Behind the Scenes with the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners!

Right here on Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog I’m show­cas­ing what wed­ding plan­ners do: look­ing at the behind the scenes process of wed­ding plan­ning. Over on Whim­si­cal Won­der­land Wed­dings (wow Lou, typ­ing your blog name is hard work! you get to see some of the wed­ding plan­ners at play! They let their hair down a bit and got dressed up in wed­ding dresses to cre­ate a fun and inspi­ra­tional shoot. Enjoy! The pho­tos are all by Eliza Claire Pho­tog­ra­phy.

The UK Alliance of Wed­ding Plan­ners (UKAWP) exists to pro­mote pro­fes­sion­al­ism within the wed­ding plan­ning indus­try, but also helps to edu­cate brides (and sup­pli­ers!) about what wed­ding plan­ners do. We have a large num­ber of won­der­ful mem­bers across the UK, each work­ing inde­pen­dently and run­ning their own suc­cess­ful busi­nesses, but with one sin­gle aim – to pro­vide brides and grooms with a pro­fes­sional plan­ning ser­vice for their wed­ding day.

Last autumn, sev­eral UKAWP mem­bers got together at the beau­ti­ful War­ren House in Sur­rey to organ­ise a photo shoot with a bit of a twist. Rather than just show the fin­ished prod­uct of pretty recep­tion tables, ele­gant cake dis­plays and cre­ative card tables, we decided to cre­ate a show­case that would demon­strate the type of work we reg­u­larly do on a wed­ding day – a sort of behind the scenes look at the work of a wed­ding planner!

Although the wed­ding plan­ning indus­try con­tin­ues to grow, many brides, as well as some venues and sup­pli­ers, don’t always fully appre­ci­ate or under­stand the ben­e­fits of hav­ing a plan­ner involved in man­ag­ing their day. With the ever-increasing pop­u­lar­ity of photo shoots, we felt this was a great oppor­tu­nity to visu­ally demon­strate how we work along­side sup­pli­ers to ensure every­thing is metic­u­lously organ­ised with the utmost atten­tion to detail, and dis­pel the unfor­tu­nate myth that we bang our clip­boards, order every­one around are gen­er­ally unpleas­ant to deal with!

Using a color palette in keep­ing with the UKAWP logo colours of choco­late brown and blue, our mem­bers cre­ated var­i­ous wed­ding day “scenes”, includ­ing indoor and out­door cer­e­monies, two com­pletely dif­fer­ent recep­tion tables, an escort card table, guest book table and drinks dis­play. The dis­plays fea­tured beau­ti­ful flo­ral arrange­ments by Euphoric Flow­ers, styl­ish sta­tionery by Emily and Jo, table­ware by Options Hire and deli­cious cakes and desserts from Cake by Sugar. Each dis­play reflected our mem­bers’ indi­vid­ual cre­ativ­ity and style, but all were organ­ised and set up with the same metic­u­lous plan­ning and exact­ing stan­dards that are expected of a pro­fes­sional wed­ding planner.

Don’t for­get to head over to Whim­si­cal Won­der­land Wed­dings blog to see the sec­ond part of the wed­ding plan­ners’ shoot! http://whimsicalwonderlandweddings.com/

Sup­plier Credits:

Venue: War­ren House (www.warrenhouse.com)
Pho­tog­ra­pher: Eliza Claire (www.elizaclaire.com)
Style and Design: Mem­bers of the UK Alliance of Wed­ding Plan­ners (www.ukawp.com)
Flow­ers: Euphoric Flow­ers (www.euphoricflowers.co.uk)
Table­ware, linen and chairs: Options Hire (www.options-hire.co.uk)
Cakes and treats: Cake By Sugar (www.cakebysugar.com)
Sta­tionery: Emily and Jo (www.emilyandjo.co.uk)
Wish­ing Tree: Sim­ply Ele­gant Hire (www.simplyeleganthire.co.uk)