Every year one of the biggest special event professional associations (NACE) holds a massive conference somewhere in the country for professionals in the “industry.” It happens to be in Philadelphia this year. That’s where I’ll be today through Wednesday. Trust me when I tell you that three-day long conferences with endless seminars back-to-back is not my idea of a good time. Plus, it really is hard to be away from the office for that long… but…

Today was a REAL TREAT…at today’s luncheon, the one and only Mindy Weiss provided us with a great talk on what’s she’s seeing in weddings these days and then entertained us all with some anecdotal fun stuff. What a doll. I tell you, if she hadn’t become the most famous and most successful event designer and planner around, she would’ve made a killing as a stand-up comedienne.

I’ll gladly pass along some of the fun insights she provided today, but the first thing I wanted to share was her response to a great question from the audience: “Mindy — you’ve shared with us some of the things you like and some of the recent trends in weddings that you’re enjoying, but what do you dislike that you’ve been experiencing lately?”

The following was her list of dislikes:

Putting a bridesmaid in charge: It almost never turns out well. Bridesmaids should never be in charge of anything but making a fuss over the bride.

Mean vendors: We all have had to to endure vendors who act like they’re doing YOU a favor. Solution: Don’t use them ever again.

Client insisting on the caterer (or chef) using family recipes: It’s a disaster waiting to happen. Along with insulting the chef, the client is setting herself up to be disappointed because no two people make the same recipe the same way.

Hanging seating cards: It just doesn’t work. Looking for each guest’s name is a nightmare.

Tacky DJ’s: Mindy’s imitation of a slick DJ was hilarious. “Classy DJs” are great, but loud, obnoxious “Let’s partaaayyyyeeeee” DJ’s are just awful.

And my personal favorite: PEOPLE WHO DON’T SAY THANK YOU. Enough said.

I’ll gladly share some of the new things I learn over the next couple of days with you, but this was a GREAT WAY to start the conference!!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Advice, All the Buzz, Event Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.