Wedding Seasons

I miss doing flowers. I came across this picture of work in progress for a past event. In all aspects of wedding planning, my favorite is usually working with flowers. A second favorite is being on the machine to make seat covers, tie backs, table clothes and dresses: something I'm slowly but steadily expanding into.

August is usually a wedding season in Nairobi and due to a lot of factors its really a slow month this year and the cold weather isn't helping either. Its more like a gamble getting clients to book right now. When business is slow and uncertain, it always pays to have a plan B in place. But when all businesses are slow....what next.

It struck me as the best time to review my business goals for this year, to find out if they are headed in the right direction. Finding out what's going on in the wedding industry worldwide and trying to book clients for other months. So yes, its the wedding season: august is one of the peak months usually but so is December. When a month looks uncertain, there is sunshine in others. I'm looking at the glass as half full.

Real wedding: Saturday, 3rd June 2017

Its June already. Halfway into the year and a day. My bride was just awesome to work with. We met online through Facebook. Its awesome to work with someone who knows exactly what she wants and at the same time is very flexible. She hired me as her event day coordinator.

The schedule started well with all the vendors from Friday leading up to the event on Saturday. I must admit. Working with a fellow tent and decor person proved to be more than great. It was awesome working with Mark. Great things happen when competitors work together. Saturday morning something happened that left me a bit embarrassed. As the camera person had arrived to start shooting the bride, I led him upstairs to where the bride was, but for some reason went into the wrong house and even asked the owners where all the girls had gone to before I came to my senses and realized I had led them to the wrong house. The home owners were friendly though and understood my confusion. (Talk about a planner on pressure.)

My best parts of the day was hanging with the young bridal team. Those kids were awesome in everything and also at the end of the day, a happy bride means good job.

Nairobi wedding scene: A vendor's perspective.

This has been afew tough months for me in the wedding industry. I have had to look critically at how I run my business and make necessary changes. Nine years with quite a good turn and a few bad turns even some horrible situations to work with that now as I begin the 10th year soon, a radical change is necessary.

Before in my early years in the industry, I could predict with certainty what my clients would want. Now the tide has changed. You learn to keep an open mind and work with them. This is certainly good for a creative mind as keeping with the latest trends worldwide and out of the box thinking are the norms towards setup of such events. I must admit I miss the predictable bride once in awhile. The reality though is she has become as rare as hidden treasure.

With more wedding vendors getting into the market and pricing point becoming the competitive factor to many, its sad to see at the end of the day the number of frustrated bride at the end of their wedding. On the positive side, more competition means better pricing, vendors offering more than one service to keep the account books attractive. It also means that as a vendor, you only have one chance to pitch to the bride or the work goes to another vendor.

In the past, i would have feared a saturated market but now ive learnt not to do so anymore. When its clear the kind of client you want to attract and work with, the business standards you keep and what you can do well then whats left to consider is: Does my target market give me the business I need to have an attractive balance sheet? Well, my 10th year in this business just about to start, it might just prove to be a more realistic ride than ever before.

Flowers for all ocassions

I  began this article on flowers more than a year ago. I had promised to work on 3 of them. I can finally say its the third one of them. I just love flowers in a wedding as they add beauty to the occasion. Much as its important to engage a florist early most times, its equally important to have the season you are getting married clear in mind. For example, next week for many who observe Valentine's day, the usual trend is for them to say it in flowers, mostly red flowers. That probably makes red roses prices to more than triple in February or at least the week of Valentine's day.

For a bride getting married then, it would be wise to avoid having red roses used in your wedding décor if the goal is to keep the price from excalating. 2 years ago i had an event in may same day as a national holiday. All venues countrywide were using white roses which i desperately needed. At the end of the day, i didn't have enough white roses to build my theme well and that left me feeling like I'd let down my clients in their expectations.

While its hard to miss roses, its good to check early enough for color availability. The same can be said of seasonal flowers, they might not be around when you need them. The good thing though, you can always dye flowers work with artificial or even have the flowers you want dried early enough when they are still available.

Ps: my friend took lovely shots of this flowers. I'm glad he let me use them in my article.

What's in your wedding contract

I have still been following conversations taking place in Facebook pages that involves brides naming and shaming vendors that give the wedding industry a bad name. I thought to myself how damaging this is for the industry here in Nairobi. Some accused vendors have been quiet about the issue. Not responding to the accusations online or legally. There was a case that caught my attention. Of bride bitterly complaining that the vendor had not delivered on her promises and changed agreements. The complaints were so many that I felt bad on her behalf for a ruined wedding. Its like her life came to a standstill. You could almost feel her pain and really understand what she was going through until the vendor gave her version of the events. You could easily conclude she was a bridezilla and the changes to the agreement were approved by her assigned signatory. It left me wondering why we had to be treated to the theatrics.

This leads me to think about the necessity of a wedding contract or an agreement of sort that is binding to both parties and addresses how to  handle situations in case disagreements arise. From that account and one that followed it and some more, there is the need for vendors to protect themselves against brides that give the industry a bad name. This problem cuts across both ways. Yes, there are difficult brides to work with who would rush and let the public know what is damaging to the vendors reputation. Once a disagreement arises and expectations aren't met and refunds issued to the client, does it still give them the right to ruin reputations of that business. If this terms are clearly stipulated in the contract, it will  prevent the client of ruining a good business that just had a bad day at work.

Its about time more local wedding vendors stated clear terms and conditions in there contracts, protected themselves in it against biased damages to the company reputation through social media and made every form of communication with the bride and any changes to agreements to be in written form whether its on email, Whattsapp, or any other social media and this written communication evidence kept for sometime even after the wedding ends just in case an accusation arises. For the case that I mentioned today, some brides opted to no longer consider the vendor in question as an option to their event but others weighed the scale well and decided to work with her as she had excellent reputation from many in the past.

Vendors who give the industry a bad name

The wedding business is Nairobi is big business. It keeps growing and everyday there is room for new business to open and flourish. I have an interest in this industry since 2005 and slowly I've seen brides who stand out as unique in their wedding in their demands to quality service and telling a story different from others. Before many vendors and brides and grooms relied heavily on bridal magazines and exhibitions to source for vendors that anyone getting into the business had to invest heavily on these two forms of advertising to get word out there of their existence.


How things have abruptly changed with time. Social media has made it easy to access new vendors at the market and practically everyone is spoiled for choice. In the past there were bad business practices that took a really long time to come to the public attention. This is different today, thanks to social media. There are Facebook pages like buyer beware that brings to your attention bad business practices, who to avoid working with and people who have been conned can easily speak on this platform and other Facebook pages that cater for the wedding industry needs.


Someone had suggested in one of this pages of the need to avoid cheap vendors hence the problem of working with rogue vendors will not arise. I beg to differ with this. The way different vendors charge always means a lot of factors have gone into their final costs, which can differ from one to the other and once one is comfortable with their profit margin, well the variance in price and quality of work received comes in. Due diligence is required in vetting who the vendors are that work for you. You get what you pay for in terms of quality and service at most times but no one pays to be conned of their hard earned cash.


There are many marketers who can promise you alot of what their company can offer but if this isnt stated clearly in a contract, it becomes your word against theirs. This isnt any different with those marketing in the wedding industry. There are local organization, event mangament bodies that have been formed. This vet the vendors who are their members and getting a vendor from them always means finding a reputable one. Working with referral from friends and family who have had experience with such vendors has helped a future bride and groom avoid a rogue vendor.


I love it when new vendors in the industry are given a chance to prove their worth. You maybe impressed by what new talent brings to the industry. But more so do your homework right. Not everyone can afford the same type of wedding but you can find a good vendor for whatever budget you have.

Wedding guest entertainment

Been meaning to get back to writing. I prefer talking to it but once in a while, I remember to update this blog. Today happens to be one of those days. Exactly, a month ago, I attended a wedding as a guest. Every time I do that I get to see what pleases or annoys guests from their point of view. This can be from delayed food service, cold food, not enough sitting, location of the restrooms, inadequate parking. The list never seems to end. I do like the ones who give compliments where it is due as I feel that they appreciate good service.

Back to the wedding that I attended. It was for a family friend and everything went well as scheduled. There was a band and mcee hired that gave me ideas for this article. What would one consider good entertainment for guest. A lot of the times in local settings, the photoshoot happens after the ceremony as guests are having lunch at the reception. It is at this times that a lot of the wedding entertainment is enjoyed. How does one decided what is good entertainment for guests? Most weddings around play similar songs that many dance to. What can easily be enjoyed across varied age groups.  It can be something quite popular or at least it has to be to get guests out of their seats and on the dancing floor. Even though the bride and groom eventually join the dance, its usually for a shot time when you factor in the time their photoshoot takes and the traffic to join the reception depending on the day of the week.

The wedding I attended, the mcee had us dancing at particular times kneeling. While I enjoyed the music and the dance and his style of commanding the crowd, my knees weren't as forgiving once I got home that day.