RENOWNED Destination Wedding Specialist, Joy Agness of “Wedding and Event Planning South Miami, will be holding a two-day Destination Wedding Conference in Guyana on April 1 and 2, 2017.

The venue is the Princess Ramada Hotel, Providence, East Bank Demerara and the conference which is being held under the theme: “The Love and Sunshine of Guyana” is open to persons engaged in the production and sale of any activity that goes into making up the ideal wedding package.
Persons registering before March 15 will be required to pay a fee of US$100 and after that date US$150. Registration could be done on line, accessing joyagnesevents.com. For those registering at the venue on the opening day, registration starts at 8:30 hrs. Classes start at 9:30 hrs and conclude around 16:00 hrs.
At the end of the opening day’s sessions there will be cocktails from 17:00 hrs to around 19:00 hrs.

Meanwhile, there’s a big incentive for two lucky participants attending the conference. Participants are asked to submit business cards and at the end of the second day, two names will be drawn. The two lucky persons will each win a trip to the United States of America to shadow the managing director and one of her support staff to do either a wedding event or a related activity.

Passionate about the prospects of educating her fellow Guyanese in an area – interesting but hitherto untapped locally – Ms. Agness was nevertheless at pains to point out that the forum is a ‘Wedding Destination Conference’ and not a “Wedding Expo.”
“It is a Wedding Destination, and is actually teaching entrepreneurs and people already in the wedding event arena how to market themselves,” she told the Sunday Chronicle.
On a point of clarification, she went on: “In this industry, what you’re selling is your ideas and yourself as a representative of your company, and therefore you need to be quite knowledgeable about what you’re doing so I am here really very passionately trying to educate my fellow Guyanese in the Guyana [wedding] industry.”

Agnes who is managing director of “Joyagness Wedding and Event Planning” has her own business in the United States, and is also a professor at Miamidade and Broward Colleges where she teaches wedding and event planning and English.
Pointing to various features of preparation for a wedding she cited: Dress-making; hairdressing; cake-making; catering; interior decoration, making flowers, among others. She reasoned: “It is one thing to bake a cake, it’s another thing to be a dressmaker, but then how you market yourself in the industry is what counts.

The first thing people will ask you – Are you certified? So this is a good chance for people who want to take their business to the next level to be able to do so. Get certified so you can become more comfortable with what you are doing, because you are not only satisfying your neighbourhood or satisfying your passion, but now you are having customers on a larger scale,” Agnes said.

And just who can participate in the conference? The answer is persons with any of the above-mentioned skills, as well as hoteliers, small boutiques, food vendors, water distributors, ice-makers and more, adding that they all make up the industry.
She referred to it as ‘basic education’ for one to learn the ins-and-outs , ups-and-downs and know-hows of how to do this. “So there’s no limit to any one person who can attend this conference and that’s what makes it so unique, because there is no limited time for learning, and here is no limited time on how fast you can propel yourself,” Agness declared.

Agness said it was her ambition to push Guyana as a “Destination Wedding Site” because, according to her: “We’ve a lot to offer culturally. We don’t have white sand and blue water, but what we have is eco-tourism which is good and that’s a plus for Guyana, because everybody after a while gets a little tired of doing the same thing over and over.”
Ms. Joy Agness wishes to express gratitude to her sponsors: Rahaman – Rent a Tent; Suriname Airways: Fly Jamaica Airways; The Princess Ramada and Joy Agness Events.
A Guyanese by birth, she’s a retired nurse and has been in the business of wedding and event planning for the last 26 years during which time she has travelled extensively in the execution of such business.