Show notes:

This week I'm joined by Damian Bailey, founder of The Wedding Industry Awards, for a fascinating conversation about data.

After surveying more than 32,000 UK couples over the last decade, Damian and his team have released a brand-new industry report packed with insights into how weddings have changed and, more importantly, what that means for wedding businesses today.

We discuss why fewer enquiries don't necessarily mean fewer bookings, why reviews are more important than ever, how couples are really finding their suppliers, and what the data tells us about pricing, mobile-first marketing and changing consumer behaviour.

If you've ever wondered whether what you're experiencing in your business is just happening to you, or whether it's part of a wider industry trend, this episode is full of evidence-based insights that will help you make more confident business decisions.

The Wedding Industry Awards report

The Wedding industry awards Instagram

Time stamps:

Chapters:

00:05 - Understanding the Value of Service

00:57 - Introduction to Data in the Wedding Industry

11:53 - Understanding Wedding Economics: Trends and Insights

13:58 - The Shift to Mobile: Adapting Wedding Business Strategies

24:57 - The Importance of Reviews in a Trust Recession

29:32 - The Importance of Reviews in the Wedding Industry

35:43 - The Shift in Wedding Dress Advertising

40:41 - The Changing Landscape of Wedding Financing

45:50 - Future Directions for the Annual Report

51:46 - The Importance of Community in Business

Mentioned in this episode:

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My service has value, has a higher value than I first thought. I start when I first started, I charged nowhere near what it was worth. Even at the beginning. I'm now charging what I'm worth. It's more than most.

I get fewer bookings, but I get better bookings. And I get couples who appreciate the difference.

I'm Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, strategist, speaker, and author.

Over the last decade, I've combined my love of marketing with my knowledge of the wedding industry to help thousands of wedding pros and venues just like you learn new skills, strategize, get re energized and grow their businesses. Because after all, that's how you stay top of your game. Whether you're brand new into this industry or been here forever, I want to help.

So grab a cup of tea or a cocktail, sit back and enjoy a brand new episode of my award winning podcast, Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow. Let's get going with today's episode. Today I'm chatting with Damian Bailey, founder of the Wedding Industry Awards.

But today we're not actually talking about awards. Instead, we're chatting about a topic. You know that I love, data.

Having surveyed over 32,000 couples over 11 years of running the awards, this week sees the release of a brand new industry report covering a decade of data. Today we're going to dive into the data and see what it can tell us. Damien, welcome back to the podcast.

Becca, hi. Lovely to be back. Thanks for having me.

I am very excited to have you. When your email landed in my inbox saying that you had a new data report, I think I emailed back almost immediately to say yes, come on the podcast.

Because people who listen to this podcast know that I love some data, I love some stats, I love an industry report. So I'm thrilled that you've taken your data and you've done something with it. But before we get there, people didn't hear our previous episodes.

Just give people a very quick brief rundown of who you are and how you got to where you are today.

I've shot just over a thousand weddings in that time.

And we've been doing so Ever since Tweer as we call it, because it saves about half an hour a day in our office than saying the wedding industry awards each time Tweer is going strong and is the benchmark of quality in the wedding industry. So that's where we're at right now.

Amazing. And if people want to know more about the awards, we did cover it in two episodes because there was so much for us to talk about.

Which if people want to go back and listen, we're episode 129 and 1, 3, 2. So if you want to know more about the awards and how to make the most of awards and why awards matter to your business, go back and listen to those.

But today, as I said in the introduction, we're talking about all things data. So I want to know about why. Why now you decided to turn some of your data into this report?

It's a good question, Becca. We, we've been asking couples about their weddings for 10 years, 11 years, a decades worth of data.

We've asked the same questions deliberately so that we had comparable data in that time. And that's really important. Snapshots are all very well one year's worth of data, but there are no patterns obviously within one year.

And those patterns generated over time give a really clear signpost to where the industry's been, where it's going next. And that is vital for any small business within our industry.

Frankly, we never had the ability to process all that data and AI has enabled us to crunch that data.

It's taken us months to do to put it together into this report, but we wouldn't have been able to do it without AI and is actually one of those really positive AI uses. Everyone's scared of AI and there's lots of doom mongering around. But this has been amazing to see.

This data being crushed and being used is really exciting and I'm really excited to release the results in the report.

And obviously the people who are voting right now in the current awards, their data will be included in the report next year.

Fantastic.

So I think what's really unique about it then is, is number one, it spans such a long period of time and so we can definitely use it to see patterns and maybe see things that have changed over the last decade. But also it' spans a huge amount of people.

32,000 Isn't a small data sample and as you said, I think it would have taken you an ever such a long time to do that and have a look at it if you didn't have AI, which probably makes it one of the most comprehensive reports to cover this length of time right now here in the uk. What else makes it different? What else makes you think this report has something else to say?

There are two things. First of all, it is a, what you might call a random sample.

Other reports exist, usually from a business that is asking its users who are already using that platform or that product about their weddings. Most of the time, in fact, I would say almost all of the time, that's a self selecting group of people, they're already doing something.

Whereas for us, we're asking our voters, the people who are voting for the entrance in the wedding industry awards to complete the survey after they voted. So we're getting absolute spread, nice even spread geographically over all the regions of the UK and across all categories within the awards.

And we offer 29 categories. So the voting data is broad, it's rich, it's evenly spread across the uk.

And the absolutely key thing, the differentiator between our report and all the others out there is that we ask couples after their weddings. All other businesses tend to deal with couples when they're planning their weddings.

It's very hard to access them once they've got married because they stop using all the tools that, the planning tools, etc. And they stop, you know, visiting the blogs and all those sorts of things. We're asking people after their weddings by definition.

So the responses we get to the questions in our survey are not predictions, they are reality and fact. And that is a much, much more solid base to build a report like this.

So when it came to crunching the data, obviously used AI, but are you most interested in the shift? So looking at the early data and then the most recent data and how it's changed over time or have you looked at that middle stuff as well?

All of it. Because. Because we were able to. Absolutely. The bigger picture is important to show the trajectory and to build out that decade story.

Because right in the middle of that, remember, lest we forget, we had the dreaded Covid. So it's been really interesting to see how our has or the data for the industry has, has changed and what Covid changed, if anything.

And we do cover that in the report. But also we're able to examine in a really granular way each of 14 different categories I mentioned. We have 29 categories in the awards.

Some of those, the four of those are venue categories. So they're dealt with in one category in the report.

Some of them are not covered in full because we've added to them since and they will be included in the report going forwards.

But there are in depth analysis of the data specific to those categories and I think you won't find that information anywhere else in any other report because those industries in effect don't really exist on their own. I mean, wedding photography, you know, I'm a wedding photographer, but it's not an industry as such.

There's no one out there finding data for wedding photographers. Same if you're a cake maker or a wedding planner.

So we're able to provide this data for those individual categories in addition to broad data about the wedding industry in general.

And is it all UK based? Is everyone that was surveyed from the UK or at least got married in the uk?

Well, they don't necessarily have to have got married in the UK either. They have to have used voted for suppliers who are based in the UK because that's one of the prerequisites for entering the awards.

The vast, vast majority are those are couples who have got married in the UK and obviously used UK. All of them have used UK wedding suppliers. So the data is confined pretty much 100% to the UK.

And I ask that because a lot of reports, not all, but a lot of the reports that I look at over the industry are very American heavy.

And so again, it's great for us, if you are a business here in the uk, to have something that's very UK focused and also a lot of the reports are very venue specific. And so again, it's nice for people who are in those different categories and that's a lot of people who listen to this podcast to have the data.

Now I've been very fortunate to have an early little sneak peek of the data from you and I've had a long look through the report and we're going to talk about some of the things that I found in it that I found interesting. Some of the things that you're finding a bit, we are only scratching the surface because there is a huge amount in there.

So if you are listening to this, we're going to talk about some of the things I found interesting, but there's a whole lot more. I mean, if we talked about everything in this report, we'd be on this podcast for four hours. So we're definitely not going to be doing that.

But just to start with, I just want you to explain how the report's laid out because it's kind of in three main sections. So just walk us through if you someone has a copy of this report in front of them what those each of those parts is for.

So the report is built in three parts how the whole industry has shifted across that decade. And then there's a specific double page spread effectively for Data for those 4, 14 different categories.

And then the full data tables at the back of the report. Now that's for super data nerds.

Every fact and figure that we've gleaned from the report is in there fully sourced so that you can see the granular nature of the data. Lots of other reports don't source their data properly because they can't. We've got it all and it's all in there.

But what we've tried to do is say, look, here's a broad overview and here are some main takeaways. Here's your category with granular data about who, who's booking what, how they're booking it, how they're finding it, all that sort of thing.

And then at the back of the full data tables, so you have every bit of information you need.

And Damien, it will not surprise you to know that I have spent a long time looking at the full data t at the back of the book because actually that's really fascinating and a little teaser for people listening. I found a really interesting stat specifically for wedding dress shops.

So if you're a wedding dress shop owner listening, we'll come to that later on because that's the level of detail you can go to. Not only are you seeing these broad pictures, but you can see within individual categories what's going on inside these couples minds.

So one of the headlines that kind of came across to me and was quite a shock, and I am interested to find out if it's a shock to you as well, is one of the Things it says in the report is that weddings have got cheaper, not pricier, which I think is going to come as a shock to everyone. So explain to us in broad terms, what do you actually mean by that?

It is kind of a head spin, this, because the assumption would be that everything is getting more expensive and certainly over a decade, the assumption would be, well, weddings must be more expensive now. And the key thing here is the underlying figures.

So in the UK, a wedding cost about 20,000 pounds a decade ago and the cost now is about 23,000 pounds, just under, according to our data. And this is obviously all according to our data. Now, on the surface, that looks like an increase, but everything else has gone up faster than that.

So the underlying rate, prices of costs have gone up with inflation. A wedding is therefore roughly 15% cheaper than it was 10 years ago. So the boom is in the rest of the economy, not in weddings.

That's the key takeaway here. And why it matters commercially is that most suppliers assume couples are feeling the pinch and hold their prices down.

And also that's an obvious way of helping to drive inquiries or bookings from those inquiries, of course, but the data says the opposite. And in fact, we see this, our interpretation of this is that there's a real opportunity to price up, not down.

And I think that should be a real encouragement. It's a brave thing to do, but it's a really. Should be a real encouragement to wedding businesses in the uk.

Absolutely. And it's interesting because I see this on the ground all of the time. And again, I'll challenge people listening.

When was the last time you raised your prices? As you said, everything's going up around us. Flowers are going up, price of ingredients are going up.

But actually, a lot of wedding business owners I speak to haven't changed their prices for the last three, four, five, six, you know, going back years. And that's probably contributing to this gap.

And so there's definitely an opportunity for people to revisit that and realize, okay, that's a part of business. Everyone else is having to shift things up incrementally. Maybe it's time that you look at whether or not you need to do that in your business too.

So that's a really interesting thing that that came out. Okay, next thing. Now, this one wasn't a surprise to me, but it was around.

The amount of people planning weddings on their phone is definitely going up. I mean, all of us are using our phones way more than we did 10 years ago.

What do you think that means for wedding Businesses when it comes to, to their marketing, to their websites, what's the knock on impact if we know that, you know, 2/3 of people and more are using their phones to plan their weddings?

Well, I know it sounds fairly obvious, but it means that everything you do has to look good on someone's phone, desktop. All very well, things look beautiful in landscape, but everything has to look great in portrait, frankly, on someone's phone, on someone's device.

I think we're all aware that we're using our phones more for everything. But for wedding planning, the other thing that came through in the data is that people are researching for longer.

So by the time they have come to you for an inquiry, they know who you are, they've looked and the sales pitch is almost done. They have already gleaned everything they need to know and that's why they've made an inquiry with you.

They've taken a long time to make those decisions as to who to inquire with. So they're looking. Everything has to work well on a mobile. That is something that surprised me actually, I have to say. And I made a change.

I've made changes to my photography business as a on the back of this report. It's incredibly useful to me personally.

So, yeah, the phone thing, we all know it's happening, but I think photos, videos, everything has to convert on a mobile. Obviously social media, your feed, your reels, stories, all of that stuff has to look great and sell what you do, why you do it.

And I think most importantly, going back to the comment, the comments we had before is that it has to portray and show your value. That is so important.

If you're looking to charge more, then you have to show the couple or the person who's looking at your work that you're, you're worth. Simple as that.

Yeah.

And I think it's important to remember as well, for people listening that it's not just social media, they're looking at the phone, they are looking at a website. And some of the places I see people fall down on this is contact form.

Sometimes something as simple as the contact form is terribly difficult to use on a mobile phone.

And the other thing I think people fall down on, sometimes it's is brochures, like they have this beautiful brochure, but it doesn't load on a phone or it comes out all funny on a phone.

And so again, the data shows us that they're not just looking on social media, they are doing a majority of their wedding planning of all stages, emails, everything on their phone. So we need to do more to help them with that. Now I'm interested because you said you made a couple of changes in your business.

You willing to share any of the things you've done differently based on what you've learned?

Yeah, I mean, I'm not a. I'm a. I'm an old duffer. I've been going for a long time. Social media was not a thing, believe it or not, when I first started shooting weddings.

So I'm a late adopter when it comes to social. I've always received all my bookings through word of mouth.

That has dropped as a percentage of the way that people find suppliers and that online has taken over. That's what's happened over the last decade. I think we all get a sense of that. But I was amazed at the extent I have chained email.

I wanted to actually comment on that because you're talking about people looking at websites and contact forms. Email is still the single biggest way in which a couple will get in touch with the supplier they're interested in.

Email is the preferred mode of contact, not message, on Instagram or any other social media platform. It's email. So I've just actually tweaked my email trail and how my emails are sent out and how. What's. What happens once someone sends me an email.

So I'm more efficient on that. And more about the comms is how I've made those changes, how I communicate with couples based on what the report has told me.

And that is specifically about photographers, but the data is in there for the other categories as well.

And I think the email one's interesting because obviously again, if you go back a decade, phone calls was still a bit more of a thing that it. And definitely that's now dropped off a cliff.

But it'll be interesting to see if you continue to do this over the next five years, whether email still stays as strong or whether the rise of some of the instant messaging or WhatsApp starts to take over. Because we've definitely seen an increase in couples wanting to communicate that way. But yeah, I guess that'll be an interesting thing to track.

Was WhatsApp a specific option on your form over the last couple of years? I think it was from what I saw.

Good question. Off the top of my head, I'm not entirely sure. There's a huge amount of data and you'll forgive me for not having memorized all of it.

There are 41 questions with all sorts of different options within each question. I will double check and actually it's a good point because what we we've made some changes to the survey that voters are currently completing now.

And while still enabling the data to be comparable year on year, we are also adding lots of new data, new question points. So I'll make sure that that granularity about the way that couples are contacting their suppliers is included.

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing for us to track over the next couple of years because I remember saying on stage probably a year and a half ago, two years, WhatsApp's on the rise. And then people started adding WhatsApp and they are seeing couples engaging in that.

But in the same way that Google search is still king and AI search is growing in a smaller rate, I wonder if it'll be the same. But we don't know.

We'll have to have this conversation again in a one or two years and see whether or not it is catching up or whether email is still king. But we also know, just a side note, that the way that couples are consuming those emails is also shifting.

Obviously the data won't go into that kind of granular detail, but for people listening the way your emails are received now, they just need to get shorter and they need to get to the point because if you've got long, flowery storytelling emails, they're probably not being read anyway. Back to the data. Now one of the other things you just mentioned was about online versus word of mouth.

But what was really fascinating to me in the data report was the way you broke down some of the categories. So actually online is definitely king for most categories.

But interestingly some categories are still favoring friends and family and some categories are still mostly being found by venue recommendations, which I thought was a really fascinating insight. So for example, caterers, which makes sense, like predominantly are being found from venues.

And so I think again going into this report and each category, looking at where they sit is really important because if you go and see you're a category that is still very much venue recommendation heavy, then you should be doubling down and going with the venues. If you're in a category that is still very friends and family heavy, there was a few of those, but one of them I think was as florists.

Again you should be looking at that and then everybody else, photographers included, is definitely online. I wonder why that shift has happened.

Have you got any insight onto why we think either people are moving away from recommendations or why it's so split dependent on category?

I'll be honest, we don't have any insight into that, because it's not something we've asked those couples within that survey. Just one point on that. Our survey takes between 20 and 30 minutes to complete.

That's a long time for a survey, but we get about a 10% completion rate. So of the 25,000 couples that are voting, we get about two and a half thousand each year completing this survey.

So that's well above industry or any average for a survey completion. The more questions we ask, the longer it takes. So we have to be careful with what we ask.

Just as a general aside, but no, I mean, obviously caterers make sense.

You go to your venue, the venue will often have a recommended supply list from which you have to select, or they'll offer one caterer, external caterer that you have to choose, or they'll offer the catering themselves. It's increasingly popular with venues because it's another revenue stream for them. Cake.

I think part of the reason it's friends and family is that it's also come out as one of the highest rates of DIY within any of the categories.

So I think I don't want to give the stats away, but it's the highest percentage of diy, whether that's the couple doing it themselves, but more likely a family member making the cake for them rather than than engaging a professional cake maker. So obviously their friends and family is going to be a much higher percentage of the discovery channels.

But you know what, Damien, I was just going to say, for me, my marketing brain starts whirring at these stats, so I think sometimes people think, well, great, that's a great start. How am I actually going to use that in my business?

But that's saying to me, right, if cake makers, we know predominantly or is a higher percentage of using DIY as cake makers, that gives us so many content ideas about why we shouldn't use our friends and family to make the cake. Here's all the things that go wrong when your aunt bakes the cake. Here's why you should use a professional cake maker.

Here's this, like food hygiene standards. And that is what gets me excited about data. It's not the numbers, it's how we can take those numbers and turn them into a positive.

That's absolutely right. And I think cake's a really good example. You have to show value.

People think, people who do DIY just think, oh, I'll get Auntie Joan to make us a cake because that be she'll love it and we'll still have a cake that we can cut and eat and. But cake makers are offering completely, you know, different skill sets. And I think cake makers in this instance need to show that value.

We talked about that earlier on websites, social media. They need to show the value, the skill. Why is it worth, you know, paying for a professionally made cake? Designed and made cake.

And the DJs are the same. DJs are another category. Vent comes from venue recommendations predominantly. Why should you go with a ven. A DJ that knows the.

The venue well rather than another DJ that's, you know, the DJs need to display that in their marketing. You know, you're right, there's an opportunity. There's opportunities in all of this data.

And one of the hard things for us has been to try, in a short winded sort of nutshell way, try to offer some help to each category to say, look, here's what this means for you, here's what you can do with this data and here's perhaps how twee might be able to help. We put a bit of that in there, but it's not easy to decode this data. Data, but the data is there to be decoded.

Yeah, absolutely. And which is why conversations like this are great, because it gives people ideas, but also what I really like about the report.

And again, we won't go into too much detail because there's so many categories, but for each category there is a double page spread as you said, with really practical advice. And I know you joke about you, you talk about how Twitter can help, but actually there's some really helpful stuff in there around.

If people have already entered in the past and they've got badges, how using their badge in certain places or particular categories will help them.

So again, if you're someone listening to this that has been part of twee in the past, that data and those insights work together to help you decode it and understand what to do with it. Because data alone is, is great.

Like we could list off a whole list of stats, but actually it's what you do with those stats and the decisions you make next which are the important thing. Now. Another thing that stood out to me in the report was around the importance of review.

So reviews were growing essentially in terms of a trust signal. I've been talking a lot about how we're living in a trust recession. People don't believe anything they see on the Internet anymore.

And on average I think they were reading between 5 and 10, which is actually quite a lot of reviews. I mean, when I review something, something I normally only read one or two and I normally just go for the one star reviews just for a laugh.

But actually people are really taking their time to read a lot of reviews. So knowing that information again, practically, what should we be doing?

I mean, I think a part of Twitter, they get all those comments back, don't they? They count as reviews 100%.

And I think this is a key aspect for how tweet can help. I know this is not a tweet centric conversation. We, we produced this report, but this isn't about the aw.

But this little bit I think is you can get a Google review, you can collect things on trustpilot, but frankly, anyone can give those reviews. And I think the couples have become a little bit pinch of salt with Google reviews over the years because.

Because they can be given and generated by, by anybody. When you enter the wedding Industry Awards, your recent couples vote for you.

They score you out of 10 in category specific criteria and they leave comments for your on your entry. We give each entrant their voter feedback. So the average voter scores, which is really granular, it's really useful.

You can see what you're doing well and what you might be able to improve upon and then combine that with the comments as well. Those two, there's more data for everybody to crunch and they really can be really powerful.

Those reviews can be used on your website, on your social media. They're great content generators as well. And the key thing is that only those couples can vote for you. So it's different.

They've used your experience. There's. Sorry. They've used your product or service.

They're based on user experience and are therefore much more credible and trustworthy when it comes to reviews than a Google review, I think, or trustpilot or something like that. So it's really powerful.

And in an industry where it's super competitive, that credible differentiation that twere offers as an entrant, finalist or winner at any of those levels, reviews are key. And twee offers that.

I mean, at the end of the day, people are expecting whatever's on your website and social media, that marketing and inverted commas to be great. You're writing that yourself, you're gonna make sure you sound amazing. Rightly so, because you are.

But what we're offering is something that you couldn't write yourself. That it's been. It's an independent body that's been voted for by your couples and then judged by independent experts.

That has power, that has meaning, that has weight.

Yeah, absolutely.

And again, I challenge people because I guarantee there's people listening to this who've probably still got that spreadsheet that you've sent them or that data that you sent them in their email flagged to do something with at some point and it's never seen the light of day.

And so again, if that's you having heard how important these reviews are, like set yourself a to do, get that out of your email inbox and break down, get some of those comments and use them across your website, across your social media, in your stories. Just put them in places. Email footers are a great place for a little review. I love that as well. So just use the data that you've got.

And also I think the other thing is don't neglect the importance of reviews, however you're collecting them, whether they're from Twitter, Google, Facebook reviews, anywhere. Because I think sometimes we think like I just said, that people only read the last one or two, but actually this tells us they're reading 5 or 10.

And also on your website again, I sometimes go and review websites and they haven't updated their reviews on the website since they built the website, which could been five, six, seven years ago. And the date dates show that. So just like we update imagery, go and update your reviews because I, I was really shocked by that.

I thought five to 10 is a lot of reviews. And even I think it said in your survey some people even read more than 20, which is crazy to me.

I mean, one other thing in this, in this context, the reviews is, let's take it outside the wedding industry. When you go on to something like Amazon and you're, you've got a whole load of different products that are basically the same.

And let's say you get it down to a short list of three, one of the ways that you, you will differentiate is you'll look at the reviews and if they've got a high percentage of 1 star reviews, you're probably going to discard that. You're Looking for, you know, reviews with photos, good, in depth reviews.

And that's effectively the same with people who are planning their weddings. They're even more invested in that. The price points higher there. They've got to make a good decision. And reviews are obviously key to that.

And twee can help. Tweet is not the be all and end all. I always say this to people. It's not the be all and end all.

It's just another way that you can help your business. It's another reason for a couple to book you. I mean, you know, the badging. The tweer logo is a credibility badge.

It looks good to couples who are looking for their suppliers. And that's basically a review in itself. So, yeah, reviews are key, as you said.

It's interesting how much more important they are to couples than 10 years ago. Yeah.

And how many they're reading as well. Absolutely. And it probably is, as you say, we are culturally and as consumers now used to reading reviews on all these different sites.

If we go and book a hotel, if we go and we start reading, reading about what other people are saying about it. And actually that consumer behavior will of course then shift into other purchasing decisions, including the wedding industry.

Now, here's my favorite stat, Damien, of the entire thing.

There was a lot of stats in there, but one of my favorite stats, and I'll tell you why it's my favorite, because I love anything that backs up what I've been teaching for the last 18 months, two years. And I've been talking about how inquiries are down. In fact, I did a whole TikTok video about inquiries are down.

But that don't panic about it because actually the quality of inquiries is better. And that came out really strongly in your report, which I was thrilled about.

And it shocked me more than I thought it would, actually, despite the fact that I teach that. But 22% of couples said they actually only inquire with one person in their category, one individual person. So not 20 people, not five people.

And so that backs up what I'm saying. Your inquiries might be down because before you were one of five other photographers, five other florists that were all getting that inquiry.

But actually that means that inquiry that you do get, even if there's less of them, is way more likely to convert. And I think that's actually really exciting because that means we're wasting less time on people that are inquiring with every man and their dog.

And actually it means we can put more time and attention into those individuals.

You're Absolutely right. It is amazing, isn't it? I think it goes back to what we were saying before that couples are spending much, much longer researching on their phones.

Predominantly they're looking, they're doing their research, then when they come, they made a decision, then they send an inquiry. They're not sending out inquiries in the scattergun approach as part of their decision making process or their fact finding process.

These days you can find a lot of information about people before you contact them. And that's the whole point. That's what we're all trying to do to make it as simple as possible.

So yeah, for those 20 odd percent, I can't remember the exact percentage you just quoted it, of couples that only said one inquiry for each supplier hire. They're effectively already made their decision and then what they're looking at is you, how are you a nice person? Can they work with you?

I mean, I think the industry is based largely on that anyway. People book people, they'll book the person first and the skill and product second. But they're very, very close together.

So yeah, if you're, if the nurturing those inquiries and the fact that there are fewer of them, you have to nurture them more. You have to listen and be attentive and sure you're giving people the information they want in the way they want it.

Because if you're, if, if you don't mess that up, you're likely to get that booking.

Yeah, absolutely. And I always say that by the time now a couple contacts you and even wants to get on a call with you, all they're doing is checking your vibe.

Do they like you? It's a vibe check. Because they should have your pricing. They should know roughly what your style is from what they've seen on social media.

They've seen your work, they've done everything else. The only thing they haven't done, done yet is check your vibe. And it's the same when someone tours a venue, right?

They've looked at all the pictures online, they've looked at all the pricing, they've looked at the caterers, they've done everything. They just want to feel the vibe when they walk in it, do they like the person?

And I think sometimes as suppliers we mess that up because either we don't give them enough time because we just assume it's just, just another inquiry, we're too slow to get back to them not realizing how much they've prioritized us, or we're not giving them up our full attention on the call we're not listening to them. We're so, you know, we're scared because we're thinking, oh, we've hardly got any inquiries this week. We've got to make this one work.

And so we just do this big sales pitch at them and it kind of ruins the whole thing because that's not the vibe they're looking for. They just want to know, are you a nice person? Can you get it? My friends just got engaged and we had a chat about. Can't remember what supplier.

I think it was photographer, actually.

And she'd narrowed it down and she had two calls and she said she went with the one that listened to her and when she shared a problem, didn't try and fix the problem, but just understood and spoke kindly to her about it. And that's what I mean by the vibe check. Both photographers, they were both in her price range. She liked both their photos.

She just decided on the vibe on the call.

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, you've got to spend the day with that photographer. You've got to spend the morning with your hair and makeup artist or artists.

You need to get on with them.

You need to think that perhaps in a different time time in a different place, that person would have been your friend and they would have been invited to your wedding. It has. It should feel like that anyway. And I think the data just shows that you have to. Yeah, as you said, look after. Look after those inquiries.

There are fewer of them, but they're more valuable.

And don't panic that there's fewer of them because that is what we're seeing across the board. As I say, it's actually a good thing because it shows that we're attracting quality over quantity.

And that was a problem going back five years, that we were just getting too many quantity and everyone was getting burnt out with calls that weren't going anywhere. Well, we've actually worked as an industry to almost fix that problem. Consumer behavior is changing, so embrace it and now make the most of it.

Okay, I teased something earlier for wedding dress shops, and we cannot end this conversation without me talking about this particular stat for wedding dress shops. Because it really was a shock because you've got all sorts of graphs and curves and things like that.

And we know, we all know print is unfortunately pretty much on a downward trajectory almost to nothing. But nothing was more shocking to me than the difference that's made to that wedding dress category.

And I thought for the wedding dress shops, it's interesting to see how big a shift that's been in such a quick amount of time. And I get it. I get it, because people did used to browse through magazines to look at wedding dresses, but it turns out they don't anymore.

No. And it is amazing, isn't it?

You'd still think that, you know, when you got engaged, engaged, you just bought a stack of wedding mags and you'd flick through and the majority of the ads in there would be for bridal wear dresses. I know it sounds slightly odd that I know that, but I've been in the industry a long time. I've looked at a lot of wedding magazines. Yeah.

Magazines have gone online or ceased to exist in their entirety because online has beaten them to that. And the difficulty there, though, is how does it. Does.

Does a bridal retailer or any supplier get their website front and center with a couple who are. Who are. Who are looking for supplies? And that is. That is the challenge we all face as wedding business owners.

And obviously we haven't got time to go into it today, and it's not really the topic, and it's what you obviously help businesses do in part. But it is amazing. The magazines have just dropped off a cliff and you'd be hard pushed to even find them in Smith's or.

Or anywhere else where you might get your magazines these days. Yeah.

And as individual businesses, you should be looking at your individual data as well. Because. Because just because something's worked for the last 10 years, it can suddenly stop working. And that's what wedding dress is.

Shops have probably seen in terms of magazines. And it can feel scary because you're like, why? This has always worked for me. I've been doing this magazine.

I've been doing this piece of advertising for the last 10 years. It's brought me in this many customers, and then Suddenly, seemingly overnight, but probably over a couple of years, it's just gone.

And that is scary. But that's why we have to track everything we're doing in detail so that we can get ahead of that, that before it's too late.

And I think being able to see the picture over a decade just showcases how important that is for individuals to be tracking. Do you track things in your own business, Damian? Are you good? Are you good at tracking the numbers?

Yeah, I'm pretty good. I'm not as good as I should be or could be, of course. I mean, it's one of the problems with running your own business.

If you could farm it out to individual experts for each part of what you do, you'd realize that you're at best, 75% as good as you could or should be. But I've done all right, I think. A thousand weddings in 23 years. I'll take that. I used to do, you know, just over 100 weddings a year.

And it all came through word of mouth. That is still the case, but not, not to the same extent anymore. So those are the things I've learned.

There's also some interesting overlaps between categories. So how, for instance, videography has seen a huge boost. Boom, boom time for video. Mainly because two factors.

I think that the equipment has changed a huge amount and has enabled videographers, or filmmakers, as they often like to be called these days, enable them to show their true creativity. And that means cinematic, cinematographic productions, people's weddings, it's no longer cheesy, etc.

But one of the nice overlaps is that a lot of those videographers are getting their bookings from photographers because the photography is still something that's traditionally booked ahead. And if there's some budget left, the video gets booked. Now, I don't like that at all. I would encourage anyone to go for a video.

We're doing the same job as a photographer, trying to capture the day, but in a different format. And so as you're marketing, if you're a videographer, you probably already are talking to a photographer, but you really should be doing that more.

So it's been interesting to see things like that as well just play out in the data something you have a hunch about or anecdotally you hear plays out in the data. And that's not the only example. There's all sorts of those throughout this report.

Now, we've only scratched the surface.

We don't have time to go into everything, but I just wanted to check with you if there's any other headlines or surprises that we haven't talked about that you wanted to share with the listeners.

I think the one I would mention is who's paying for the wedding and how that's changed over the years. We're all wedding suppliers.

Wedding business owners have always been used to obviously talking to the bride and, or the groom or partner one, partner two for civil partnership, etc.

They would often be they're the point of inquiry, they're the point that the people you're talking to but they're then going back to somebody who else who was eventually paying the bill. That was often the way and traditionally back in the day that would have been the bride's family in time, bride's parents.

That's changed over time and anecdotally you hear it in the speeches, you know, for instance, where you thank you to the groom's parents for buying all the booze is a very common one, for instance. But now couples are increasingly paying for a larger proportion of the wedding themselves and I think that changed the conversation somewhat.

They're going to be much more discerning because it's their own hard earned cash, let's be frank.

So, so that's been a really interesting learning and something that plays out across pretty much all categories and it comes into the data for all categories in the report.

Yeah, that is a really interesting insight.

And again, it's interesting to think about how that does change the way that couples are then acting, how they're thinking about their money, the length of time they need to save up, whether they're saving up before they get engaged. I mean there's a million offshoot questions that you then start to think about. But yeah, interesting to see such a shift.

And again, the anecdotal we know that I guess there's less, you know, people being told what to do by the mother of the bride as they used to be when they were paying for the wedding. But again, it's good to see it in fact and in numbers. So we've talked about it all the way through the podcast really.

But I just wanted to kind of just glean from you any other ways that you think this data can help. You obviously put it together for a reason. You thought it was going to help the industry in some way. So what do you hope it's going to achieve?

How do you think it's going to help those people that engage with with it?

I hope it gives people within each of the 14, 15 categories that, that are covered within Specifically within the report. I hope it gives them some information that they can actually put to good use.

That can be tricky sometimes and we've tried to help, as we've said, with some suggestions, but I think again with, with, with AI and mentorships and businesses like services like yours, Becca, that. Okay, now here's the data. What do I do with it? Do something with it.

And we hope that people are able to make changes to their business incrementally perhaps, but also see the benefits in a tangible way and whatever tangible means that could be more inquiries, more bookings, charging more for those bookings or all of those things and others. There's all. One thing we've learned from running twere is that people want different things out of their businesses.

It doesn't have to be about the bottom line. It can be about self confidence.

It can be about going full time, getting rid of the, the boring full time job and going full time with your, your, your wedding business.

And I hope that there's data in there that's interesting about the general industry, interesting and useful about your own category and, and that going forwards as we produce reports probably annually from now on that there's an ongoing story here, a narrative that you can track your own business alongside. I think it is useful, it's unique because we ask couples after their wedding and because we go into such detail for each of those 15 categories.

So I really hope it's useful. You know, Twee exists to, to help the industry and to help couples to find the, the best suppliers for their weddings.

And if we can help make those couples better, sorry, those, those businesses better, even in a small way, then that's good for the industry as a whole.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I know that the data is going to be useful because I'm definitely going to be quoting you in some of my talks over the next year and referring to the data because I love a good data set and it's really helpful for just underpinning the different things that we're teaching. And I think as well for business owners, what's really helpful is that collective.

So sometimes people think it's just me that's seen my inquiries drop. It's just me that is struggling with this.

But actually when you see it in this kind of picture, you realize, oh, it's not just me actually our industry has shifted. It's not just me that's not getting magazine inquiries anymore. It's actually everyone you know.

And I think that that kind of collective and that's something you guys do really well at Tweer is bringing people together from all parts of the industry and I think that collective feeling of confidence and going okay, it's not just me, this is the data.

Right.

How can we, how can we all do something better about it? Is brilliant. Now you mentioned there and I'm really glad you did that.

You are thinking it's going to become an annual report makes a lot of sense, especially when you are collecting all of this data anyway.

But I noticed a little back section of the report which again piqued my interest because I like to read these things in detail about what's going to change in next year's report. So obviously previously you were gathering all this data, you didn't necessarily think about turning it into an industry report.

Yeah. So we're aware that we've deliberately asked the same questions for the last 10 years because then you get the purest patterns.

We're not asking different questions each year because then there's no comparison point. But we also know that times are changing and we're going to keep the core of it exactly the same but we can add new things.

So we're going to make sure that we that every category that Tuya offers has its own briefing. We call it within the document a two page briefing.

So we're adding details specifically in the previously we've had a music entertainment section of the survey and we've combined hair stylist and makeup artists together into one that doesn't work for those businesses. So we're going to split the music entertainment out into dj, band and other live music, which is what we have within Twitter.

And hair styling will have its own section within the survey.

So will make up also we're going to track even though we don't have a standalone category for these two, but we're going to track menswear and transport transport and we don't have categories for them within twere because we just don't see the demand we used to but we had to remove them because businesses weren't entering and that's fair enough. But we're tracking that data because there's still obviously things that couples use for their weddings.

And I think the thing I'm most looking forward to actually I think this will be really useful for people is another function of the Fact, we're asking couples post wedding after their weddings have actually happened. So the, the facts, the information they're giving us, the facts is we're going to ask them about what they would have liked to have done differently.

Hindsight, you know, what would you rather have spent more on? What would you rather have spent less on? What do you. What was the best thing you booked, in retrospect?

What was things do you wish you booked that you didn't? And I think that'll be really interesting because again, it's, it's something that only you can only ask if the wedding's already happened.

So, yeah, we're looking for a much a bigger, richer, deeper report in the coming years and that'll obviously provide different narratives, different patterns.

Well, I'm super excited that you're going to make this an annual thing and hopefully you can make this an annual visit to the podcast to come and talk to us about the latest data because as I said at the beginning, I'm a big data nerd, but I think data informs and data helps us make better business decisions. And we're doing things on the fact rather than feelings. Now, we've given lots of highlights.

As I said at the start, there's huge amounts more data that we could have shared and there's all those individual categories. If people do want to get hold of a copy of the survey for themselves, if they want to use that in their own business, how does that work?

How do they get a copy of that?

So head to our website. There'll be a link in the about the awards section.

You can click on that and it'll take you to a page that actually is a bit of a summary of what we've talked about today.

It explains how the report is put together, where the data comes from, what is included in it, so that you can make an informed decision and the data is there available. And I should say this is probably obvious, but it's not just for people who enter Twitter, it's for any wedding business.

Anyone who has an interesting interest in the wedding industry here in the uk, the report is available. So, yeah, via our website is the best way. We'll be sending out an email, email to emails to our database.

But for those of you that aren't involved with twee in any way, just head on to the website.

Fantastic. And I'll make sure I put a link in the show notes to that report as well.

Now, Damien, before I let you go, I always end my podcast with the same question, which I did actually ask you when you're on an episode before.

And so I've had a little look to see what your answer was last time, because I like to play a game to see whether you have the same answer or a different answer.

Becca, what are you doing to me?

Because things change and our thoughts change and our ideas change and sometimes they stay the same, sometimes they change.

So I will tell you afterwards what you said last time, but first of all, I'll ask you the question, we'll see what you think right here, right now, today, which is this. What's one thing you wish you'd known sooner in your own business?

That's a good question. It was a good question the first time you asked me and I genuinely can't remember what I said, so I'm not going to just pigeon repeat that.

For my photography business, I wish I'd known sooner that my service has value, has a higher value than I first thought. When I first started, I charged nowhere near what it was worth, even at the beginning. I'm now charging what I'm worth. It's more than most.

I get fewer bookings, but I get better bookings and I get couples who appreciate the difference. That would be the first thing, the one for the photography, I would say for the wedding industry. Awards, Awards. It's about the community.

It's something that's happened inadvertently and around everything that we do as an awards. We've, we've not created a community, we've enabled a community to gather at our events. You mentioned it earlier on in our chat.

I wish I'd known that we were able to do that because I think I would have made it a much more front and center thing about what we do from the beginning. But I'm really proud it exists and it's, it's pushing, driving much more of what we do going forwards. So, yeah, I'm proud to say that. Twier.

I know you're the proud recipient of a podcast award. I can see it there just behind you. Quite right. Twee managed to pick up an award last week.

We got a bronze in the awards Awards, which is just what it says on the tin. It's an awards for awards businesses and it's effectively our Oscars. And they couldn't really call it anything else except the awards Awards.

But it is quite an amusing name and one of the things that we focused on within our entry was the community because I think a lot of awards don't do that and that's one of the markers for us. And I know that's one of the reasons people get involved.

So, yeah, I wish I'd known that sooner that that would be part something that Tuya did or that we could have helped facilitate earlier.

Well, side note, the awards.

Awards is the best name of an awards I've ever heard and it just proves that there is an awards ceremony for absolutely everyone and I love that and I love that you guys picked up a bronze. That's a huge achievement you should be really proud of. In terms of what you said last time, I'm going to put you out of your misery.

And I love it because it's pretty much exactly what you said today, which shows it really is the heart of what you believe. And last time you said the thing you wish you'd known sooner was the power of community.

And that's exactly what you've reflected today in both talking about the awards, but actually the power of community in this data as well. Because without the community of couples that had filled in all those surveys and taken that time as an industry, we wouldn't now have the data to.

To reflect back to the listeners. So, yeah, absolutely. Power of community through and through is so, so important. Damien, as always, it's been a fabulous conversation.

I love chatting to you. I will make sure I put the links in the show notes.

If people want to get involved in twere are their dates coming up because I know you always know the next dates and I don't.

I do always know the next dates. Entries close on the 21st of September. Voting closes one week later on the 28th. So there's still plenty of time.

But if you want to have an easier time getting your votes in and getting your votes as you go along through each wedding, there's no time by the present. As an organiser, I'd love everyone to enter the first day that the awards opened, but people do not operate like that.

But yeah, end of September and then the judging process starts and we'll be traveling the country in November for our regional events and we have recently confirmed the dates of Benny's offers. They're available on the website.

Amazing. So if you are interested in the awards, go back and listen to those previous podcast episodes we did and get your ent in earlier.

David, if people want to find out more about you about the awards, where are the best places for them to go?

Well, the website is the best place. It's the font of all knowledge. It's got everything on there that you could possibly need.

To understand how the awards works, just head to twia.co.uk click on how the awards work for an overview with deeper links to deeper dives and there's yellow buttons on there where you can book in. A 15 minute call with me and I will answer any questions and talk you through how it all works and you will not find that at any other awards.

Fantastic. David, it's been a pleasure. I hope to see you somewhere very, very soon. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you Becca. Take care and good luck to everyone in this busy wedding season.

Love that conversation with Damien.

I think these industry reports are so crucial and I'm so glad that they've taken their data from the last decade and put it into something meaningful for us all to digest and understand. Do go back and listen to this episode again. Go and find the report and download it for yourself.

And don't just leave it in your inbox, use it to make your business better. I'll see you all next time.