Wedding gown specialists plan meeting in San Antonio
The international group known as the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists
have scheduled its annual meeting to be held Feb. 26 through March 1.
Hosting the meeting will be Sharlene Thum of Five Star Cleaners and Five Star
Wedding Gown Specialists in San Antonio.
Every year, members of the association— which includes drycleaners who specialize in gown cleaning and preservation — make a trip to a fellow member’s plant in order to tour the facilities, exchange ideas and attend interactive
presentations offered by some of the industry’s best experts.
This year, one of the featured speakers will be Lynne LaFond DeLuca, senior vice
president of Beverly Clark Enterprises, which is widely known for offering
elegant bridal accessories, wedding locations, romantic getaways and honeymoon
destinations. During her session, DeLuca will divulge some current wedding
statistics and trends as well as money-making opportunities for attendees.
With over 18 years of experience in wedding hospitality, she will also offer
tips on how to develop unique selling propositions for your business.
Also on the speaker list is Sonny Ganguly, an international marketing expert and
the chief marketing officer of WeddingWire.com, a new wedding website which is
also the platform powering the wedding planner and local vendor listings at
MarthaStewart.com.
Ganguly will discuss social networking and how it can be applied to generate
traffic for your website in order to build up your bridal business.
Chris Jaeger of BookMoreWeddings.com will be on hand to present “25 Things Your Webmaster Didn’t Tell You.” Not only will he review and critique members’ web sites during the program, but Jaeger will also discuss ways to get better
results from Internet marketing.
For those looking for a new way to attract brides to their business, Robert
Allen will discuss the field of broadcasting wedding talk radio that brides can
download to their iPods and MP3 players. Allen is the executive producer of one
such station, the Weeding Podcast Network.
WPN is the most popular wedding talk radio station. It distributes and produces
custom audio InfoCasts™ for communicating with all types of prospective customers and media outlets.
Another highlight of the day will be in the form of roundtable discussions in
the afternoon.
The topics will range from gown cleaning to restoration and preservation and
other topics.
Participating in the panel will be several association members, including:
incoming association president Kermit Engh of Omaha Lace Cleaners in Omaha, NE;
Michael Johnson of Fashion Care in Atlanta, GA; and Elizabeth Petersen of
Speciality Cleaners in Guadalajara, Mexico.
For more information, contact the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists at
(800) 501-5005 or go to www.WeddingGownSpecialists.com.
Members of the association, which is a not-for-profit trade group, are located
in the United States, Canada, Australia and South America. Each member honors
the guarantee of every other member, which includes taking the gown out of the
container and pressing it at no charge when the gown is to be worn again.
