The Munaluchi Bride Coterie Retreat was held in on December 7-10, 2015, in Bridgetown, Barbados at the Hilton Barbados Resort. Over 100 wedding industry professionals were welcomed to the conference by receiving a beach bag full of conference branded swag items by From Sir with Love and beautiful name tags and paper goods by LePenn Designs. The conference planning team also thought of the male attendees that received the same swag items, just in a messenger bag which was a great added detail.

The ideal attendees for this conference are wedding and events professionals with any experience level including solo business owners, staff of event planning firms, planners, photographers, fashion designers, stationers, cake designers, makeup artists, and any other creative entrepreneur who has an affinity of working within the wedding industry.

Conference topics included:

• Corporate Events

• Social Media & Branding

• Streamlining Your Business with Systems

• Styled Shoots and Book Publishing

• Working with the Multicultural Market

• Budgeting on an Irregular Income

• Enhancing the Customer Experience

• Working within the Luxury Wedding Market.

There were so many ah-ha moments and takeaways that narrowing down just three was challenging.

Here are my top 4 takeaway points:

1) Businesses thrive on good relationships. Practice the art of building relationship capital and nurturing your partnerships within the industry. We are stronger together. – Chike Nwobu, Publisher of Munaluchi Bride

2) Will the customer refer you or forget you? Ensure you are competing on the customer experience and never stop innovating. – Christine Traulich, CEO of Red Bliss Designs

3) Don’t be the Chief Everything Officer. There is power in streamlining your business and outsourcing the tasks you do not have time for or are not strong skill wise. – Heather Crabtree, Business Strategist, Heathercrabtree.com

4) In order to stand out from others, you have to find a way to be disruptive in the events industry. Always ask, “How can we fill this space?” – Mindy Weiss, Mindy Weiss Party Consultants

The Munaluchi Bride Coterie Retreat provides not only workshop structured content, but intangible relationship building within the room with industry professionals that service clients within the multicultural market. Having a space where there is genuine support of each others businesses across the world is a unique niche that has not been experienced at any other conference I’ve attended or even researched.

It’s hard to just pinpoint one thing that I liked about the conference, but I will say that the variety of topics and the accessibility of the speakers throughout the entire week was hands down, an invaluable experience. I would have liked to see a few more optional breakout sessions on the first day which I’m sure are in the works for next year.

I highly suggest this conference, to any wedding industry professional servicing clients across the board, but specifically for those in the luxury and multicultural market. I will be attending the 2016 Munaluchi Bride Coterie Retreat in New Orleans and hope to see you there!

This is a guest post from Jillian Smith. Jillian is the Owner of OneTouch Events LLC, a Wedding & Event Planning firm based in Atlanta, GA servicing social and corporate clients worldwide.