Hey Guys!
A couple of weeks ago, we headed out to Las Vegas for a big wedding industry convention called Wedding MBA. This was actually the first time we have gotten to go to it despite being in business for 5 years! Amanda and I were super excited to go on this trip because Wedding MBA started just 3 days after our 5 year wedding anniversary so we figured we would make it into a business trip/anniversary trip. The only downside was that we had to leave our two boys behind :’(
The Grand Canyon from the airplane
Here in Central Florida, we have a lot of beautiful parks with some amazing trees, but it is pretty flat. Amanda and I have been working on building our destination wedding portfolio, and since we didn’t have enough to do in Las Vegas already between our professional development and celebrating our anniversary we decided to also schedule a photoshoot in the desert (keep your eyes out for that blog post coming soon). I love nature in general (both Amanda and I support conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy), and I find Central Florida to be absolutely beautiful (when you escape the tourism and make it out into the forests), but it is incredibly flat. Las Vegas (or at least the area surrounding it) presented itself to be completely different than what Amanda and I are used to shooting, but my goodness was it awe-inspiring. We’ve already dropped some sneak peaks of the session on our Instagram and Facebook pages, but I can’t wait for you to see the final images. Needless to say, without spoiling too much of the next blog post, we had an amazing time photographing out there!
Anyways, back to Wedding MBA. It was a like being in school all over again. There are different “tracks” you can take depending on your specialty: from photography, videography, and wedding planning to officiants, venues, and photobooths. Now, you did not have to follow your track exactly. You could skip one of the guest speakers in your track and go to the videography track (which I did do) for example. Plus, it is impossible to attend all of the lectures in your field anyways because there were anywhere from 3-6 speakers in your field all speaking at the same time. Thank goodness Amanda and I traveled together. We were able to split up for most of our day and attend different talks. Then at the end of the day (the convention ended each day at 6pm) we would meet and discuss what we learned. It kind of felt like being back in high school. Have I mentioned this was all going on at the Las Vegas Convention Center? The space was huge and boy was it needed.
Aside from all of the different rooms that were set up for each guest speaker, there was a convention floor where vendors had booths set up to showcase their products and services! It was here that we had a really cool opportunity. We met with the owners of a product called Unity Cross. There is a wedding tradition to symbolize the bride and groom coming together as one. I’ve seen it done as a three strand rope being tied together, two different colors of sand being poured into one vessel, and two smaller candles being used to light one larger candle. Unity Cross is a version of that, but that also serves as a decoration for your home. Amanda and I actually used one for our wedding 5 years ago when Unity Cross was just starting out! Back to that opportunity I was talking about, we were able to become an affiliate with Unity Cross. You can follow this link here to go to their website to check out their products.
Wow, I’m sure you are tired of reading by now, but I haven’t even gotten into the details yet. I’ll end it here for now and keep your eyes out for the next blog post coming soon. This will be a multipart series I guess so we can talk about what Amanda and I learned from Wedding MBA, and what we will be doing in response to that, as well as just talking about our trip a bit more, and of course the engagement session (spoiler: it was at Red Rock Canyon!).
