Deborah McCoy of the American Academy of Wedding Professionals - Part 2

Welcome to part two of my interview with Deborah McCoy of the American Academy of Wedding Planners. If you haven’t yet listened to part one, rush to it right now and play that episode. My name is Joshua Birch, and I’m the host of LCI Paper’s podcast. I had the opportunity to speak to Deborah and hear her reasons for starting the American Academy of Wedding Planners. Enjoy part two of the interview.

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Here is a transcript of the interview:

If a person has a career goal of becoming a wedding planner, what does The American Academy of Wedding Professionals offer?

We’re a little bit different from other wedding organizations that offer courses because we are an organization of all types of wedding professionals. And why I structured it that way is very simple. If you are a wedding consultant, and you join an organization of wedding consultants, then you’re not going to get the referrals because those people, those members, the consultants in your home town certainly aren’t going to refer you ‘cause they’re not going to refer their competition. So when I was structuring it, I thought, “There’s got to be a way around this.” Because when I was a wedding consultant, other wedding consultants didn’t refer me but the photographers did and the videographers did and the florists did and the catering directors did. So I thought, “There’s the answer.” Make the organization a network of wedding professionals who can all help one another. And that was really, really a prime focus of mine, to make the organization different so that everyone could benefit from a membership.

Let’s keep talking about membership. What are people going to take away? What kind of confidence can they expect while they’re taking the course and then after completion?

The good news is that when you’re taking the course, when you purchase the course, you become a member of AAWP. We offer credit card processing to our members at very, very competitive rates which means that they can offer credit cards to their clientele. As a single vendor working out of their home, when a client comes into them and says, “Gee, I want you to plan my wedding and I understand your fee is $2,500 and I’d like to give you $1,000. Do you take MasterCard?” Our members say, “Yes, I do.” So that’s a major, major perk, without a doubt.

The other thing that we offer which is incredible is once you become a member, you can build your own member profile on our site. And that means that you can go in and build your own mini web site on ours. And you do not have to be computer savvy or literate in the...in any way. We have done it so it’s completely user friendly. You can go in and you can put up your own text. You can put up photos. You can tell people what you want. And that way, the brides that visit our site every week and every month that are looking for vendors, can just easily go into the brides section of AAWP’s web site and find a vendor in their area for whatever they’re looking for.

So folks can basically set up their own web sites right away without all the hassle and even the know-how.

Yes.

Okay. Anything else, any other features of your web site that you’re proud of, or have we covered them?

I’m extremely proud of the course because of the way that I wrote it. We have standards at AAWP that I expect our members to enforce. We don’t believe that brides, for example... Here’s my thought on it. Too many brides today suffer from the queen for a day syndrome and they forget that a wedding involves everyone. And years ago, the philosophy was that when you threw a wedding, your guests came first. Because as a gracious host and hostess, you made sure that those people came first at your wedding. It’s the same as if you throw a party at your house. You care about the guests, what you’re going to serve them, the drinks you’re going to offer, that kind of thing. You’re a gracious host and hostess. And that’s what we impart to the aspiring wedding planners that are taking the course, that we have different standards to uphold, and they are very, very important to us. And that means we don’t tolerate bridezillas or nasty people or people that are uncivil to vendors. We preach politeness and we preach that you don’t do things like have cash bars. And the example that I give is when a guest comes to your home for dinner and they ask you for a Coke, do you charge them $2.00?

Right.

And if you did, would they be offended and leave your home? Probably they would. Well, a wedding a no different. So we’re a very, very different organization. We have standards that I have seen over the years that make for the most successful weddings. Those are the standards that I want our aspiring wedding planners to aim for.

And around you, you’ve seen some of those standards deteriorating.

Exactly. And the weddings where I’ve seen those standards deteriorating are always the weddings that are in shambles that are the worst weddings, always.

Have major Hollywood hit movies like The Wedding Planner and Father of the Bride brought attention to your field?

Sure, without a doubt. I mean, the media is obsessed with weddings. Look at the magazines. Look at People magazine’s wedding issues, In Style magazine’s wedding issues, all the movies that relate to weddings. And it brings constant attention to the field. And you can tell because more and more and more, people are becoming wedding planners. There’s no doubt about it. It’s a really good profession and it’s a profession that’s really needed. Because in this day and age, where a couple both work, they’re working forty hours a week, when in the world do they have time to plan a wedding?

I don’t know. (laughter)

To plan a wedding is almost like a full-time task. If you think... Here’s what happens. The first thing that happens is an engaged woman will say to me, “Where do I go? What do I do? Where do I start? What happens now?” If that person doesn’t have a wedding planner, and let’s say she’s out there and she’s looking for DJs, but she doesn’t know what DJs are any good. So she’s out there hitting the streets. She’s interviewing DJ after DJ after DJ. Can imagine doing that for every single vendor that’s involved in planning a wedding?

Right.

I don’t know how you would do it without a planner. Plus, a planner knows the ins and outs. They know which vendors are good in their own particular areas. They know who to refer. They just cut a lot of the legwork and the stress. My whole thing with my brides was alleviating stress. That was my main focus.

How often are you able to sort of take on consulting on the side. I know you’re largely retired from certain aspects and you’re really more about running the web site right now and training others. But how often do you get to help others plan weddings? And tell me about the satisfaction that gives you, to see a happy couple...

What I do now is I basically help my students and our members most. You have to realize that when you have a membership in AAWP, our staff, we’re available to you at all times. So many times I’ll have members call me every week and say, “Gee, I have a difficult bride. What am I going to do?” Or, “A vendor’s giving me a problem and I’ve never encountered this before, and how would you suggest I handle it?” So I’m basically here to help people get through the task of helping others planning weddings at this point. I have a few consultants here in South Florida that I work with sort of to keep my hands in the pie so to speak, but I have to tell you that I just enjoy training others in this profession so, so much. It’s just wonderful. And you have to realize, that I’m hands on with each and every person that takes this course.

Yeah. For those women and men that are thinking of taking the course, tell them a little bit about the satisfaction that you would have when you were a wedding planner. You know, when things really went right. What can they expect?

Oh, it is the most... It’s euphoria. (laughter) You see people so happy and so pleased on the wedding day and crying with emotion and beauty and the wonder of it all and I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying anywhere. It was almost the same satisfaction as to see the bride in a final fitting in her wedding gown and just looking so radiant, knowing that she was going to wear it a week later. It’s that kind of satisfaction. When you get to that wedding and the ceremony is over and the couple is married, at that point, the stress is off and you see how happy everyone is. And then you go to the reception and you see how beautiful and elegant and awesome it is, and know that you played a key role in that? It’s just creativity beyond belief. It’s so many... It brings in to play so many different emotions, so many different positive emotions.

But at the same time, it’s almost like preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. (laughter) You prepare for weeks and you make pies and you do crazy things and you... I love to cook so I’m always marinating things for a week before I make something and I’m doing all these crazy things. And you sit down for Thanksgiving dinner and it’s great and it’s wonderful and it’s over in an hour. And sort of a wedding is like that and that’s the sad part. But on the other hand, as a planner you know, “Hey, I’ve got another one coming up.”

Thanks to Deborah McCoy of the American Academy of Wedding Planners for participating in LCI Paper’s podcast. If you like interviews like this, make sure you’re subscribed to our podcast. It’s free!

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