About

About the blog…

The Wedding Industry is amazing!  It is a wonderful and collaborative industry where colleagues come together to produce the most beautiful celebrations of love and marriage.  The people who make up this industry are hard-working individuals who have built their businesses from the ground up.

Sage Wedding Pros is a resource for wedding professionals who want to have smarter businesses.  We’ll guide you through the maze of business planning, marketing, forecasting, accounting, and so on… so that your business may boom.  Oh – and we’ll throw in some fun “insider to insider” tips too!  After all, it’s this collaboration that makes our profession so fun.

Sage Wedding Pros’ Mission…

Sage Wedding Pros is…

… dedicated to creating sustainable businesses in the wedding industry.

… committed to education, information, and inspiration.

… devoted to building camaraderie and cohesion within the wedding profession.

Our Value Proposition… our PROMISE to YOU:

We promise to bring VALUE to your BUSINESS!

And this is how we’ll do this…

• Workshops focused on the “big picture” of your business, not just your product and not just your marketing. Why are we qualified to do this? (Read our bios below.) In a nutshell, we come from business and corporate backgrounds, yet have been in the wedding industry for a combined 10+ years. We want to bridge these two for the better of this profession. We offer perspective and experience.
• Online tools and resources that you can use to strengthen your business. These are the nuts and bolts of ALL business: small sole proprietorships thru mega Fortune 500 corporations. We’ve scaled them down for your use in your daily operations.
• Partnering with other sage wedding professionals to bring you additional insight and perspective. We know some pretty cool people and we want to share their minds with you!

Who we are (so far)…

Michelle Loretta is the owner of mmm… paper, a custom wedding invitation studio.  She founded the business in 2004 after working as an accountant for Deloitte, a sales manager for DDLA, and a merchandiser for Coach, Inc.  In 2008, Michelle co-founded the wedding industry not-for-profit Get Hitched Give Hope.  Recently she moved herself, her family, and her biz from Seattle to Miami.  You can say she is a “mixed bag”.  Michelle loves talking all things business with people in the wedding industry and founded Sage Wedding Pros because of this passion.  She likes to describe herself as:

…analytical and creative, business and art, right-brained and left-brained, inside and outside the box!

Kelly Simants is the owner of Sweet Pea Events, a wedding and event planning business with offices in Seattle and Dallas.  Before launching her business, Kelly worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and Starbucks in Human Resources.  In 2008, Kelly co-founded the wedding industry not-for-profit Get Hitched Give Hope.  Kelly is excited to bring her background and passion for training and development, as well as her 8 years experience in the wedding industry, into the workshops provided by Sage Wedding Pros.  She  likes to describe herself as:

… grounded and adventurous, laid-back and passionate, quirky and traditional, master of checklists and dealing with the unexpected.

Katherine Dunnie is our intern extraordinaire!  Katherine studied Marketing and Entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University.  While there she held a number of leadership positions for various school organizations.  She wowed us with her experience working with Clear Channel Broadcasting and Fox23 in Tulsa.  She has a broad range of experience working in various marketing and PR positions in Tulsa and now Dallas.  This is why we love her…

…Katherine is so on top of things!  And, she is not scared to take on any new task.  She is resourceful, friendly, and engaging.

Our Affiliations include:

National Association of Catering Executives (NACE)

Wedding Networking USA

Association of Bridal Consultants (ABC)

June Wedding, Inc. (JWI)

Visit our speaking page to learn about opportunities to hear us speak.