With weddings, you have one chance to get things right. As ethnic cultures synergize with American traditions, the challenges to banquet and catering departments have become more complex, making an already complicated situation even more ponderous.

In order to properly service these once-in-a-lifetime events, Marriott International—with more than 3,200 properties in nearly 70 countries—institutes a consistent, structured process to rein in the countless details of weddings, to point out variations in cultural traditions, and to anticipate any possible request. Toward these goals, corporate food and beverage executives created the Marriott International Wedding Certification Program and, in so doing, prepared the company to claim the distinction of being number one in weddings worldwide, hosting more than 100,000 weddings each year.

BIG PROGRAM, BIG DAY
Since the Wedding Certification Program’s inception in March 2002, Marriott has certified 6,945 sales, banquet and catering, and event managers as wedding planners. Over those seven years, Marriott has seen a 15 percent increase in wedding bookings. The program educates future planners on the full range of elements they will encounter, such as food and beverage options, service standards, vendor lists, and wedding traditions from around the globe. Through self-study, managers become familiar with Marriott’s collection of very specific guides and must pass an online test to achieve certification. A set of resource guidelines for each property integrates site-specific reference information such as local preferred vendor lists and regional customs with brand standards, corporate vendor partnerships, and service requirements.

Marriott Senior Director of Event Management Andrea Nacci stresses that the education is ongoing. Nacci—herself Marriott’s first certified wedding planner—sees the current environment as a time of very personalized ceremonies and receptions and of new and intermingled traditions. She cites the up-to-date expertise of Marriott wedding planners as a primary draw for couples from every ethnicity, religion, and social background. “Understanding traditions and the emotional part of it is extremely important if you’re going to be in the wedding business,” Nacci says.

Marriott’s expanded focus on wedding events began soon after 9/11 and the subsequent realization that demand for wedding celebrations is less elastic than demand for corporate events, government meetings, and other social functions. While the slowed economy took its toll on conference and convention revenues, wedding bookings were relatively impervious to the economic doldrums. Marriott collected ideas from bestpractice wedding properties and streamlined the procedures for pulling together the many disparate facets of a successful, memorable wedding.

DEVELOPING A REPUTATION
Besides organizing the minutiae and preparing for unexpected occurrences in wedding event execution, the certification program aims to increase bookings and maximize revenue as well. With Indian, Middle Eastern, Latino, and other cultures seeking hotels such as Marriott that are willing to fulfill the requirements of their ethnic traditions, demand has multiplied. Ethnic weddings are, in fact, the fastest growing segment of the wedding business.

Daniel LaBoudiere, director of sales and catering at the Huntsville Marriott, specializes in ethnic weddings, particularly Indian receptions. As the “Silicon Valley of the South,” Huntsville enjoys a surprising richness of cultural diversity. The Huntsville Marriott receives about a third of its event revenue from weddings, and LaBoudiere reports that nearly 50 percent of that wedding revenue comes from a handful of Indian weddings. “One event spent around $36,000 on food and beverage alone,” LaBoudiere says. “I have a following of Indian families who will not work with anyone else but me.” That kind of trust can turn into many future bookings.

Not long ago, couples looking for a hotel venue for their traditional ethnic weddings were out of luck. “Hotels would say, ‘No, we don’t do that, but here is what we have,’ and [the couple] would go somewhere else,” LaBoudiere says. “They passed up a lot of good money because they weren’t willing to give these couples what they wanted.”

Marriott bends over backwards to accommodate special requests, often bringing in outside vendors for décor, music, customary attire, and catering—or even flying in a Marriott chef from another location who specializes in the desired cuisine. Nura Sakati, director of catering sales at the Marriott Renaissance Mayflower in Washington, D.C., is no stranger to out-of-the-ordinary requests from the bride and groom and their families. The location has held a wide range of ethnic weddings, each with its own peculiar cultural eccentricities.

One wedding, Sakati says, stands out. On a Friday night in May, the groom and his family arrived for a Hindu ceremony via an elephant-and-white-horse procession. Street closures, seven city permits, and a pachyderm from New Jersey might be extreme for any wedding, but the Marriott planners took it in stride.

“That was a new experience we could add to the books,” Sakati says. Now, somewhere in Marriott’s trusted vendors list for Hindu weddings, is a tip on where to get an elephant if you really need one.

Weddings are a $2.5 million revenue stream at the Renaissance Mayflower. Sakati credits the program’s success to the location team’s attention to detail, developing close relationships with clients, and a burgeoning reputation for accommodating ethnic traditions.

“Community and trust are very important to these groups. Once they know they can trust you, they all come back.”

Sakati, LaBoudiere, and Nacci all agree that the best advertisement for wedding event services is for guests to see the results. “Host one, and word travels fast,” Sakati says.

STAYING ON-TREND
The popular trend of personalizing weddings means what is in and what is out are less important than what is meaningful to the bride and groom. Such customization, of course, implies that the standard “cookie-cutter” wedding is out. “[Brides and grooms] are designing their own weddings so when you walk away, you really know that couple,” Sakati says.

She also observes that men are much more involved in the decision process than in the past. Nacci sees growth in “green” weddings with a greater awareness of the event’s carbon footprint. Local and organic food, natural fabrics, recyclable items, and travel distances are becoming important to environmentally conscious couples.

Nacci also observes that more couples are coming to Marriott for “short-term” weddings, those with shorter-than-average planning periods. This is where Marriott truly shines; its partnerships with preferred vendors allow planners to more quickly source everything from flowers to limousines to photographers.

Nacci acknowledges the success of the wedding certification program as a tool but points to the expertise of her planners in using that tool as the real key to Marriott’s achievement. Each Marriott hotel has a mandatory minimum of two wedding planners per property, and many have separate teams of planners focusing on sales and bookings and management and execution of the event.

Whichever factor is to thank for Marriott’s rise to the top, helping unite 100,000 couples in matrimony each year is a success by any measure.

Denny Lewis is a professional freelance writer based in Arlington, Massachusetts.