Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam McElhinney.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
The sad reality was, we had been to too many weddings at popular venues where the standard setups just didn’t feel like they reflected the unique stories and lives of our friends getting married. If an “event factory” hosts three weddings per weekend, is it really going to be customized and unique enough to tell the story of two completely unique people and the life they are creating together? Generally, no.
At the same time we knew there were so many amazing open spaces, hidden gems like historic farms, family estates, gardens etc. across New England that could really speak to a couple’s story and personal values so much better. For us, we saw these spaces as the blank canvases a couple could use to create a wedding that was really going to reflect their story and leave their guests with that memory in a way a busy traditional venue cannot.
The challenge though, was to make it feasible to plan and host a truly custom event in these kind of rare, open spaces. That was where we saw the opportunity to leverage our team’s own expertise in technology and operations — coming from companies like Google, Wayfair, NASA, and the US Army. We realized we could use technology and process automation to allow couples to focus more on the creative decisions of what their big day should look like and not the logistics. By working with some of the best caterers, wedding planners, rental companies etc. across New England we developed a set of tools that allow any space to easily be turned into an event venue for just one weekend. As we say, Mayflower venues at their core are “unique spaces for creative couples.”
Today we have over 50 venues across New England and a waitlist of many more that will be on boarded in the coming months. Right now, we have already couples creating amazing events that tell their stories at spaces that reflect what they care about. So far the feedback from them and their vendors on our venues, our planning tools etc. has been fantastic.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest challenge as a small team has been balancing traveling to all the venues that want to join our platform and working with our already booked couples to ensure they are having an amazing experience. In order to make sure we were building the tools couples needed for venue coordination, we couldn’t get to all the venues asking to join so we developed a bit of a waitlist of properties we haven’t been able to onboard. We did just raise a small round of financing and are now going to be hiring a couple sales and operations teammates to make sure we can onboard all these interested venues while still providing the best quality service and tools to our couples.
Mayflower Venues – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Events, but weddings in particular, are really the times when personal storytelling can come to life. When we surveyed hundreds wedding guests to learn what most defined a wedding in their memory, the number one response was “the venue.”
That is why Mayflower venues are meant to enable creativity. Our venues only host a single wedding per weekend so that a couple has the time and open space to customize. And there are absolutely no required vendor lists you must choose from — it’s your day, you should be making the creative decisions not your venue. We leverage cutting edge technologies to onboard venues in a way that lets couples plan and coordinate these custom setups largely online. Our proprietary Mayflower Venues app collects the data to generate venue specific schematics and planning tools that simplify the logistics — like finding vendors in your area, telling the caterer how many feet of hose or electric they will need, or making sure the tent is setup where you want it. It’s your wedding day, we just want to help put your inner artist in control of it.
No other companies have been able to offer such unique, off-the-beaten path spaces for events or such powerful venue specific remote planning tools to coordinate custom the events there. At Mayflower Venues we are doing both.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
We have had couples discover venues through Mayflower that they never thought they would be able to find. Truly, we have notes from people who drove around New Hampshire knocking on barn doors and family estates trying to find a space where they could create something special. Being able to discover such an incredibly unique and rare type of venue and then coordinate and create so much of that all online… giving that kind of authorship and artistic power back to the couples, it blows their minds.
Of course, there is the entire other half of our business, which is providing the owners of these amazing properties with new sources of revenue. Historically, many of the small farms, family estates, orchards and other places that dot New England have become victim to development — being bulldozed and turned into strip malls or subdivisions. When we speak to a venue owner who receives their first event booking through us, it’s an incredible moment. The difference of several thousand dollars from a wedding profoundly affects the ability of many landowners to maintain and keep these properties open for future generations. That’s when you realize, our couples’ weddings are actually helping to save these kinds of special open spaces.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mayflowervenues.com
- Email: hello@mayflowervenues.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mayflowervenues/
- Facebook: https://b-m.facebook.com/mayflowervenues/
Image Credit:
White Loft Studio – photo of venue setup by river
Mayflower Venues owns all other photos provided.
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