Success Story: Event Management with MeisterTask

Wedding days can be pretty high-pressure. Couples have often planned their big day for months or even years beforehand, refining minute details down to a T, working out which long lost aunties really warrant an invite and often forking out mega bucks, all to make their wedding day completely and utterly perfect. So, being a part of implementing this vision can be quite a lot on your shoulders. Anyone involved in wedding event management needs to be compassionate, diligent and super well organized.

Event management with MeisterTask Wedding photography project management

Interview with Wedding Business Owner, Martina Lundborg:

Recently we sat down with Martina Lundborg, Wedding photographer from Gothenburg Sweden, to speak about how she manages to deal with (and actually enjoy) being an essential part of a couple’s big event. Martina takes us through how she prepares for, implements and follows-up with weddings, within her photography business.

Martina – could you tell us a little about your business?

Well, I’m a wedding and boudoir photographer based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and I’ve been shooting weddings since 2008. I mostly shoot locally, although I’ve travelled all over Sweden and Norway for events and I’ve been lucky enough to even shoot a wedding in Australia.

Wedding photography is my part-time job, as weddings in Sweden are very seasonal. About 50,000 people get married every year and 45% of these couples get married in June, July or August. This means that the wedding photography business is very concentrated during the summer, and very low during the winter, when I focus primarily on my other role as a Marketing Assistant.

Martina Lundborg MeisterTask wedding event management project management
What’s it like being part of a couple’s big day?

My mission is to create memories that last a lifetime, hopefully, more. To be a part of a couple’s wedding day is a huge responsibility, but I love it.
On the day itself, there’s a lot of action going on and a lot of things to remember. I use MeisterTask to plan for this, creating Project Boards for client management and project management.

Over the summer, weddings must be pretty much back-to-back – how do you handle that?

It’s pretty busy. A lot of work goes into trying to organize myself for the upcoming wedding season and managing projects concurrently, over the summer months themselves.

MeisterTask project board event management task management

In my Client Management Project in MeisterTask, I have one Project Board for this year’s booked weddings. The tasks for the weddings are divided into four sections:

  •         From request to engagement photo
  •         Preparations before the day
  •         Packing the camera bag
  •         The after work

I can then create a task per couple so I’m able to move their task across the Project Board and ensure everything on the day itself goes to plan.

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Have you ever had any event management nightmares on Wedding days?

Not nightmares but I have forgotten small but essential things, like chocolate or water, which I need to keep going.

To avoid this happening again I now have a camera bag checklist ready in MeisterTask, which I include in every wedding task. It’s always a risk when having one list, or just everything in your head, that you might forget something. I reduce this risk a lot by adding a new packing list for every couple, which I can tailor and double-check through the night before.

I can keep adding things to the checklist that I usually forget the day before (like extra shoes, or cell phone charger), things that are great to have during the day but aren’t essential to get the job done. After 12+ hours of shooting non-stop, changing shoes is one of the best things that you can do.

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Do you take any other steps to make sure you’re properly prepared?

Within MeisterTask, I use the tagging, due dates and attachment features.

Depending on the chosen package, price and hours, I use different tags to filter my events. For example, I offer special deals at certain times of the year so I have tags to reflect this in the relevant tasks. I then use due dates to set myself reminders, e.g. to book a certain aspect by a set date. To embed all relevant files within their respective tasks, e.g. a wedding venue floor plan, I attach documents and specifications using the Dropbox integration.

How do you keep busy outside of Wedding season?

All year round, I work as a marketing assistant for a Swedish company selling products around the world. I’ve recently started using MeisterTask in that capacity too, introducing the task management tool to the rest of our team. This position is divided between the US and Sweden, so MeisterTask’s collaborative functions like the commenting feature and assigning tasks, make it much simpler to work across locations.

Within the marketing and sales teams, we use G Suite alongside MeisterTask, for similar collaborative reasons. Using Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail, Hangouts and Calendar, we can all remain on the same page, regardless of where we’re based. With MeisterTask we particularly use the Google Drive attachment feature, ensuring that each task has all the information we need to proceed.

In addition to shooting weddings, I’m also a portrait photographer. Lots of women have portraits taken for their partners as gifts, but the real aim is to make them feel confident and happy in their own skin.

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I also keep busy planning out my dreams for this year and next. For this, I have a MeisterTask Project for personal projects, listing all of my dreams and ideas. My ‘Dreams for 2018’ project includes what I’d like to get done and importantly, the steps I need to take to achieve this. This gives me a great space to note down ideas, whenever they pop into my head, whether at home or on the move, and keeps me focused on my goals.

How does MeisterTask work for you, as a creative person?

There’s just so much about it that makes work easier for me. I’m an organizer, but at the same time, being the creative type, I couldn’t really find a solution that I stuck to. I tried Excel spreadsheets, paper calendars, the calendar in my iPhone, notes on my iPhone, all of them combined! But I struggled a lot with both design and function. I’d tried Trello too but hadn’t got into the right workflow as I didn’t get along with the design, which affects my workflow a lot.

The design is so gorgeous and clean, I want to organize, I want to plan, I want to keep everything updated, I want to complete things!

So when I found MeisterTask and realized that it pretty much combines everything I needed, I was fixed. The design is so gorgeous and clean, I want to organize, I want to plan, I want to keep everything updated, I want to complete things! All of this is great for business and using the desktop application and the focus feature on tasks, I keep focused on work and undistracted from other browser tabs.

Even when I’m away from my laptop, I can still do everything from my phone with the iOS app. As a result, I don’t miss out on anything because I haven’t got my calendar on me and if I get a request from a couple, I can check availability directly, give them an accurate answer and have them set up as a client within a couple of minutes.

What are the next steps for your business?

I’ve always worked alone as a Wedding photographer but I’m starting to get involved with projects that involve cooperating more with other photographers in Sweden – projects that I would never have considered since the management would take too much time. However, since I’ve worked out a much better workflow with MeisterTask, although it sounds cliché, anything now feels possible!

Huge thanks to Martina Lundborg for sharing her story and workflows with us. You can get in touch with Martina about her photography services, via her website: www.martinalundborg.se

Event management with MeisterTask Wedding photography project management

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