Bootcamp with Liene Stevens of The Smart Planner

One of the things that makes being a part of the wedding industry so much fun is joining its community of artists and business people. Since we are photographers, we are usually surrounded by other photographers, deep in photography conversations and geeking out as we talk about the new lens that we've been trying out or a new concept or idea for our businesses. Last week I (Becka) had the pleasure of branching out a bit and getting to hear some great perspective from another side of the industry: event planners.

Liene Stevens, founder of Blue Orchid Designs and whirlwind force behind The Smart Planner came to Orlando for the day for a workshop called Blogging Bootcamp. Liene, on top of being ridiculously fun to spend a day with (Not even kidding: we sat for 4 hours chatting over coffee!), is an amazing business woman. As we all typed away on our laptops, she dropped gem after gem of social media wisdom into our laps. I was able to relax and take a minute to evaluate what we are currently doing via social media and dream up ways to make it better. I am excited by all the things that I took away from the workshop and am thrilled to start implementing them in our business, especially here on our blog. One of the first of which is the new Subscriptions link in the right sidebar where you can easily add our blog to your google reader (or whichever reader you prefer). Just trying to make life simpler for ya. ;)

Twitter talk. Join us: Liene, Me, Nate


The lovely and talented Trisha Hay of Black White Bliss supplied us with these lovely custom journals and centerpieces


Business time!


The entire group. That's me third from the right. (Can you tell I prefer to be behind the camera?)