By Keith “K.C.” KoKoruz, “The Science of Marketing”
If you weren’t at the Wedding MBA 2015, you need to put it on your calendar for 2016.
After attending DJ shows/conferences for the past 20 years, I decided to step outside of the box and attend Wedding MBA for the first time this year. This is the third conference I have been to in 6 weeks so I went into it excited and exhausted all at the same time.
My first impression was awesome. I am going to talk about a few things that anyone who has attended a trade show or conference can appreciate.
Wedding MBA was hosted at the Las Vegas convention center. As a result of this, you could stay anywhere in Vegas without feeling like you needed to support the conference if it was at a hotel you didn’t care for or if it was out of your desired budget.
The registration process was so streamlined that getting badges took minutes. They had over 3,500 people attending and on Monday everyone wanted to get their badges and get into this year’s industry specific seminars which started at 2:00 p.m.
The rooms at the convention center were all clean, set up school room styled, and perfectly climate controlled and the audio visual was perfect. So far this is just the appetizer. Now on to the main course, the education.
The education was stellar. Like any conference there are always some lame ducks but this show has so much education that no one can go home without a notepad filled with notes, sources, and ideas. There is also no other show where you can see so many well respected speakers all speaking at the same conference. At this show there was no shortage of excellent speakers. Here is a sampling of the speakers; Alan Berg, Andy Ebon, Chris Evans, Shane Mc Murray CEO of The Wedding Report, Sonny Ganguly and Timothy Chi of Wedding Wire, Carley Roney and Daniel Katz of The Knot as well as dj industry notables such as Jeremy Brech, Peter Merry, Ron Ruth, Jason Spencer, and Larry Williams.
The parties were also awesome. After going to DJj expos for 20 plus years, it is refreshing to go to an industry event and not just see all guys dancing badly. The parties were hosted by The Knot and Wedding Wire. New Jersey’s Jason Jani spun at the Wedding Wire party at the MGM as well as ADJA President Dr. Drax spun the next day at the Wedding Wire happy hour. Washington’s Austin Beaver spun both the opening cocktail party hosted by The Knot as well as The Knot’s main party the next night at the Bellagio. The two largest wedding media companies hosted parties back to back. The Knot from 7-10 and Wedding Wire the same from 9-1 and both with full open bars. Life was very good that night and a good time was had by all.
The trade show was filled with every wedding media company you have ever heard of and a bunch that you have never heard of. Chauvet and Eternal Lighting were both in attendance showing their lines of décor lighting. There was also a ton of business related vendors offering insurance, consulting, etc.
If you are looking for a change or if you are looking to take your company to the next level in the wedding industry, I strongly suggest that you attend Wedding MBA.
