Invitations sent for our first NZ Couple!

When we first moved to New Zealand and started making friends little did I know that within 5 months, 4 of my new friends would be getting married and also want to use Paperless Wedding. One of the couple has actually become the first New Zealand couple to send Paperless Wedding invites out too!

Nicky Cambie and Nicko Vella

Nicky and I met while being involved with North Shore Musical Theatre's production of Little Shop of Horrors. I was stage manager and Nicky was in it and from day one we got on really well. A month later Nicko, Nicky's fiancee appeared in Auckland Musical Theatre's production of Assassins with my husband Jim.

Nicky and Nicko have been engaged since Christmas and have been excitedly planning their wedding for a number of months.   There have been numerous venue changes and ideas.  The  nuptials are going to take place in December in Auckland.

Like many couples Nicky and Nicko have the challenge of a tight budget and so we are really happy to be able to help them save money.  They have saved the cost of the paper invitations, envelopes and also the stamps, as well as saving a few trees along the way!


This morning, after a week of going on to the site and tweaking their website to get it looking perfect, they sent out Paperless Wedding's 1st set of wedding invitations to all their guests.  I have just spoken to Nicky and 6 people have already RSVP'd and messages have been left on their message board. I think I am almost as excited as Nicky!!!

An idea that Jim and I had is now making life easier for other people and bringing them enjoyment in the process. It is also great that our new friends have trusted us with such a big part of their day and we are very grateful for their feedback.  Nicky even helped us pick the logo when we were still in the designing phase!

I shall keep you posted with how their final planning is going and of course some pictures of the big day!

Who is coming to visit?

So we are up and running and have been already paid for an invite!

We can track how well we are reaching people by the wonderful world of Google Analytics.  It tells us how many people visit the site, where from including country and town, what browser was used and how long people stayed on each page.  It was great to see directly after the show we saw our biggest hit on the site with 50 new people looking and we had a steady flow throughout the week.

We are continuing with the Facebook campaign and the numbers of the fan page are slow rising. This is a great way of spreading the word as each post I make then is seen by all the fans friends and people are learning we exist! We want to promote without resorting to advertising in Wedding Magazines which of course uses a lot of paper.  There are several other options we are looking at these include:

http://www.engaged.co.nz/

This is an online magazine that looks great and just as good as a paper based magazine.  The best thing about it for a Bride-To-Be she can look at it at work without feeling too guilty and she can get loads of information from it.  We hope to advertise in here in the coming months and with luck get an article written about Eco Weddings.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/opinion/blogs/bridezilla/2866550/Cupcakes-and-blow-up-dolls-Highlights-from-The-Grand-Wedding-Show

This link above goes through to a blog written by Katie who we met at the wedding show.  She is also getting married as well as being a journo for the Waikato Times.  At the end of the article she mentions she is going to write more about what we do.  Fingers crossed she will!

http://www.thebigstep.co.nz/Home


This is another company based in Wellington offering new businesses the chance for a bit of free advertising and joining there directory free for a few months.  We hope to take this offer up and see how we fair on it.

Next month we start our month of advertising through Celebration Studio. We will have a digital picture frame running a looped demo of our site and a few business cards there. We hope this will also help increase our profile and generate a bit more business!

The other links that are seeing us generate a bit of traffic through our site are:



www.linkedin.com

Google searches under the categories of:

paperless wedding
www.paperlesswedding.co.nz
sending invitations via email
paperless wedding nz
paperless weddings
paperless wedding invitations
paperlesswedding
email wedding invitations
paperless wedding invitation
paperlesswedding.co.nz

and this blog!

The Offical Launch

After months of planning the day finally arrived yesterday and we officially launched to the public at The Grand Wedding Show. It was a fantastic day and we got so much out of it from 135 people entering the competition, to a raft of new ideas of what we could add to the site.

I was really pleased how the stand looked.  We managed only to use recycled paper for business cards and the notepads, but everything else was paperless. The paperchain people were made out of felt and the background was made out dyed white bedsheets!

We got lots of good feedback and I hope we are in the running for the best stand.  It did stand out in comparison to other stands there on the day.  We also stood out as there were a lot of photographers and venues there and very little other variety.   There were 2 other traditional invite stands  on the lower levels, but we had a great position meeting people just as there entered the show.

At 11.30 the corks went flying and we handed out Lindaur's new Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc, which was a hit in itself.  Paperless wedding was christened, slightly merry and ready for the afternoon of more newly engaged couples on the stand!

The video showed a demo of the site on loop which worked really well and helped us explain what it was all about. People gave us great feedback about the designs and we have a few more ideas up our sleeve now. We also need to sort out the Save the Date function and get the Gift List on there as these would be big winners.

As you can see at this moment we were busy and it was like this for several hours.  The lady in the Lingerie stand next to us loved it as she got a lot more people to her stand too. The competition was good fun too as it really got people thinking.  We do have a winner and I will post it on the next blog.

The question was how many wedding were there in New Zealand in 2008?

Everyone that entered will be reciving an email this week with a special code that will give them the Wedding Show discount when they sign up with us. We hope people take advantage of this great offer!  So far we have 3 people doing the free trial which is great seeing its only 24hours after the wedding show.

I have uploaded more photos on Facebook if you want to see more click on the right and join the our Facebook Fan page.

Paperless Wedding has gone LIVE!!!!

In preparation for the big Wedding Show tomorrow we have launched the site a day early to double check all works smoothly. I got up early this morning to do some more testing, restart our Ad on Facebook and to start collecting all the stand display together ready for 3pm get in.

Nervous yet excited that after a year in the planning, 6 months of building and testing, we are a day away from showing this to loads of brides-to-be at the wedding show. We have had good feedback from our first test couple who jet off for their wedding next week! We also have another 2 couples who won the Celebration Studio Competition who are creating their sites in preparation for sending at the end of the month. We have a few dummy test couples who have tested as well, one who is already married but living the dream all over again. All the feedback has made the site what it is today, so thanks goes to all of them.

We know over the next few weeks loads of things will be added and changed. Our designer comes back from his holiday and I am sure he will have a few things he will want changing! We also have another invite design to go on, the Gift List product to be added and am sure a few requests from people at the wedding show. We want feedback, good and bad so we can work on making Paperless Wedding the best and most user friendly invite and website in New Zealand!!

Ticking things off the list (online one!)

D-4 days, which is actually only 3 days left of work time. Stomach flip! Well we are rattling along and ticking lots of things of the long lists of things to do. Jim and I worked out which technical things had to be done before Sunday and then prioritised into another list. OK so I like lists, but in situations like this it is the only thing that keeps me calm!

So what has been done? Well we have picked up the tables, approved the business card proof and I am collecting tomorrow, ordered white pins for the stand, bought recycled note books for us to take down peoples details on the day and organised a training session with Taryn and Nicky.

Jim has added a new tab to the site called RSVP's and it looks fantastic and easy to use. It summarises all RSVP's from guests all on one page, with the ability to look in more detail at each individuals reply. We have added the help tool to the site which I have just tested and all works well. Jim is currently creating a database for visitors to the Wedding show can log their details into. When they do they could win a prize of a free Paperless Wedding Invite.

I am now going to spend the next hour reading all about tax and how to keep the books. There are free seminars run by the government that I am going to attend to help get my head around it. This website is helping me a lot:

http://www.ird.govt.nz/images/flash/tfb/

We already have 4 invoices to pay, I really hope Sunday brings us some business!! It is an amazing product and I think a couple could save so much money by using us and they help the environment too!

1 week and counting!

This weekend has been a blur of felt hearts, invite designs and FAQ's. Jim and I have had the music playing and a plan to get through and as Sunday night draws in I am pretty pleased about how much we have achieved.

The stand design is almost complete. We have decided to recreate the website homepage on the stand, but without using any paper. All felt confetti have been cut out and the "papermen" look pretty good if I do say so myself! These will be hung on the back of the stand behind the TV. The horrible black display boards are going to be covered with pink sheets. The stand is not big at all (2.4m x 1.2m), but I think we will have enough room to get our message across.

I have spent this afternoon getting back to my TV editing skills. I did a lot of editing when I was doing my TV Production degree in Bournemouth, many moons ago. I downloaded some free software and have been recording a demo of the website:

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

It has been pretty easy to use and I have created a short 30" promo of the site. Unfortunately I don't have any music yet, but for the show it will be fine as it will need to be mute anyway! I will upload it once I have done all the finishing touches to it. It will end up on the website to help people use the site.

I have spent AGES this morning going through all the FAQ's. Jim and I have worked out how we are going to aid people using the site through some simple icons and more detailed FAQs. I hope the demo video will help too. Thanks goes to Nicky, Linds, Richard, Ruari, David and Taryn for all their helpful insights of how the help tool can be better.

While I have been busy in the main part of the flat, Jim has been tucked away in his office completing the themes gallery. He has uploaded another 5 themes along with their invites. A beach hut, orchid, hearts, hibiscus flower and a beach theme and they look great. Currently there is only one colour option but this will change over the coming weeks as we want to add a colour selector to the site so that couples can tailor it to their colour theme.

He has also enabled the payment option ready for the launch next weekend and set up the trail options. These are not on the live site yet. We also worked on the final week action plan to make sure all the final important bits are finished by D-Day. There is still a lot to do!

The coming week for me is going to be training Taryn and Nicky on the site as they are helping us on Sunday. I am picking up the tables for the stand, the business cards from the printers and also most importantly the wine for that official launch!