors, it allows brides the ease of accessing; researching, and requesting vendor information, all from their mobile phone. When brides use this mobile tool, along with the website, www.my-wedding-concierge.com, they are provided "with a mobile collaboration tool, which will allow brides to not only find and rank vendors, but share and organize them..." On the website, vendors can upload up to 30 photos of weddings for the bride to look through, rate her favourites, and store them in her favourites folder. When the bride wants to refer back to her favourites folder, she can click on the "Request Info" button & an email is sent to the vendor for follow-up. Thus, effectively, ending the days of lugging around 15lb notebooks. Amazing, yeah?
Since launching, the App has had over 12,000 downloads and consistently 100-150 brides daily are downloading the app.

The future of My Wedding Concierge? Besides World domination? "To be the ultimate wedding search engine". Brides will be able to refer to the website for everything from images and news articles, to vendors and blogs, making it possible for brides to search through many wedding blogs in one location, rather than doing a different search for each blog.

For Vendors: The cost to advertise on both the iPhone App and on the website starts at $29.99/month with no contracts. The bonus is having your name and your business listed on an invaluable site.

For Brides, both current and future: How awesome is My Wedding Concierge? Can I just be honest for a minute? I haven't been a bride in years...and I have the app on my iPhone and the site in my favourites menu.

Get it now. Use it everyday. Love it forever. Enough Said.