Show notes:

Today I’m chatting with Dave – founder of Love me Do Wedding Films and co-founder of the Happily Ever After Christmas party for Wedding Pros. I wanted to find out more about Dave, his industry growth and why he decided to get the industry together to celebrate at Christmas!

Get your tickets for the party using code PODCAST for a discount

Love Me Do Wedding Films

Follow Happily Every After Party on Instagram

Time Stamps:

00:13 – Introduction to Wedding Business Growth

06:27 – Transition to Wedding Filmmaking

10:45 – Mistakes and Lessons Learned in Videography

18:47 – Transitioning to New Opportunities in Wedding Videography

22:07 – The Importance of Networking in the Wedding Industry

28:58 – Planning the Happily Ever After Party

Transcript:

Dave

00:00:00.160 – 00:00:11.760

To be honest myself, it was networking and it was speaking to people. I think when I kind of started this, it was putting yourself out there with other people is very, very valuable.

Becca

00:00:13.520 – 00:01:06.250

I’m Becca Poutney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger and you’re listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I’m here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level.

If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your pass and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you’re in the right place. Let’s get going with today’s episode. Today I’m chatting with Dave Sartin, founder of Love Me Do Wedding Films.

Based in Hertfordshire, Dave has been filming weddings for the last five years, capturing weddings in his natural, chilled out style. Last year though, Dave had another idea to throw an end of season Christmas party for Wedding Pros, but more on that later.

I’m really looking forward to getting to know Dave better and today we’re going to be talking all things business and Christmas parties. Dave, welcome to the podcast.

Dave

00:01:06.250 – 00:01:06.810

How you doing?

Becca

00:01:06.810 – 00:01:30.440

You’re right, I am good. Now it does feel a little bit early to be mentioning the C word for Christmas, but we are going to be talking about that later in the episode.

Before we get there though, the first thing I like to do on my podcast is get to know the people that I’m chatting to because the listeners want to know why they should listen to you. So tell me a little bit about you, about your background, about your career and how you ended up in the world of weddings. Sure.

Dave

00:01:30.680 – 00:04:42.060

So I was previously in role of sales, did that for about 10 years straight out of school, but throughout school I had done my GCSEs in film studies and did my A levels in film. It’s something that I’d always kind of wanted to get into but unfortunately I couldn’t afford film school in the uk.

It’s very, very expensive so I went down an apprenticeship group in sales and after about 10 years when Covid kind of hit, that was when I just decided to do it.

I’d been dreaming about it for many years before COVID but that little bit of a push to just say, right, let’s go and do it and kind of moved into weddings from the off. I’d been flying drones now 2025 for 10 years. I worked in IT in sales, so always love gadgets and things like that.

And when the first drones came out I Was like, oh my God, what is this thing? So, yeah, I got a drone. I’ve been flying drones all over, all over the UK to be honest. All kinds of wonderful jobs from cars promo videos to.

I’ve done about four Star wars wars fun films for uni students.

And yeah, kind of evolved from, from the drone thing, which kind of started in, it was 2015 and then I did my first wedding in 2018 as a way of kind of getting into video kind of whilst I was working full time really. And then like I say Covid was where I was like, oh, okay, I’ve got to do this. So I think I left in 2021.

So I’ve been filming weddings full time, full time, I say for about three and a half, four years. But yeah, I did do my first wedding in 2018. It was, it was just quite a natural progression for me to get into weddings.

It’s a live environment, but it’s also one which can be, can be edited into a specific style. So it kind of leans into film.

Unlike things like if I was going to film live conferences or anything like that, that’s very much a thing that happens and it’s got its own, you know, sequence of how you would film that. But weddings can be very much how I want to create them, if that makes sense. So that leans kind of into the film thing.

Not too interested in actual film production in terms of movies and things, to be honest.

So yeah, this fits like perfectly for me with kind of like a documentary style with, you know, I only do a little bit of corporate work and that is all very much kind of brand documentary style versus you kind of Instagram stuff that a lot of people videographer term that you get now. I, I don’t really like that term, to be honest. I much prefer like wedding filmmaker which leans away from the videographer if you like.

But yeah, that’s kind of my background sales has helped me a lot, I think in the business. But I’m sure there’s a lot of other stuff that I could do with. Help with if that makes sense. But completely just.

Yeah, everything is YouTube based courses. I’ve done a couple different courses that I can explain in terms of videographers and what they’ve done.

I don’t know if you know of a chap called Adam Wing.

I did his film course when I first started, which was specific for weddings and I did go over to Switzerland on a filmmaking retreat for wedding suppliers run by a lady called Emma Wilson. She’s one of like the original female Wedding videographers. And I went over there to do her course as well.

So it’s all self taught and yeah, via just or any resource that I can find online.

Becca

00:04:42.060 – 00:05:02.220

Really fantastic. And you make it sound so easy as people often do on this podcast. So you say, yeah, about five years ago I just thought I’ll just do this full time.

The reality of that is actually quite scary for people to go, you know, I’m going to quit my day job or I’m going to lean into this full time. Do you remember that feeling? And what was it that gave you the confidence to go yeah, I think I can do this?

Dave

00:05:02.380 – 00:05:46.640

So at that point I had, I, I booked 17 weddings on the back of doing four and those 17 were booked in 2020 when Covid happened. And that realization was, I knew at that point okay, I can’t do both.

And I thought well, if people are willing to pay me incrementally, I kind of, you know, I just think I started off, I did my first one for free then, then the next one for £250 and then £450. And then those booked throughout 2020 were in a region between like 750 and £1,000.

And of thought, well if people are willing to pay me to actually do it. Although I must be doing something right. So I, I read, did some research online.

It’s kind of like there’s never, I would never suggest to someone just to pack everything in and say yeah, I can do it. You kind of need to put things in place to start.

Becca

00:05:46.640 – 00:05:47.000

Right.

Dave

00:05:47.000 – 00:06:26.020

So I built a buffer so that I had some money in the bank to go from there. And to be honest, it was actually my girlfriend who she’s very much kind of just do it and see what happens if you know, mentality.

And she, she’s a personal trainer, she wasn’t enjoying the place that, that she worked at the commercial gym. And she came was like I’ve just quit the gym. And I was like no you can’t. We’ve not. What, what’s going on?

But that her attitude to that and she very much kind of was like, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve saved that buffer, you know, you can do it, you know you’re good at working. Just, just go and do it. So it’s kind of, I don’t say to people it was massively her influence just to say just go get it and do it. And I did.

And so far so good.

Becca

00:06:26.420 – 00:06:52.080

The rest is history.

And sometimes we need those people in our lives to just Push us to do things, especially if we’re of the more cautious tendency or to look at the way to go wrong. And actually, sometimes we do need to be more. And yes, we need to be sensible. We don’t want to do anything crazy.

But there is a moment where you do have to take a leap. It’s never going to be guaranteed.

So take me back before that then, because you said when you took that decision, you already had 17 weddings booked in from four. How did you end up with these first four weddings?

Dave

00:06:52.160 – 00:08:55.800

So a friend of mine was getting married and I. They were. They were kind of like a friend of a friend. So I wasn’t necessarily going to be a guest.

I think they had invited me to the evening and I’d said, you know what? I really want to get into filming weddings. I’ve been wanting to, you know, go into the video space for a long while.

Would you let me film this wedding for free? Obviously they were buzzing about that. So I did. I went along, I did it for free. They bought me a nice little Tissot watch as a.

As a present and I put that film together. And then I basically just reached out to everyone saying, look, I’ve done this wedding. This is it. You can have a look at it on this. This link here.

I really want to do it. If you know anyone or any family or friends who are getting married, please just put my name forward.

Videography is one of those things that people don’t always necessarily have budget for. You’re talking about seven years ago, anyway, so even more so back then, it wasn as much as it was, was now as an important to people.

So it very much was that. And I think off the back of that’s when I booked though, the additional three.

And they were just friends of friends, a couple of people that, you know, like a work colleague of someone else. So. And then I just built my website from there and had the portfolio and those other ones.

A lot of them, this from the 17, I think about five or six of them were people I went to school with. So that was just the power of kind of social media, right? That was Facebook people saying, oh, Dave’s filming weddings now and we’re getting married.

So they were. Yeah, a lot of people that I kn and a few of my girlfriend’s clients as well. So that kind of.

It just led me and the numbers just came up and I was very surprised at 17. And, you know, as a videographer, we can get booked anywhere from two years up to two weeks before a wedding.

So Even at that point I thought, you know, if I stay in work till the middle of summer, and that will be when I really need to crack on with the editing. So I’ll have some, you know, the payroll money still left and I would just have half the year as self employed and just market really well.

And that just got pushed back a year. But that was literally what I did.

I worked until June, so I’d filmed a few weddings and then had that backlog that I could crack on with because I wasn’t working full time anymore and then was just a bit frivolous with money, really, just to see me through that first winter and then just push the marketing really hard.

Becca

00:08:55.800 – 00:09:28.180

Amazing. What I love about what you’ve just shared is that actually it was a lot of it, word of mouth to start with.

And it’s something I’ve been talking a lot about at the moment is going back to basics. You didn’t have some shiny social media campaign, you didn’t spend loads of money on a flashy website and Google Ads.

You literally just talk to the people you knew to start with, got your foot in the door and have grown the business from there. And I think sometimes, particularly, particularly right now in the age we’re living in, people forget to go back to the basics.

They think that there’s some magic thing that they’ve got to do and actually just getting out there and talking to people and making your name known is as good a way of doing it as any.

Dave

00:09:28.180 – 00:10:37.540

Definitely, yeah, I think that is.

There’s a lot of people, I mean, especially in the drone industry, diverting a little bit, but I saw a lot of people, I mean, I did a few courses and I was the youngest there by far. I went to one course over in Wiltshire and the average age of the people in there in their 50s, that was when you could buy drones for like £10,000.

And they were big beefy, they did everything thing from surveying and mapping and things. And I think a lot of people are going into retirement thinking, oh, I’ll buy this and I’ll set up a business doing drones.

But they’d spent all this kind of money and didn’t necessarily have any form of business plan or any customers to go with.

So being from the sales background anywhere, I knew that things needed to be organic and not to spend lots of money on gear before I could actually have the clients to do that with and the films to film.

So for the first two years I was renting a good camera every single time I had a wedding and driving up to Bedfordshire, it was like an hour and a half round trip. But I was renting the camera so that it was better than what I had. And I just built that money back up and invested the money on.

On different things until it got to a point I didn’t actually buy the cameras I use now until December 2021. So you had that whole 20. No, sorry, December 2022. So you had that whole first 18 months where it was just complete rentals.

Becca

00:10:37.780 – 00:10:59.400

But you built up from the ground. And that was a really sustainable way to do it and a really great way to do it as well. So what mistakes have you made along the way?

Because we like to keep it real on this podcast and there’s no point everyone coming on here and saying, yeah, everything in my wedding business has always been because it’s not the reality. So as you look back over the last five years, were there mistakes you made early on?

And you look back and you think, I shouldn’t have done that early on?

Dave

00:10:59.400 – 00:12:16.120

And, and recently, I mean, talking about building it organically, I only changed my website earlier this year.

So three years into it, right, when I did a bit of a rebound, the biggest mistake was leaving that website to go lapse because my brother was designing the new one and that died in March and I didn’t have a new one until the end of May. Two whole months without a website impacted me massively for sales this year. So that’s one thing. Never, never do that.

But then little m the videographer, right, I’ve not pressed record on the camera, I’ll be honest. Gone back to the back of the. My B camera at the back of the ceremony at the end and thought, oh, wow, I don’t have any of that angle I’ve given.

And these are quite early ons, actually.

2021, 2022, clipping audio recorders on grooms and then realizing that they’re taking their jackets off halfway through their speech and I don’t have the audio. But they’re little things that you learn, right? And they’re things that I think you need to learn because I’ll never do that again.

I’ll never not double check my camera to see if I’m recording. And I will never not ask the groom, are you going to your jacket during your speech or are you going to take it off?

And that’s the same with that, with everyone that’s doing a reading, right? But yeah, there, I’ve not, I’ve not done anything too crazy, I’ll be honest.

Touchwood never lost any wedding films or formatted a card, which I know other people in this industry have done. But no, nothing too crazy. Touchwood. And hopefully that doesn’t happen.

Becca

00:12:16.760 – 00:13:28.720

Well, I have the worst wedding video story. I probably shared it on the podcast before, but you won’t have heard it, probably.

So I had a wedding video, but I did just get my friend to film it because I’d done television at university, so lots of my friends were videographers. So we had the wedding video. I got married back in 2010. They recorded it all and then I asked them for the raw file so that I could edit it myself.

They gave me the tapes. They didn’t take a backup. They were in my car and my car got broken into and they stole it all. So I have no wedding video.

So it can’t get much worse than that. And I still live for the day. I think maybe one day it’ll be one of those news stories where someone finds these tapes like 20 years later.

It’s like someone’s wedding video in the. In the bushes somewhere. But yeah, unbelievable. And again, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was a friend. They. Well, it was.

They should have taken a backup, but, you know, we didn’t even think of it. So, you know, when it comes to wedding videography mistakes, I would say that one’s pretty high up in terms of my own video.

But also it highlighted me to me the importance of people having a wedding video because I really, I feel that hole.

I know it probably feels worse because I knew I should have had it, but actually, I wish I did have it to look back on now all I have is a few, like, scattered clips. Social media video wasn’t a thing back in 2010. And yeah, I bet you can’t beat that story. That’s the worst, the worst one.

Dave

00:13:28.880 – 00:14:10.640

No, no, I definitely can’t. And I would horrified to. To have lost someone’s wedding.

And you know, I. I listen to podcasts for specifically wedding videos and people say things, you know, about formatting, you know, a card for. They lost everything from the first dancer and after. And it happens, right? We are only human. So mistakes do happen.

But obviously you put things into business to try and prevent that as much as possible, like backups and cloud backups and all of that kind of stuff. But there’s only so much you can do at times.

But yeah, I think the biggest thing is we are inhuman and little mistakes happen, especially on a wedding day when things can be very cha. And there’s, you know, A big, big entrance and then you’ve got two minutes to try and mic everyone up before they start speeches.

And yeah, it’s quite a stressful time.

Becca

00:14:10.640 – 00:14:37.620

Yeah. And we live and we learn and we get better because of it. And I learned never leave anything valuable in the car boot ever again.

And I never have since because you never know when someone might break into your car. Now, what’s working for you right now in terms of inquiries?

Because this is the other thing I find fascinating when I talk to people who are right in it at the industry right now. I know you said your website being down hasn’t helped inquiries, but when you look at the inquiries you have had, where have they come from?

Is it still from word of mouth? Is it from clients? Is it from social media? What works for you?

Dave

00:14:37.620 – 00:16:36.440

I’ll be honest, I get, I get a few word of mouth from previous clients and I hope that doesn’t mean that I’m not doing a good enough job. But that’s not, that’s not the main source of my inquiries. I get really good reviews.

So I’m hoping that, you know, the videos are good, but I would say the majority of mine do very much come from Instagram. Instagram has always been the one for me. That is, I’ve always treated it as my shop front.

So I don’t post for the sake of posting, if that makes sense.

I know you can try and keep up with algorithms and things and people’s tell telling you you need to post three times a week and all of that kind of stuff, but I very much don’t do that. A, because there’s a lot of work to do that.

But also B, I think you’re just kind of putting things on Instagram for the sake of having to try and keep up, keep up with what people say you need to do. So I’ve always just kept it very much as a lot of my teaser films, I do these postcards which are just like single frames from.

From wedding and just try to keep it as very much the shop front. So I think that that does me quite well.

I’ve always asked clients where they found me and I would say it’s overwhelmingly Instagra toyed in the last couple of months for doing some boosted reels.

They obviously did drive traffic to my Instagram page and I have couples that basically go to the contact form, they fill out their name and email address to download my brochure.

Obviously I then get that in my inbox so I can see how many people are downloading Those I did notice obviously a lot more downloads during any paid boosted posts.

But unfortunately with what I do, and we can talk about this later, but I don’t, I don’t play the Instagram game and I don’t really play the, the current game of portrait, landscape and all kind of stuff. Everything needs to be portrait and everything needs to be snappy if you want to be good on Instagram.

I very much do over two minute teasers and everything’s in landscape, so it goes against what Instagram wants. So I can only boost a couple of things really. There’s in fact, there’s no, none of my teasers that I can boost. I have to make something specific.

So I had to make a CV specific reel which was under 90 seconds for me to boost some. So that’s quite difficult in a way.

Becca

00:16:36.760 – 00:17:15.600

Yeah, absolutely. And it is kind of been much bigger conversation that we haven’t got time to get into now. But we really are dictated to by these platforms.

That’s why it’s so important to have a website. That’s why it’s so important to have our own grounding elsewhere.

Because they can change the rules and they can change the limits and they could do whatever they want at any time.

And you know, something as simple as wanting to share your video in the format that it looks the nicest in and they’re like, no, we don’t want you to do that. So sorry, you have to share it how we want it.

And as, as a former videographer myself, I know that’s frustrating because that is not how we want our videos to be seen. I’d be interested to know, you said that you had the, the posts and you boosted them. You saw an impact on downloads.

Do you think you had an impact on conversions or did you end time wasters?

Dave

00:17:16.400 – 00:18:26.400

No, I did have a positive impact on conversions, I’m not going to lie. Yeah. So this, this year has been quite a difficult one. It’s been my slowest year yet, but it has for a lot of people in the industry.

So I kind of thought, well, what do I have to do? And that hence doing the boosted Reels 2026 is looking a lot better.

But yeah, I, I have conversed quite high on a lot of the recent calls that I’ve done, which is great. I think we were just. Everybody’s boosting posts at the minute and it’s.

Unfortunately, that’s one game that I think you maybe do to try and get those organic people finding you when every other story they see is potentially a Videographer, when they’re in that market looking for one, it means you’re very much just one of 30, 40, 50 that they might come across. So. But yeah, conversions were definitely up for that time period, which was great. So kind of it shows to me how that it has worked.

And I’ve just got it on my to do list to make a couple more reels that I can boost, but in a specific way that I want them for kind of ideal clients and all of that kind of stuff. Like I say, I can’t just post a teaser and then go, yeah, that was a really good one. I’ll boost it because it’s over 90 seconds. So I’ve got to.

Got to put the groundwork in first to make sure I’m posting the right thing.

Becca

00:18:26.400 – 00:19:14.100

Yeah, but it’s important to know that data as well.

I’m again, a big advocate for people talking about the data and thinking about it, because it’s easy for us to boost a reel and say, yeah, 5,000 people saw it, but actually that’s a pointless statistic. What we really want to know is, did the right people see it? Did the right people fill in the form?

And even more importantly, has it led to more sales, which therefore made it worth spending the money on marketing? So it’s great to hear that it sounds like it did. Now, let’s move on and talk about the C word, Christmas.

Because you have decided over the last couple of years that you wanted to revolutionize the way that, particularly in our area in the home counties, the wedding pros celebrated Christmas. So you are throwing a Christmas party.

You threw one last year, you’re throwing another one this year, specifically with wedding vendors and professionals in mind. Just take me back. Where did this idea come from and how did you bring it to life?

Dave

00:19:14.180 – 00:22:07.010

So myself and a photographer I worked with a lot last year, Kirsty Buber.

Um, we’re both recommended at the Farmhouse at Redcoats, and we were at a wedding there, and I know Charlie, the wedding coordinator or like the wedding manager, quite well as well.

And we were kind of sat during the wedding breakfast and I just said, charlie, can we open the bar in December and just have a load of people down and just have a couple of drinks? Last year was crazy for me. It was really, really busy, as I know it was for a lot of other wedding suppliers.

So I just wanted a date in mind that I could go out near Christmas and just have a couple of drinks and let our hair down.

Now we kind of got to a point, I think in, in industry where there’d been a couple of other Christmas parties and things that had been going on and quite a few of those closing down for a number of different reasons. So I think we, we hit a good time, which was nice. So yeah, Charlie kind of said, absolutely.

However, just opening the bar, you need some form of entertainment or something like this. I was coming at it that there was maybe going to be like 10, 15 of us, right.

So it just kind of spiraled a little bit and we said, okay, well if we’ve got to get a DJ who we’ve got to pay, we probably need some food, so we’re going to have to pay for that. So it kind of went into a ticketed event. We then obviously had to organize. We didn’t have to, but we wanted to go a little bit bigger.

So we looked at, you know, getting a photo booth involved a glitter station, a live singer and all of just little things that would make it Christmassy from decorations. We had big balloon arches, neon signs, backdrops and all of that kind of stuff for photos.

So yeah, it spiraled and I think it was, it was a difficult one because it happened also quite quickly. And I had a couple of problems with making the website with the, the event page and like the payment gateway.

So that wasn’t working for about three weeks. So that was all. All a bit strange. So it was quite last minute dot com.

But we did end up having about 80 there in the end, which was a really good turnout. And I think the overwhelming feedback was that it was just a good bunch of people from all different parts of the wedding world. Right.

So we had florists, DJs, celebrants, makeup artists, photographers, videographers, probably some others.

Can’t think right now, but it, it meant that these kind of people, especially when you look at the likes of florists that come into a wedding morning, yes, we see them, we say hi, we have a little bit of a chat.

But they’re very much focused, focused on putting up the flowers and putting, you know, displaying them how they need to, that you don’t have a really, really long chat. I will speak to hair and makeup for a lot longer than I will because I’m in with the bride for a long period of time.

So you get a bit of a rapport with them. So that was nice to then have, you know, see people. Oh, okay. I only see you four or five times a year. But it’s in a working environment.

Let’s have somewhere where we can actually let our hair down and network a little bit more. And I think that was a really good side of it that people could actually come and say, hey, I’ve seen you like three or four times this year.

But that’s all. And it’s only for couple of hours now. We can actually have a good chat, have a couple of drinks and things like that. So yeah, that’s.

It just came out of wanting to have a little bit of a social spiraling out of control into a ticketed party and then everybody asking us to do it again.

Becca

00:22:07.090 – 00:22:23.210

Which you are, you are doing it again this year. What do you think is the benefits to those people that came?

Obviously it’s a good night, but in terms of business and end of season, a lot of us are working on our own. What were some of the benefits that the guests found last year and you think are a benefit for them to come this year?

Dave

00:22:23.210 – 00:24:30.670

Well, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there with people working by themselves. I mean myself, I, I have my own office that I’m there pretty much by myself all day. Obviously it’s a co working space.

So I see other people, but they’re not in my industry. They’re not people that I would see on a daily basis if I go to weddings. And that’s very much the same for the majority of wedding suppliers.

I would say a lot of photographers will work with a second or they’ll see a videographer on the day that we get to spend the day with. But everyone really just spends most of the time by themselves.

And there’s not many people in the industry that are doing, you know, five weddings a week where week and week out they get to socialize with the people. I would say most probably spend four days a week at home and, or sorry. Or at their own office and just doing their thing.

So the benefits were just being able to a, after a busy year last year, just kind of let your hair down, have a couple of drinks and socialize with other people that you can talk weddings about.

And that’s, that’s the thing, it’s very difficult when you come home and try and speak to your partner about a couple that they have no idea what’s what. But you’ve got stories or things that you want to tell them about and they have no idea who these people are. Right.

It’s not, not normal if that’s makes sense. So you can go and you can talk to people about that. And I think, yeah, just networking side of things. I’ve, I kind of went into It.

Kirsty was a lot more well known than I was in this area or am, really. So a lot of people maybe thought that it was a bit of her party, if that makes sense. That doesn’t really matter.

But there was a lot of tags on Instagram and things that was like, Kirsty put on this bash, which is fine, really. But then obviously I’d hope from that a lot of people then knew oh who I was at that point.

And I do a lot of the stories and things because on this prime example, Kirsty really doesn’t want to put her face. She’s very shy.

So, um, it was great for me in terms of networking and people knowing a little bit visibility where I am, but also having some videographers there that I wouldn’t necessarily know in the area.

I know there’s one who I’ve never heard of until a couple of months ago and now he’s coming to the Christmas party, but he lives right around the corner. But it’s just one of those things. Quite a completely different style.

He’s now coming, so I’m very much looking forward to catch up with him and getting involved in our WhatsApp group, really, because I’ve got a WhatsApp group with other videographers from the local area and I know I’ll be chatting to Ollie about, you know, trying to get in on the WhatsApp group as well.

Becca

00:24:30.670 – 00:25:26.530

Love that.

And what I love about our industry is that is this rich tapestry of people who all do wildly different things from taking photos, recording videos, making floral arrangements, being a celebrant. And yet we all have this common purpose. We all are working with the same people. We all face the same similar challenges.

And yeah, and even the people that do the same as us, I always think they’re often the best people to talk to on the night. Because I remember the first networking I ever ran myself way back in 2016.

One of the first people I spoke to was another videographer, and I was still a videographer at the time. And we had the geekiest conversation about editing tools. It was a wonderful conversation.

I thought there is very few people in this world that would be as excited about the conversation we were having as we were in that moment and to share ideas and to share tips.

So I think the idea that people have that, oh, well, I don’t want to talk to anyone that’s doing the same as me, or I hope there’s not too many of the same supplier type in the room, is actually a falsehood. Because often they’re the best people to be talking to 100%.

Dave

00:25:26.530 – 00:26:50.520

And I think, you know, if you, if you look at a wedding fair, for example, you want to go and do a wedding fair.

Of course I don’t want six of the videographers there because it means the couple that are coming through the door of can speak to six different people. Right. But in this scenario I would hope I never go to a wedding and there’s another videographer there.

So I can’t get to have the chats about my role in particular.

And that’s why I think networking is key, especially when we do all kind of work for ourselves because I’m very much a community over competition person anyway. So to have other people that you can bounce ideas off and share challenges that are directly relate to videography, for example, is great.

So I’m always wanting to have more people and I hope that other people get that as well. I know. So there’s like big groups for hair and makeup, for example, so that they can share leads and things together.

So I don’t know if those kind of things do exist for other people like celebrants and things like that. There’s a, there was a new celebrant, Victoria Howard who came last year.

I’d met her at a wedding fair, got her to come last year and I think she met Kelly Hawes and she’d known about Kelly for ages and she was, you know, hadn’t she was still working part time and things. She’s now within that year socialized a lot and she has left her full time job and has gone straight into celebrity. So it’s.

The networking side of it is very strong and it’s not just with your peers in your particular niche, but also other people. Knowing you, I know she’s really Polly now with a musician that comes Roxy. So it’s one of those things, right.

They’ve met and they’ve bonded and they’ve seen each other at weddings since. So it’s great in that respect and.

Becca

00:26:50.520 – 00:27:09.770

Based on what you saw last year and hopefully it’s going to be the same this year.

What’s the vibe like if someone was to come on their own, say they are newer in the industry or they don’t know many people, are they going to feel welcome at the party? Is it an easy environment for them to get talking to?

Because I know there’ll be people thinking, oh I’d love to go to that but actually I’m a bit nervous.

Dave

00:27:09.850 – 00:28:45.680

No, definitely. And not that I vibe Check anyone that’s booking a ticket and decline anything. I think from. From just the crowd that’s kind of gone.

It was a very good bunch of welcoming people there last year that very much share that kind of community over competition kind of ethos. And there were people.

There was a photographer I’d worked with, Rio, he had moved down from Surrey up to hertfordshire, is about 10 minutes from the venue. And I’d. I kind of said to him, rio, you don’t know anyone but come network.

And I was just watching him do the room and a lot of people unfortunately like, oh, I know, I know who you’re talking about. He was just kind of wondering the room, but in a good way.

He was going from group to group to network and I haven’t, I haven’t spoke to him about the benefits of that, but I imagine now he knows a lot more people in this area because of being able to do that. Of course that was a bit of a confidence thing. Obviously had had the confidence to kind of do that.

But I would say most people in that room are going to be very, very welcoming to anyone that’s there and if there are people by themselves, people are going to pick up on that and go and grab them and say, hey, come and have a drink with us or come and chat about this. What do you do? And that’s the kind of ethos that we do want.

They’re going to be this year surprised at all the kind of things that we’ve got going on, especially in terms of Entertainment. We’ve got five different DJs doing five completely different sets with a saxophonist, the bingo bongo player.

So there’s going to be some good entertainment in that sense. I could or couldn’t say it was going to get a little bit messy, but I imagine it probably would.

So with the glitter station on arrival, hopefully some welcome drinks, a photo booth that is again, quite encouraging with a nice backdrop and things. I think the environment very much would be to walk in and be very welcomed in what you. You know, what you’ve walked into.

Becca

00:28:45.760 – 00:30:31.690

Fantastic. So it is coming back again this year.

It’s happening in Hertfordshire again at the Barnett redcoats on Wednesday 10th December and tickets are now available now again in a, I guess a interesting sen. Circumstances this year.

I was thinking about what I did for Christmas for the last, I don’t know, since about 2018 I’ve been running my own like little Christmas dinner event with a lot of my members and the wedding pros that I work with and I decided at the end of last year that I was going to do something different this year, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

I’ve been incredibly busy doing all sorts of things, but I really wanted to still mark the occasion because I think it’s a great opportunity to get together. And I saw about your event. Kelly actually put me in touch and said, look at what they’re doing, doing.

It’s actually on the date that you said you’re going to do something. And so I came to you and Kirsty and said, look, would you be interested in collaborating?

Because actually, you’re putting on this amazing event on my doorstep. Why would I go and set something else up down the road when I could just come and party with you?

So I am going to be there on the night at the party myself, enjoying Christmas.

And the benefit for me is that you guys are organizing everything so I can actually come and be myself and just chat to people rather than feeling like I’m having to be the person on the door checking everyone in. And I would encourage as many people listening to this to come and join me. Come and join me. Come and join Dave.

Come and join Kirsty in Hertfordshire this December. If you’re further afield, make a night of it. I believe there’s some special offers at the hotel or there’s accommodation nearby.

And if you’re closer and it’s down the road from you, just make the opportunity to come. If you know me and you’re coming alone, send me a message. I’ll look out for you.

I’ll greet you on the door, I’ll make sure I say hello, so you feel super welcome. But I’m really excited to be part of it this year and I’m looking forward to coming and partying with you. So tickets are now available.

If people want to get a ticket. You’ve got an Instagram account. Tell me about that.

Dave

00:30:31.690 – 00:31:04.390

Yeah, so we named it Happily Ever After Party. You know, cliche, but it works. And we’ve got that Instagram. We’ve been posting a lot of pictures from. Last year.

We had a funny reel go viral of one of the photographers, Nikki, rolling along the floor doing all kinds of weird, wonderful things with her camera. And that Instagram has got the link on there to the website, which is happily ever afterparty.co.uk it’s got all the details on there.

You can go ahead and buy a ticket directly from the website that will send you an email with a PDF document which we’ll scan at the door and let you in.

Becca

00:31:04.390 – 00:31:30.030

Fantastic.

And you are very kindly doing a special offer as well for my podcast listeners to even more say you’ve got to come and be part of this event and come and hang out with me on the night. So if you use the code podcast in the checkout, in the coupon code section, it will give you five pounds discount off your ticket.

Now the tickets are very reasonably priced, I think they’re £40 full price. But that includes everything. That includes food on the night, that includes all of the entertainment, am I right?

Dave

00:31:30.030 – 00:32:17.370

Absolutely, yeah. The only thing you’ve got to pay for is drink, whether that’s alcohol or non alcoholic. Yeah, it includes the.

I think this year we’re going to go for pizza and wedges. We hadn’t had taco station last year, so just super safe pizza and wedges. All the entertainment is included.

Like I say, five different DJs doing different sets. You’ve got the photo booth which you can get, you know, your little printouts and we send the kind of PDF or people can get the high resolution.

If they email us there’ll be a glitter station. I’m not going to say too much more.

There might be a few of the weird and wonderful things going on, but it just all depends on, depends on budget really. We’re running this for a non profit so you know, we’re not trying to make any, any money out of this.

So things like welcome drinks and any other entertainment that we might be putting on is all very much budget dependent. Obviously we’ve got to pay suppliers that are coming as well. So.

Becca

00:32:17.370 – 00:33:09.290

Sounds fantastic. And Dave, trust me, you wouldn’t be able to do an open bar for the wedding industry if no one has got enough money for that.

So I think everyone is expecting to pay for their own drinks. Absolutely. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

I cannot wait to get dressed up myself in a glittery dress to come and be part of the crowd to come and party with you all and hopefully lots of you listen will come and join me on that evening. You don’t need to be a particular member of any association. Everyone who works in the wedding industry is very welcome. So go and grab a ticket.

I’ll make sure I put all of the links in the show notes and do use that code podcast if you want to get that £5 off as well.

Now there will be a few people listening, Dave, who think, well, this sounds amazing Becca, but I am actually based in Texas in the US or I’m based in Australia. I’m based in India.

And as much as I would love to come and hang out and party with you in a glittery dress, it is a little bit too far for me to travel for a Christmas party. For those listening, how would you encourage them. Them to do something similar where they live?

Dave

00:33:09.290 – 00:34:23.620

I would definitely do it. I mean, I think it’s one of those things. We’re fortunate. Right. Like I mentioned earlier that I’m recommended at the Farmhouse at Redcoats.

And because of that time period, over the, over the years, you kind of build a rapport with the people that work there, whether it’s you kind of like your day managers or night managers or wedding coordinators. I know there’s a couple there, so it’s that kind of having that conversation, really. Right.

And saying, you know, you guys might well be having a Christmas party because you’re a big venue, but we’re in an industry where a lot of people, People work by ourselves, so could you put some kind of deal on for us? And that’s very much what we did. And it was just a deal to.

On a weeknight where they’re probably not going to have a wedding or any other big, big event. And it’s fairly straightforward to put up if you’ve got a good community.

And I think the community builds even more so from doing something like this through the networking that we kind of mentioned. So just, just speak to some local venues that you’re at, speak to a couple of other people, whether it’s your peers or.

I know, like myself, videographers work alongside photographers. So that’s why I kind of approach Kirsty with it, because we worked so many times together last year. So do it on your own.

It’s nice to have two people because then you can bounce ideas and share tasks. It’s also not very easy. There’s a lot of logistics that can go into it with organizing things. So to share that burden is quite nice as well.

But I would just encourage doing that and just to try and build that community yourself, because it is great.

Becca

00:34:23.620 – 00:35:09.630

Yeah. And it doesn’t need to be complicated. It doesn’t need to be a big event.

Even if you live in an area rurally and you’ve just got a venue and you can do what you originally planned to do, which was just get 10 people together for a festive drink, that’s a great place to start. And it’s got you out the house. It gives you a chance to celebrate and meet another nine people in your area. So if anyone Listening does do that.

I’d love to see photos. So go ahead, tag me in any images and show me where you’re celebrating Christmas this year.

Dave, it’s been such a pleasure chatting with you, getting to know you better. Thank you in advance for putting on this event for the industry. I cannot wait to be there myself and let my hair done.

I know it’s going to be a fun evening as well. I always end my podcast though with the same question which I’m going to pose to you now, which is this.

What’s one thing you personally wish you’d known sooner in your own wedding business?

Dave

00:35:09.630 – 00:36:30.780

Okay, so without having to repeat myself a lot, I think, to be honest myself it was networking and it was, it was speaking to people.

I think when I kind of started this it was videographers have a bit of a reputation to being a bit introverted and just kind of fly on the wall approach and we’ll turn up at a wedding. We don’t really say a lot, kind of let things happen and in particular for my style as well, just candidly watch what’s going on and record it.

And I thought for the first couple of years that I could do that and just, you know, I would have a good time with photographers or other suppliers that were there. But it would very much be a message that oh, it’s great working with you, hope to see you again. And that was kind of it.

Tag them on Instagram when you posted any teasers and things. But I think actually putting yourself out there with other people is very, very valuable this year.

I tried massively to do that last year and this year and it’s worked wonders with this Christmas party. I’m sure I can mention this, but I’ve been invited to like a roundtable thing now with a couple of suppliers.

I don’t know who’s on there yet, it’s all to be confirmed, but it’s that kind of thing, right?

You put yourself out there and you know, I think others realize that you are as well and see that you’re like minded in how they, you know, want to work for a wedding day and that you’re a professional and that you actually care about what you do and just being a friendly person. I think yeah, it’s, it’s worked wonders for me in the last couple of two years and I wish I’d have done it sooner.

Becca

00:36:30.780 – 00:36:47.040

Fantastic. And now people will know that you are also the face of the happily ever party ever after party.

It’s not just Kirsty, Dave is also front and center of the event. Anna representing today. Dave, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure. And I will see you in December.

Dave

00:36:47.120 – 00:36:48.800

Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much for having me.

Becca

00:36:48.800 – 00:37:13.180

Love that conversation with Dave. Really enjoyed getting to know him and his business better.

And I love that he’s taken the initiative, along with Kirsty, to organize a great event for wedding pros in our area. Like we said, if you’re further afield and you can’t make it in December, then why not consider starting something in your area, too?

But if you can, I would absolutely love to see you there this Christmas. So come party with me. You the code podcast at the checkout and I’ll see you there. I’ll see you next time.