I had the pleasure of speaking with Sara Morgan at Weddzilla last week and boy are they doing some amazing things lately. If you havent been to their site you should visit it at http://weddzilla.com/…like TODAY!
Check out whats new with both Weddzilla AND Sara in our awesome interview below:
1. What is your role within Weddzilla?
Director of Marketing
2. How is Weddzilla changing the game for online wedding planning?
Planning a wedding is suppose to be fun. With a million sites out there focusing on selling brides something, Weddzilla aims to make their planning experience easier. We created each feature with the thought that if it didn’t simplify something it didn’t make it on Weddzilla. Brides and vendors both appreciate how Weddzilla cuts out the guessing and wasted time.
3. What is the one feature you would highlight for Wedding Professionals to use?
Our Weddfieds are the game changer for vendors. They allow wedding professionals to be proactive in connecting to the Nearlyweds that need their services anytime they want, without paying for leads. You can set your search parameters by zip code, budget, and wedding date. We notify vendors every time a Nearlywed creates a post that matches their search criteria and they’ll be able to start connecting with the brides they want to work with directly through Weddzilla.com.
4. What is the one feature you would highlight for Nearlyweds to use?
Well there are two really. The Posts and the Weddmark. Since I just mentioned the Weddifieds for the Vendors I’ll highlight the other “posts”. When we talk to brides one of the things they hated was having to call and email so many vendors during their planning process. They would spend weeks and month going back and forth with vendors only to find out they were booked or out of their budget. That will never happen again when a Nearlywed creates posts on Weddzilla. They can now tell specific categories of vendors exactly what they need with budget range, wedding dates, and important details once and let the vendors come to them. These posts live on the Weddifieds I mentioned before…which vendors search and submit quotes to brides that are within their budgets. Vendors have to stay within your budget to quote and we don’t sell them your info like other sites. We organize any quotes you receive right there attached to the post so a nearlywed can view and compare easily.
I can’t go without mentioning the Weddmark though because it’s my favorite tool on our site. We know nearlyweds are looking everywhere for inspiration and wanted to give them a new way to collect and organize it. Nearlyweds can now get their Weddmark – which is like a suped-up bookmark. When you add this Weddmark to your browser toolbar and browse other websites and find an image you like – you can click it and we magically strip all the text off the page and leave you only images to select from. In a few clicks you can add something to your Weddzilla collection to look at later, share with your bridal party to get their opinions, or use for an inspiration board.
5. Do you do Webinars or educational series to help Nearlyweds or Vendors?
Yes, in fact we are starting our series Social or Die for Vendors next week. We will be starting our webinars for nearlyweds soon and will feature our Weddzilla Gurus!
6. Tell us about your experience (an anecdote) about working with an up-and-coming internet company. What has the journey been like?
Man. It’s been a ride. We have a story that could fill a few books…and like Ive told everyone on our team, write that down for the book! We have definitely had our share up ups, downs, and everything in between. I guess the funniest part of it all is that I am running a wedding company! I can honestly say that if you asked me 5 years ago to list 500 things I could be doing today – running a Wedding company would not have made the cut.
It’s hard not to imagine it now – we have a great team and have a ton of fun. We do a lot of crazy things, pull stunts, pranks, and probably have had an HR violation or two – but we all love working with each other and that’s what’s so cool about it. Being a startup means that its about passion – and it’s not about a job. We are all passionate about Weddzilla and I think it shows in everything we do.
7. Tell us about your gurus. How did you pick them? What will they be bringing to the Weddzilla community?
We love our gurus. And honestly, we don’t use them enough…but that is about to change! When we started creating the concept of Weddzilla we wanted to align ourselves with the best experts in the industry, but wanted more than faces. We wanted expertise with weddings, but also wanted them to believe in the power of social media. All of our Gurus definitely satisfy both of those qualifications. In addition, we wanted Gurus that were accessible…because in the near future we are going to connect them with our community in a way no other site does!
We have a lot up our sleeves, but one thing that is really exciting that I can tell you is that we are about to launch the first annual Weddzilla Guru Awards featuring our awesome Guru Panel. This year we will be naming 25 “Blog Gurus” and 6 of the top 25 will be handpicked by one of our Gurus do an exclusive interview with. We believe in the power of social media and are awards are 100% community driven. That means anyone will be able to nominate and vote for their favorite blogs through October 5th. Weddzilla and the Gurus will be announcing the winners on Oct 6th – so make sure you nominate yourself and vote a million times!
8. Why have you made social media such an integral part of Weddzilla.com?
If I would have known you were going to ask me this I wouldn’t have mentioned it so many times already! When we created the “Social or Die” educational series, we did it because we truly believe that the way people interact, work, market, sell, and communicate is changing. Its less about what you are told or forced to see and more about what you choose to see, interact with, or trust. Social media is connecting us to everything, allowing us to get instant information, reviews, feedback, and is always evolving. We believe that deep integration into the social networks, into the individual nearlyweds communities is the next must use “tool” that all brides are going to want to use. It’s all about planning your big day with the people you care about, hang out with online, and interact with…and Weddzilla aims to continue to stay on the forefront of technology and social media.
9. I notice you have a Weddzilla You Tube channel…any good videos we should be looking out for?
We actually just started putting up some videos to our channel. We want to make it a hub for cool wedding videos from our brides, or anything else wedding related. We’d love to have our users suggest videos to us to add to our site or as a favorite. In addition to wedding related videos you can find tutorials on how to use Weddzilla better, highlights from our launch party, and will be adding more content soon.
10. What’s on the horizon for Weddzilla?
Tell us what we should be looking out for from you guys. Right now we have the Weddzilla Guru Awards going on! We are all about social media and blogs play a huge role in the wedding community and we can’t wait to award 25 great blogs our Blog Guru 2010 title!
On the horizon are an iPhone app for Nearlyweds…if you thought the Weddmark was cool..wait till you see the iPhone app…Its going to be addicitive!
We have a whole bunch of new site features coming soon. The Ideabook, a new twist on the store, and we will be introducing “Wedding helpers” soon which allow our nearlweds to really get social and get their communities or, “wedding helpers” involved in the planning process.
Sometime later this year or early next year I’m finally going to let my team take vacations too! 
11. Have you ever blogged before?
Absolutely! Blogging is a really important way for me to stay in touch with our Weddzilla community. I blog about everything from wedding trends to upcoming events, promotions, giveaways and even pop culture. If it’s happening in the wedding industry… I’m talking about it!
12. What do I like/dislike about the world of social networking?
On a personal level, I love that social networking lets me keep in touch with family and friends that don’t live in the same city I do. It makes keeping in touch so much easier! As a of Marketing for Weddzilla, I love that social media is changing the way brides and vendors interact. It’s allowing brides to have the opportunity to really get to know wedding professionals before doing business with them. It’s a fan way to grow a relationship! If I had to say a downside of social media, it would be that for a lot of wedding professionals, incorporating social media into their marketing can seem overwhelming. That’s why our site integrates into the social networks like Twitter and Facebook with just one click. If you do something on Weddzilla.com, you’re covering all of your bases because it won’t just live on our site…it gets shared everywhere.
Havent heard of MissNowMrs? Do yourself a favor and You have to check it out! Here’s a brief overview:
Is it me or are a lot of brides wearing shorter dresses this summer? I have a feeling these dresses are going to follow us into the fall as well simply because they are so darn cute!
different. A bit of advice, if you go the short dress route get a birdcage veil. Talk about super awesome!
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