Y‘all. It’s been a week. Over the last seven days, our lives, like the lives of pretty much everyone else in the world, have been turned upside down. But they haven’t just been turned upside down by all the new usual suspects (quarantine shopping, school cancellations, fear for our at-risk loved ones)… they’ve also been professionally re-ordered, as we’ve tried to step in and help answer questions for folks getting married in the next few weeks… and as the days wore on… the next few months.
I mean, as much as we want to come at you with fun advice and wedding separates we love (and we do, and we will) it’s hard to focus on that when everyone is trying to figure out how to work from home/ survive a market crash/ care for aging relatives/ and yes, reschedule weddings, bachelorette parties, showers… and pretty much any other public event. And our job is to meet you where you’re at.
We have been doing our best to connect with as many of you as possible to provide support here and on APW’s Instagram about what on earth you can do about your upcoming wedding. But it very quickly become clear that a few sentences on Instagram story slides cannot meet a very real need for personal help. Couples with planners can call them, cry it out, get professional suggestions, and figure out next steps. But what about couples without planners? (You know…. most of us.)
Well amazingly enough, for the past few months we’d been very slowly working on building a service to provide 1:1 planner advice in 30 minute increments. I mean, imagine if you could schedule a quick call with a planner to advise you on if your wedding budget makes sense, or where you should be looking for an affordable venue, or if this wild catering idea you had would really work? Helpful, right?
But suddenly, in March 2020, that service started to seem really important.
So we spent last week (and all weekend) in hyper drive, with all hands on deck. We built a business nearly from scratch in one week, so we could beta launch it for you today.
SO. Here we go!
☎︎ Introducing Hotline Ring
The team at APW is proud to present Hotline Ring, where a team of experienced professional wedding planners from all over the country will be offering on-demand wedding advice to help folx deal with coronavirus weddings (and all other wedding dilemmas), one 30 minute call at a time. The normal rate for a call will be $80, but for now through the end of the month, all calls are 20% off, and you can book a power-packed 30 minute problem solving call, with one of APW’s most trusted wedding experts for $64.
You’ll get a chance to work through your feelings (if you need that), talk through the details of your situation (I can nearly guarantee that you need that), and walk away with an action plan, and a clearer idea of what your best options are. (And if you need more support, you can totally book a follow up appointment with the same planner.)
In the #APWPlanner, I talk about how it can be really helpful to find a (rational, cool) wedding planner in your area and book an hour-long consultation with them at the beginning of your planning process. This means that if you can’t afford a planner (hi, most of us), you can still get solid advice. Once you have good guidance, you can do the work of executing the plans on your own with the confidence that you’ve really picked the best-for-you options. Well, based on the DM’s and comments and emails we’ve been getting, measured, professional, non-judgmental (Hotline Ring’s planners have no skin in the game of your wedding!) guidance is helpful now more than ever and so we’re working—around the clock is not an exaggeration—to make that available to as many folx who want it.
Slots to book a call are open now, and may well go quickly, so head over to nab yours. You can book the call for your #pandemicwedding questions, regular wedding questions, and anything in-between.
⬇︎LIVE Q+A Happening below
And because the lifeblood of APW has always been free advice 😘and that’s never gonna stop, if you need short form advice right this second, we’ve got a wedding planner that we’ve worked with for eight-plus years (who’s also on the Hotline Ring team), ready to do a Reddit AMA–style thread in the comments to help out. We’re absolutely delighted to introduce Meg Hotchkiss, the founder and lead planner for LVR Events in New York City (and beyond), here to answer all of your questions. She’s dishing out kind but firm, smart, and possibly hilarious answers to your most pressing questions.
Let’s get to it!
