About Us
Once Upon A Time (in 1997)…
Like many other start-ups before the dot-com bubble burst, our founder, Cho Phillips, was busy exploring the Internet’s ability to connect people.
During that same time a friend who recently got engaged asked her to help pick out a wedding gown after work one day. When they reached the bridal shop at 5:15 pm the shop owner was locking the door to go home for the day.
That moment the idea of connecting vendors with customers over the Internet was a no-brainer, which led her to create a national directory of wedding vendors the first year.
What she discovered, exceeded just planning a wedding. She discovered event planning spans EVERY industry, and every part of our lives, including work, home, and play. Planning events is a skill set of organization, project management, an eye for design, along with managing budgets, timelines, and guests’ experiences and expectations.
Cho began to hire and train event planners to assist her with the wedding couples who registered for her directory. She quickly realized, most wedding and social event planners, were planning events for free for family and friends. So she kept training them and sharing her expertise in business, sales, marketing, and negotiations to help make their hobbies and love for events into successful businesses.
Cho also discovered there was no standardized academic system or professional training program to align a fragmented and disconnected community of services.
She set out to change the industry and created a movement of smart and passionate people looking to take their love for celebrations and turn it into their life’s purpose.
Our founder, Cho Phillips, believes our work-life should be driven by an internal motivation to create our life’s work. She believes we should follow our passion, because that’s where we discover our purpose and develop a talent we share with the world.
Today, Cho creates CTE curriculum for schools and universities. She does this by combining real-world training with industry icons as mentors, teachers, and instructors. And together, create career paths to help others achieve success pursuing their passion through education.