Well—2017 is officially coming to a close and I’m so happy to say we had one productive year here at Aisle Planner! From launching brand-new business tools for busy pros to sponsoring some exciting creative conferences, our team had quite the crazy-busy year. As someone who founded this company with the sole goal of empowering small business owners and driven wedding pros like you, I have to say I am so amazed and humbled to see the work team AP has accomplished this year toward that goal! I’m inspired by wedding pros, household CEOs, and business owners like you every single day and can only hope that what we’re doing here at Aisle Planner helps to make your days a little smoother, your job a little less stressful and your sleep schedule a little less sporadic!
And, in what has become a small tradition here, I’ve rounded up my favorite Aisle Planner accomplishments of the year...but before we delve into those, I just want to say thank you, thank you to our amazing community of pros. Your support has made this year such an incredible one for our team and the wedding industry alike!
We Launched our New Website
When I started Aisle Planner, my goal was to empower and inspire industry pros. I quickly learned that a huge part of empowering these awesome peeps all came down to one thing: connecting them to the consumers who need their expertise. We spent our first few years at Aisle Planner offering up tons of tips, tricks, and tools for wedding pros and planners (and we still do that on a daily basis)—but that’s only a part of the wedding-pro puzzle. 2017 finally allowed us to complete that puzzle by launching a website aimed at couples, with the sole goal of connecting consumers to pros like you. Our new website is designed to allow us to feature your work, words, and wisdom in the form of eye-catching content like inspiration gallery images and expert advice in interviews—all of which work to get you (and your amazing work) in front of the engaged couples who so desperately need you in their lives! We’re so excited to see what 2018 brings on this front and are absolutely honored to be the bridge between couples and wedding pros. (And, we’ve got even more ways to connect you to potential clients coming after the New Year—so stay tuned!)
We Released 10 New Tools
From automatic payment reminders to document signers to proposals and contracts, the team got down to serious business in 2017—all in the name of bringing you the business tools you need to plan those oh-so swanky soirées of yours. As wedding pros ourselves, we were sick (and we mean sick) of doing our invoicing on one website and our contracts on another and our seating charts on another—and having to remember 12 different passwords at that. So, we developed a slew of comprehensive business tools that allow our pros to do all of their getting-down-to-business in one streamlined (and smart) place. Our 2017 tool launches included:
We Grew Our Team!
We are all about teamwork at Aisle Planner—and growing our team was one of our most exciting accomplishments of the year. We hired a brand-new customer service rep, Francine (who just so happened to be one of our very first customers!) and promoted our freelance editor, Gillian, to Associate Editor —and we’re so excited to have them both on the AP team!
We Sponsored Our First Conferences
Sponsoring conferences is something that really reminds us of just how far we’ve come in a short period of time. When I first founded Aisle Planner, sponsoring industry events and conferences was a pie-in-the-sky goal of mine, and I’m so grateful to say that 2017 brought about the opportunity to finally get a piece of that pie and sponsor three amazing major conferences: The Cream Event, Creative at Heart and Wedding MBA. We’re so grateful to the founders of each of those awesome creative conferences for having us.
We Spoke At 16 Events And Courses
From in-person conferences to virtual educational courses, our team was tapped as experts to share our knowledge at a number of different events (16, to be exact!). We love talking with other pros and sharing what we’ve learned at Aisle Planner, and we had a great time being on the She Creates Business Podcast, our legal webinar with Annette Stepanian, our collaborative webinar with Creative at Heart and Two Bright Lights, two LVL Academies, and more. Whew!
We Grew Our Community Of Pros
2017 saw our community grow as we welcomed our first venues, photographers, floral designers, caterers, and countless other wedding pros into our business and project management platform. What started as a space for wedding planners has since become a community for wedding pros of all kinds—which is amazing, because it allows planners to seamlessly connect with the pros and vendors they need (and vice versa)!
Overall, I know it’s cliché, but words truly cannot describe how grateful I am to all of the planners, pros, and creatives who’ve supported us over this past year—as well to the incredible Aisle Planner team! I cannot wait to see what 2018 has in store and am so excited to further our mission of empowering and inspiring wedding pros across the world. Cheers, Aisle Planners, to a 2018 full of connection, community and—most importantly—pretty parties planned to perfection!
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