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CalUp Q&A with Founder Pete Buhl
One of the best parts of attending Wedding MBA was meeting the businesses that create products and services that make the wedding planner’s job a bit easier. We are excited to introduce one of those businesses to the Planner’s Lounge audience. Below you will find my Q&A session with Pete Buhl, Founder of CalUP. If you prefer to read, you will find a time-stamped synopsis underneath the video.
CalUp started as a COVID project, meant to gather different groups of people to meet for outdoor activities. Eventually, it evolved into a general-purpose kind of event tool. They worked with large hotels that were hosting large events, corporate retreats, and a wide variety of different types of events. The focus was on guest engagement, allowing communication, information sharing, and keeping people on track. CalUp pursued that path for about a year and a half, but the constant feedback they received from event planners was this would be perfect for weddings. CalUp spent about three or four months optimizing the solution for weddings and debuted the new tool at the 2022 Wedding MBA.
Pete started by sharing the guest or wedding party member experience when using the CalUp app on their mobile device to navigate their way through a wedding. The mobile app includes:
If the planner is the owner of the account they can control and customize who has access to each space.
Can you update the info in real time on the wedding day?
Is the photo sharing confidential?
The planner administrator console is used to create events and publish them to the app. There are several ways to create these events:
Once you start building your event, you will begin to add details such as:
Some additional features of the dashboard:
CalUp is a simple tool that allows the planner or the couple to keep guests informed and create a better experience for everyone. Everyone has their phones, and maintaining wedding day communication can make the day run so much more smoothly.
The last piece is my account overview, this is where the planner would manage all the different weddings that they have going at one time. You can easily look at an overview of all weddings and click in and out of one specific wedding. The setup makes each wedding separate so it is very hard to mistakenly be in the wrong wedding.
If you want to add a new client account, you simply go to the admin panel and click add an account. The pricing page will open and you select the plan based on the size of the wedding. Your account is created and you are ready to start the setup.
The planner only pays for the number of events they need and the price covers 12 months of service. At the end of the event, the planner can transfer ownership to the couple if they want to keep access to the photos or chats.
CalUp is meant to complement the wedding website. The wedding website is a static place to use for the registry, sharing info leading up to the wedding about travel and accommodations. CalUp is meant for the weeks leading up to the wedding when you need to have more communication with key people and might need to reach out to guests to communicate last-minute changes. Once people are en route to your wedding, it is far more likely they will get a notification on their phones than go back and check the wedding website.
The account subscription lasts for a year, so you can start using it at any time. Since the most helpful time is the weeks leading up to the wedding 60-90 days in advance of the wedding is ideal.
Having a tool that makes guest communication and management easier for the couple and the planner can be a great way to create differentiation in the market. There are so many ways that CalUp creates efficiency and allows for less stress in guest and wedding party management. This tool could be a way to differentiate yourself in a competitive market or create an add-on service for an additional revenue stream.
Any wedding that needs wedding party or guest coordination can benefit from CalUp. Whether it is a large event with many moving parts or a small destination wedding, there are always details that need to be communicated to the guests and the wedding party.
In our current weddings, 70% of the guest list has downloaded the app, and 85% to 88% of the wedding party uses the platform.
CalUp is designed to be intuitive and easy to use. We have found that the more familiar users get, the more ways they find to utilize the platform. As with any new technology, there is a learning curve but we have tried to make it as easy as possible to use.
The Planner’s Lounge audience can sign up for a free internal use demo account. This is a fully featured account that will allow you to experience the platform and create internal events. These can be used as templates over time or demos for your potential clients. If you choose to purchase CalUp for future events, you will receive a 15% code for all future client accounts.
Thank you so much for sharing CalUp with us Pete! If you would like to grab your free demo account please click here! You can also learn more about CalUp over on their website and check out their info on our tools and resources page.
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A complete set of templates, checklists, and tools for professional wedding planners.
Business
Wedding Planning
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Day in the Life
Self Development
Friday Favorites
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