Introducing The L.O.V.E. Club

Let’s paint a picture for a minute: you are an incredibly talented wedding professional (turn that impostor syndrome off, it’s OK to own it). You’re finally doing the creative work you were born to do. Maybe that’s photographing unique couples who are wildly in love, or coordinating an airtight wedding day timeline, or designing the perfect engagement ring or wedding invitation. Whatever it is, you have it on lock, and it makes your heart sing.

It’s just that… you really, really wish more couples knew about those talents of yours. If only they did, then your business would be booming, rather than a tiny bit struggling.

we get it, being a wedding vendor these days is hard.

There are so many people trying to hustle in a saturated market. How do you compete with someone who’s been in the biz for 10 years and charges $5K and has 50K followers on Instagram plus the budget for Facebook ads when you’re just trying to make sure your gear is up-to-date and your website doesn’t look like crap?

Even if your work is amazing, and your prices are competitive, getting clients to find you is a whole other ball game.

And more often than not, it’s one that you’re playing alone. Because running a small business doesn’t exactly come with built-in coworkers. (And well, business coaches are pricey, y’all.)

But what if they didn’t have to be?

What if you had a professional coaching team and a crew of likeminded folx you could turn to anytime you needed—from crowdsourcing how much to charge, or getting professional advice on which pictures to put in your portfolio, or pro tips on which gear to buy? What if you didn’t have to do this alone and you didn’t have to go into debt with a slew of marketing expenses either?

Because here’s the thing: Potential clients are actually always looking for super-talented vendors just like you who are early in their careers and charging those “just starting out” rates.

But when you’re charging “just starting out” rates, you can’t exactly afford to spend big bucks on marketing. Which means that growth phase can feel like it’s taking for-e-ver.

But thanks to our passionate, loyal readers, APW has a long history of helping wedding vendors scale their businesses from fledgling to booming within one wedding season. And our passion has always been nurturing those businesses to a point where they don’t need us anymore.

Introducing The L.O.V.E. Club

Our new mentorship program (think of it like an incubator for wedding vendors) launched in Fall 2019, and combines business coaching with extra exposure to APW readers—AKA the folx who are about to be your new-favorite clients. It’s specifically designed for wedding vendors who are looking to take their fledgling business to the next level—people who are talented, and hungry, and who probably need to be yelled at to raise their rates. And it’s priced at less than half what you would pay for advertising and coaching separately. (Does that sound like you? Then scroll on.)

Affectionately called The L.O.V.E. Club (League of Vendors Extraordinaire), the next round of the program will run from FEBRUARY 15TH TO JULY 15th for a small group of vendors who are a perfect fit for our readers. The program will covers topics like:

• Creating a Vision for Your Business, with Rachel Dorsey
• Defining Your Brand, with Najva Sol
• Stop Struggling over Social Media, with Hannah Chester
• Creating Systems and Processes To Create More Time
• Zeroing in on the Marketing That Will Attract Your Ideal Client. (Plus honing who your ideal client is.)

Full disclosure: This program isn’t for everyone. Not every advertiser on APW went from shooting five weddings in their first year to a full roster the next. That’s why this program is super limited and application-only. We’re looking for a handful of very specific people who we can tell are going to be the super stars of tomorrow (we have a sixth sense about these things.) 😘

Scroll on to learn more and apply!

WHO THE L.O.V.E. CLUB IS FOR

• Up-and-coming wedding vendors who are looking for a boost to get their business off the ground or take it to the next level.
• The kind of talented rising stars who could be the “next big thing” if they could just get the word out.
• Folx who realize it’s worth charging “affordable” rates for a year or so to build their portfolio, reputation, and referral network. For example, the average APW reader spends less than $3,500 on a wedding photographer, but many former APW advertisers have gone on to regularly charge $5,000 or more.
• Business-owners who are initially willing to cover a larger geographic area (serving “Southern California” or the DC-metro area, or even the whole country at a flat rate enables you to reach more potential clients than only traveling within a 50-mile radius) to build their network and business.
• Vendors who “get” the APW reader, and their desire to have a creative wedding that’s reflective of who they are as people and as a couple, and will wholeheartedly support them.
• Folx who live and breathe by the tenets of our Inclusivity Pledge.

WHAT'S INCLUDED WITH THE LOVE CLUB MEMBERSHIP

The L.O.V.E. Club is a five-month program* designed to combine all the things your business needs to grow, in one convenient place. We don’t just give you advertising exposure to APW’s readers, we teach you how to optimize your marketing and sales materials and skills, so you can turn that exposure into real life clients. During your membership in The L.O.V.E. Club you’ll receive:

Price: $3,715 $1,500

or $350/month 5-month PAYMENT PLAN

* All benefits are for the duration of the program, and you will have the opportunity to opt-in to renew your membership to continue them beyond the program end date.

WHY WORK WITH APW

From TLC CLASS OF 2019 PARTICIPANT JULIE LAFLAMME PHOTOGRAPHY…

I am so grateful for all I have learned being a part of APW’s The Love Club💕; what an incredible opportunity that I will continue to grow from. My website has been completely updated thanks to the advice and coaching I’ve received. I’m not kidding when I say my coaching call really changed my life in a way I’ve been needing for SO long. Afterwards I was seeing my portfolio, my editing style, and my unique perspective on wedding photography in a whole new light.

The master classes, particularly with Vivian Chen and Jonas Seaman, totally blew my mind and made me smack my forehead at the same time. Some of their advice seemed so simple, yet I haven’t thought of it or actually given it a try for far too long.

And the sponsored post made me feel so seen… understood… and true to myself, and I received an inquiry before I even knew it was live from someone who loved my work saying: “Beautiful shots, rich hues, romantic and candid.”

Tl;dr, I’ve been blown away by all of it. APW is the shit.

 

Julie Laflamme is a Mendocino Coast, CA-based wedding photographer with years of experience shooting quirky couples (colorful wedding dresses and top hats are the norm in her world). Like a lot of APW readers, Julie wasn’t the kind of woman who had been planning her wedding since childhood, but after her own wedding, she found that the day was far more transformative than she had expected—and navigating that experience is something she excels at helping her clients with in addition to delivering gorgeous documentary-style photos.

ABOUT APW

For just over a decade, A Practical Wedding has been the go-to resource for progressive weddings. Long before the other big names proclaimed “love is love” we were publishing LGBTQ+ weddings alongside straight CIS weddings. Our pages are full of diverse couples who represent reality. Our real weddings feature tall people, short people, thin people, fat people, queer people, straight people, non-binary people, people of color, trans people, religious people, secular people, and oftentimes a mix of the above. To us, our readers aren’t just potential clients for your business, but human beings we help to have the lowest stress wedding planning process possible. So we see our ultimate goal as being wedding matchmakers, because we only do our jobs well when our couples have good people in their corner, and when our vendors have thriving businesses with kickass couples.

PUTTING YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR VALUES ARE.
APW is run by a small team of real people you’ll interact with, who genuinely want to help your business grow, and our audience feels the same!

We work hard to win our reader’s trust, and that is why all the vendors in our directory must sign our Inclusivity Pledge. In order to advertise with us, you must be committed to treating your clients like people (not walking wallets), celebrating LGBTQ+ and POC couples, and to understanding that weddings look a lot of ways.

READER RESPONSE. AKA ACTUAL CLIENTS THAT YOU WILL LOVE.
Our audience is made up of smart, educated, mindful couples who embrace the mission of our site and understand the value of your business. They are progressive, laidback, fun, and creative. AKA the kind of clients who are tons of fun to work with and help to build a portfolio of killer weddings. We’re consistently told that APW readers are our vendors’ favorite clients.

So where do you want your marketing dollars to go? A publicly traded company or a women-owned small business that’s been committed to intersectional feminism, inclusivity, and progressive values for eleven years who genuinely cares if your business succeeds?