Gruppo: Educating couples on wedding trends, budget

Educating couples on new trends in the wedding industry and helping them work within their budget are the keys to holding a successful wedding.

Iris Cular, wedding supplier, said that these were two of the key factors for clients to have a successful wedding.

She said the other factors include being comfortable with your wedding coordinators and suppliers and to just be in one place to have most of the pieces needed for the wedding event.

Cular, who is a member of a group of wedding suppliers called Gruppo, said that Gruppo was formed to give easier access to clients and for them to compete in Cebu’s rich wedding industry.

The group is made up of 12 wedding suppliers namely  Snoogy Mata, Marissa Unchuan, Christopher Colinares, Shirley Grace Ong, Iris Cular, Jim Ubalde, Dino Ojerio, Gilbert Go, Jhong Mesira, Ghia Pastoral, Philipp Tampus, and Pinky Chang.

Cular said with the group, clients wouldn’t have to go to several places to plan their weddings.

“So in 2008 we created Gruppo and together rented this space here in IT Park where we can meet our clients and show them our portfolio as well as that of our partners,” said Unchuan, another Gruppo member.

Unchuan said the move didn’t only make it easier for them to coordinate a client’s wedding but it also made them more comfortable working with each other, which helped them to be more relaxed when the wedding day would come.

She said wedding days were stressful days not only for the couples to be wed and their relatives but also to the wedding organizers.

“Weddings are once in a lifetime event in every man and woman’s life and we as wedding coordinators have to make sure that everything goes well as planned and execute everything perfectly because we can’t say that we can have do it again next year and mobawi ra. No it doesn’t work that way so our partnership has helped create a more comfortable working relationship,” Cular said.

Cular said the key to a successful wedding would be to work within the budget and to educate the couples of the new trends in the wedding industry.

“Some really still has in their mind the traditional wedding which we help improve by making them see what else they can do for their wedding to be as what they have always wanted it to be,” she said.

Some clients, according to Cular, now have also become more and more experimental when it comes to their plans like having themes for their weddings.

“Some like to have themes like vintage or based on movies which we help them realize in a way that will still be workable according to their set budget and still bring out their true selves making them comfortable with it,” she said.

Cular said with the advent of computer technology, the group never ran out of wedding ideas.

“We have many wedding magazines now and the Internet. There is so much information we get from the Internet which we also share with each other,” she said.

Seeing the success of their group which are usually shown in the very satisfied “thank you’s” that they get from their clients, Colinares said that the group planned to organize an event where they could educate clients and wedding suppliers about the best wedding practices in the industry.