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Wedding Business Gives Founder A Window of Opportunity Long white gowns, gauzy veils, fabulous dresses for the bridesmaids, tuxedos for the groomsmen. Oh, and the website, of course! Welcome to the world of the 21st century wedding, and what a world it is. Marriage is big business in the United States, with Americans tying the knot at the rate of 6,400 marriages per day, according to the Census Bureau. Brides magazine estimates those unions generate retail sales topping $37 billion a year. The average engaged couple (she's a bit over 25, he's approaching 27, statistically speaking) will spend almost $20,000 on their wedding, and that's not even counting the honeymoon. They'll drop about $3,700 more on that. As might be expected with all that cash floating around, there are literally hundreds of details that must be attended to-and that's where the wedding website comes into the picture. The idea came to Amy Ruocco about 3 a.m. one morning in 2001, just about the time she finished stuffing what seemed like the "gadzillionth" envelope for her own upcoming wedding. "I was completely exhausted," she recalls. "Earlier that day, I had printed and cut out all the directions sheets to insert with the invitations, but I was in such a lethargic state that I forgot to include them with the invitations." When Ruocco, who ran her own print and web design agency, spotted the neatly stacked pile of sheets sitting on her disk, she didn't panic. Instead, she decided to make a website her guests could access to download directions to the ceremony and reception. "As I was developing the website, I ended up adding several other pages and created a website that was much more comprehensive than I had originally intended," Ruocco relates. She received so much positive feedback about the site that she begin to wonder if there might be a way to work a similar product into her existing business.
At the time, a handful of competitors were already doing what Ruocco proposed, and more have joined the fray since then. Best Wedding Site, a clearinghouse for wedding-related websites, includes links to almost 900 other sites, at least half a dozen of which purport to do what The Wedding Window does. So Ruocco faced challenges in her new venture right from the get-go.
CUSTOM SITES The Wedding Window's core business is creating personalized wedding websites for engaged couples that they can use to keep family friends up to speed on their wedding plans as they develop. Visitors to the couple's site can RSVP to their invitation online (which saves on stamps), link to a gift registry, access a calendar of events, find local accommodations and, of course, get directions-the quandary that started it all! In launching The Wedding Window, Ruocco set out to create an environment that would cater to the needs of a diverse customer base. "We wanted to offer enough options and flexibility so the site would be as effective for a couple planning a wedding for 300 people as for a couple planning an intimate wedding of just 40," she says. Like her competitors, Ruocco started out creating the individual websites by hand. That was a time-consuming process that forced her to put a cap on the number of update opportunities offered in a package price, and putting limitations on customers has the unfortunate side-effect of limiting a business's growth. To overcome that challenge, Ruocco has tapped both her creativity and her technology skills to automate the process and make it simpler at the same time. Perhaps most importantly, the strategy has created a unique brand identity for The Wedding Window that sets it apart from its competitors. As marketing guru Brad Van Auken puts it, brands have become the key source of differentiation that guide customer purchase choice. "It is the focal point around which an organization defines how it will uniquely deliver value to the customer for a profit-effectively embodying the `heart and soul' of that organization," VanAuken writes in his new book, "Brand Aid" (AMACOM; 2003).
By harnessing technology and marrying it with her own creative design talents, Ruocco has positioned The Wedding Window as a provider of personalized wedding websites where couples can choose from a broad selection of designs, color schemes, pages, etc., and have everything online immediately. The cost for an 18-month term is just $99 (a drop in the bucket against the 20 grand average total wedding outlay), and the site also offers longer-term options. "In simplifying our process and removing the `middleman'-the time we had to spend working with the client to create the site by hand-we have been able to reduce our prices as well," Ruocco points out. "The ultimate result is a more flexible and adaptable product at a lower cost for the customer." As well as she has done so far with The Wedding Window, Ruocco knows that in today's environment no business can stand pat and expect continued success. Right from the start, she has made it company policy to offer new designs, features and services to her customers on an ongoing basis. KEY OFFERINGS The website's high production values are immediately evident to visitors on the home page. A video tour of the site highlights its key offerings, and a seven-day free trial offer helps nudge fence-sitting potential customers in the right direction. Couples can include a Flash Intro with their own photo on their personalized wedding website and have the option of turning it off, if they choose do so. Their photo is also incorporated into each page of their site. The Wedding Window offers easy-to-use templates for the Welcome, Ceremony, Reception and Honeymoon pages to help couples get started. Each section also offers suggestions and ideas for them to consider as they build their personalized website. Users can password-protect individual pages or their entire site if they want. The most important thing Ruocco has learned through her experience of conceiving the idea for The Wedding Window, bringing it to fruition and continuing to find ways to help it grow and develop is that perseverance counts. "Number one, never give up," she states emphatically. "If you have a vision, it requires commitment to see it through. Nothing worth having comes easy. The rewards of developing your own business are amazing, but you will need to put far more energy into it than you ever did working for someone else." It's not easy, and it's not supposed to be, but Ruocco taps all the resources available to her to help ease the burden. On a personal level, she has taken great strength from her father, who, she says, always believed in her and encouraged to start her own business for three years before she finally did. "He made me see that I was at a crossroads. I could stay in a safe position that didn't excite me-and may even have been making me unhappy-or I could take a chance and stretch myself," she says. "I decided he was right, and I quit my job to start my own company."
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