Meeting with Wedding Professionals to Provide Better service for your wedding in Hawaii

Last night, I met with a great group of wedding professionals–the Board of Directors for the Hawaii chapter of the National Association of Catering Executives. This association (which I belong to) stresses the importance of education and continually learning new things to get better. And it’s a great group of people too.

Tonight, we mapped out the meeting schedule for the rest of the year, as well as discussed tentative speakers to educate us about the different facets of the wedding and special event industry. For example:

• At this month’s general meeting, Judy Ng Christensen will talk about Doing Business with the Chinese market, which today is a very hot market to do business with.
• In August, NACE Hawaii president Herb Yamamoto will share his insights and experiences from the NACE Experience Conference in July.
• In October, the wonderful staff at the Sheraton Waikiki will showcase their property and the new decor that is a result of the extensive renovation that took place last summer.
• And in November, Naomi Lee with Les Saisons will speak before the group on wedding decor trends.

There is a lot of great information in the coming months, so I’m excited to learn new things and share them with you to benefit you in your wedding plans!

We also talked about fundraiser ideas to help send members to educational conferences on the mainland. An idea suggested by Tanna Dang of The Wedding Cafe would involve selling “discount cards” in which buyers could use the cards to get amazing deals at local restaurants during a certain period of time. The idea is a win-win for all: NACE gets a portion of the profits to be used for our educational programs, and the restaurants get business! Everyone is happy.

There was a lot of brainstorming, serious thinking, and exchanging ideas at the board meeting.

At one point, James experienced information overload.

To remedy it, we all went to dinner at MAC 24/7 across the street in the Hilton Waikiki Prince Kuhio Hotel. The food was good and came in large portions. This is my bowl of tomato soup and glass of cabernet.

(Of course, I must mention that I was inspired to get it because Dianna Shitanishi with Hawaii Wedding Events ordered it before I did, and it looked very good, but for some reason, mine was a bigger order. Go figure. Oh, and the cabernet was sooo good. The finish was “chocolatey”–mmm, yummy. I don’t remember offhand what the wine was except that it was a 2005 vintage, but I’m certainly going back to find out!)

Josette Murai with the Hawaii Visitors & Conventions Bureau ordered this dish. I don’t remember what it was, but I love the plating of it.

Overall, it was a very productive meeting. There was a lot of great ideas that came out of this get-together, and I’m really looking forward to how it will help the industry grow.

The next NACE general meeting will happen next Tuesday, April 14, 2009, starting at 6pm at the Hilton Waikiki Prince Kuhio Hotel. If your wedding professional wants to learn something new and network with a great group of other wedding professionals, tell him or her about this meeting! They can find out more by visiting the NACE Hawaii website at

http://www.nacehawaii.com

See you there!