The Australian Arab Business Council hosted The Business of Building a Global Brand event at La Castelle in Bankstown on Wednesday night. It featured Wendy Al Khoury, founder and CEO of Wedded Wonderland and Wonder Group, giving detailed, inspirational insights into building a global business and brand.
Khoury’s Business Wedded Wonderland operates across 54 different countries around the world and is essentially an online booking platform for weddings.
She highlighted discovering a lack of representation for cultural weddings in Australia, mentioning there was only one type of couple seen in wedding magazines, inspiring her to start her business empire of Wedded Wonderland.
Al Khoury mentioned the importance of businesses and couples to be connected online, leading to the business growing online. Within six months, the business grew to 100,000 followers, and close to fourteen years later, they grew drastically to around 4 million followers across all social media platforms. She shared some strategies for the success of Wedded Wonderland online. “Just being authentic, wanting to solve problems for our followers, inspiring them and exciting them. But also delivering a service which is really important,” Al Khoury pointed out.
She emphasised that what matters is the problems you’re solving online through social media, which leads to connecting with people. Al Khoury added we’re in a “trust deficit and trust recession, stating new generations are anxious due to being confronted with challenges such as Covid, war and famine. She said the challenge is now connecting with them. Additionally, she urged that as a business owner, it’s your responsibility to speak on behalf of your business. “It’s no longer a choice its no longer an option,” she emphasised.
Al Khoury also mentioned knowing your ideal customer in terms of age and focusing on creating content on connecting with them, as well as stating that there were different pillars in the business that started to grow due to them listening to what followers were saying.
Wedded Wonderland was the first social media wedding platform in the world, which grew a community and is now well established with tourism boards around the world. They have also launched destination weddings for Dubai tourism and Switzerland tourism due to their knowledge in the industry. Al Khoury said all of things were possible because of building a community and solving problems.
Al Khoury also expressed what has led to what success led her to build Wedded Wonderland. “Starting with the purpose of assisting couples with booking their weddings around the world and showcasing all the amazing venues and vendors that want to meet them,” she said.
Despite having a successful following and global reach, Wedded Wonderland does have competitors in the media space and is unique in our offerings. “Its the fact we focus on education on events and have a booking platform for our couples which ties into the media,” Al Khoury said.
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has negatively impacted Wedded Wonderland’s operations. Al Khoury said it has immensely because of the business working with many tourism boards and governments over there, and couples are also deciding to proceed or not with their weddings during the conflict.
