Blog Bestie: AmyJean of Weddzilla

Meet The Relentless Bride, AmyJean. She's currently the

Director of Community Development for Weddzilla & one of my Blog Besties! I've been following Amy's Blog since I started planning my wedding! She's an awesome voice in the wedding blogging world. Here's a little Q&A to better get to know her & Weddzilla!

1. What is Weddzilla.com and what is your role within Weddzilla?

Weddzilla.com is the first website in the wedding industry to fully integrate the wedding planning process into popular social networks. Weddzilla.com leverages the power of community to simplifying the wedding planning process for our Nearlyweds. It’s all about connecting them with their perfect vendors and making their wedding planning easy, social, and fun. It's Wedding planning simplified.

My role with Weddzilla.com is the Director of Community Development - so my focus is on creating and stimulating the Weddzilla.com community for both brides and vendors. The main avenues of communication that we use are the Blog, which has many brides and Mrs. Bloggers as well as featured vendor blog posts which are provided to help brides with advice, answers to general questions, and tips on how to plan stress-free; twitter and facebook. Our main goal is to simplify wedding planning with useful social tools and to provide a community that is supportive, informative and just fun to be involved with.

2. How is Weddzilla changing the game for online wedding planning?

Social media is changing the way brides and vendors interact and Weddzilla.com is at the forefront of this new frontier. By making it easier for a bride to find her vendor, from near or far, and involving her friends and family with the various social tools on the site - planning becomes instant, fun and easy.

3. What is the one feature you would highlight for Wedding Professionals to use?

Our Weddfieds are the game changer for vendors. They allow wedding professionals to be proactive in connecting to the Nearlyweds that need their services anytime they want, without paying for leads. You can set your search parameters by zip code, budget, and wedding date. We notify vendors every time a Nearlywed creates a post that matches their search criteria and they’ll be able to start connecting with the brides they want to work with directly through Weddzilla.com.

4. What is the one feature you would highlight for Nearlyweds to use?

Our Nearlyweds are loving how easy the Weddmark (a visual bookmarking tool) makes makes collecting and organizing inspiration from all over the web. You can watch a demo here.

And of course they love the fact that each new item they Weddmark between now and September 30, 2010 gives them one entry in the “Weddmark Challenge” and a chance to win a $1,000 gift registry from Macy’s!

5. Do you do Webinars or educational series to help Nearlyweds or Vendors?

I don't personally but our Director of Marketing, Sara Morgan does. She's involved in a great social media presentation called “Social or Die.” Making social media a part of your daily business routine is a lot simpler than you may think and our “Social or Die” presentation is takes a straight-shooting approach to help wedding professionals “get real” about how to grow their business through social media.

6. Tell us about your experience (an anecdote) about working with an up-and-coming internet company. What has the journey been like?

Being involved with Weddzilla.com has truly been a blessing. It's an amazing feeling to see something start from an idea and grow into a product... especially one that I know will be such a helpful tool for brides everywhere. Planning my own wedding long distance and seeing how much I utilized the internet, I just can't wait to see how Weddzilla.com is utilized and the feedback we get on how much easier wedding planning becomes for so many brides out there.

7. Tell us about your gurus. How did you pick them? What will they be bringing to the Weddzilla community?

The Weddzilla Gurus are our team of celebrity wedding professionals that will be sharing their expertise and extensive experience with the Weddzilla Community. The Gurus are not only trendsetters in their respective fields, but are trusted names in the wedding industry. Whether they’re forecasting trends, blogging about their latest wedding experiences, or sharing their weekly tips, the Gurus act as an accessible advisory board for our Nearlyweds and Vendors and allows members of Weddzilla.com to gain access to, and feel connected with the leaders in their industry through our site.

8. Why have you made social media such an integral part of Weddzilla.com?

Social media isn’t a trend, it isn’t going anywhere. It’s changing the way people interact and the way companies do business. The wedding industry is built around a very social community of brides and vendors. We wanted to create a site that took offline word-of-mouth and social networking and put it into an online format to create that same sense of community through our site. It’s all about engagement, continuous conversation, and instant feedback.

9. I notice you have a Weddzilla You Tube channel...any good videos we should be looking out for?

We actually just started putting up some videos to our channel. We want to make it a hub for cool wedding videos from our brides, or anything else wedding related. We’d love to have our users suggest videos to us to add to our site or as a favorite. In addition to wedding related videos you can find tutorials on how to use Weddzilla better, highlights from our launch party, and will be adding more content soon.

10. What’s on the horizon for Weddzilla? Tell us what we should be looking out for from you guys.

Up first is the Guru Awards - that is going to be really cool. We are all about social media and blogs play a huge role in the wedding community and we can’t wait to award 25 great blogs our Blog Guru 2010 title!

On the horizon are an iPhone app for Nearlyweds...if you thought the Weddmark was cool..wait till you see the iPhone app...It’s going to be addictive!

We have a whole bunch of new site features coming soon. The Ideabook, a new twist on the store, and we will be introducing “Wedding helpers” soon which allow our nearlweds to really get social and get their communities or, “wedding helpers” involved in the planning process.

11. Why did you start blogging?

I first started blogging as a way to journal my wedding planning - a place to collect ideas so I wouldn't forget. When i first started blogging, we didn't have the Weddmark, where I could easily just bookmark images into one place... so the blog was my version of "Weddmark"ing things. Then, it took on a life of its own. I found that researching traditions, colors and pretty much anything wedding related was fun - and it was informative. I also noted that if i wondered it, someone else probably did to, so why not document my research.

12. Why do you continue to blog now that you're married?

I'm still recapping the wedding, so that is one main reason I am still blogging - and I'm doing a very detailed job b/c my main goal with the blog was to document my wedding planning and wedding. Another main reason I still blog is b/c its a community that I've grown very fond of. Sharing, inspiring and just being supportive to others during this fun but also stressful & challenging period in a person's life makes me feel good.

13. Do you consider yourself a wedding junkie?

Yes. I do love all things weddings. I love weddings that aren't "my style." I love weddings that are "my style." I love weddings and all details about weddings. I really don't see how anyone can do a wedding detail "wrong" b/c it really is just an expression of one's personality. At the end of the day, and when the wedding planning is done and the ceremony begins... the main focus for me is the love, marriage, family & friends and happiness: and that's what i focus on when Bride walks in the door. It's completely idealistic, but for that one moment - i think its 150% OK to have no other thought in the world.