Small Business Profile: Make Wedding Planning Easy with Weddingful

Do a Google search for a “wedding photographer in Vancouver” and you’ll get 1,680,000 results. With so many bases to cover and countless vendors in the city, wedding planning can turn the sweetest bride-to-be into a raging Bridezilla. Local entrepreneur Angel Pui is on a mission to change all of that with Weddingful, a refined search engine that allows the savvy bride to find exactly what they want by setting search criterions such as price, location, styling or availability.

Think of it as what Travelocity is for hotels, or what Amazon is for books. With over 5,000 businesses in the database other thoughtful perks, this is the mother of all search engines for those who can appreciate specificity and efficiency. Empowering brides and making happily ever afters. Did I mention that this is totally free?

I’m not the only one that thinks this is a great idea. Angel and Weddingful has advanced to the 3rd of 4 stages in the New Venture BC Competition – where she can win $300,000 in prizes. The five-month competition puts startups in a serious business boot camp with seminars with top business experts, networking and mentorships. Winners will be announced September 23 and if they win, Angel has promised to take the entire team – and the other startup that shares their office space – to Hawaii!

I had the chance to chat up Angel. Here’s some insight into our conversation.

Crystal: In a nut shell, what is Weddingful and what is your inspiration behind the concept?

Angela: I’ve had two other wedding-related businesses and started to realize that brides were still stressed about wedding planning even with new online group planning tools. Finding irrelevant vendors during your search overwhelms brides and they often don’t even know where to start. That’s where Weddingful comes in. Each search category has a very specific criteria and it will produce only the relevant vendors. Brides can then choose from the three or four results, simplifying the process and saving them time.

Crystal: What is your vision of the business five years from now?

Angela: Currently, we are in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. Next year, we plan on expanding to San Francisco, LA, and NYC. In 2-3 years, we hope to be in 10 major cities. We are talking about integrating into Facebook and Twitter and next year and we plan on developing mobile applications.

Crystal: Congratulations on your success with the competition, could you tell us about your experience there and what you’ve learned?

Angela: The competition has been more intense than I thought it would be. The second round took me a few days to write out all the questions. The third round, the condensed venture plan is killer – writing about your entire business in 8 pages! The best advice one of my business mentors have given me is to focus on the biggest opportunity. This is really important because many entrepreneurs make the mistake of doing too many things. They can have a full time, part-time jobs or too many models for pricing.

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