Cal Poly Startup Aims to Put Modern Spin on Conventional Wedding Planning
Weddings are meant to be joyous occasions.
But with the average cost of weddings skyrocketing in the United States in recent years, wedding days can result in more stress than smiles. On top of that, many couples find the process of booking a venue and finding other necessary services fraught with complexities.
That’s where senior liberal studies major Ashley Tovar says her startup company, Gatherologie, comes in.
The company, launched in spring 2016, aims to streamline the wedding process by helping couples discover, book and pay for their weddings all in one place. The service also allows small businesses to manage their wedding events and bookings.
“I knew I wanted to create something different,” said Tovar, who worked as an events and wedding planner in her hometown of San Jose before transferring to Cal Poly as a junior.
“It was important for us to look at how the industry is handling wedding planning now,” she said. “Some of our competitors have done it the same way for years. That’s not really how brides want it now.”
Tovar is hoping to harness technology to capture a millennial audience that has found the many hoops of the traditional wedding planning model too convoluted and time consuming.
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“I’ve worked with many of the platforms that exist — and many are amazing — but they’re just not made for millennials,” Tovar said. “Millennials want quick and fast information. They don’t want to have to dig deep, and they don’t want to spend hours contacting multiple places. And, millennials don’t want to have to pay up front or be tied into a contract.”
So when Tovar, who was preparing for life as a schoolteacher, was introduced to The Hatchery at Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship last year, she jumped at the opportunity to get her idea off the ground.
Gatherologie was initially conceived as a venture to host events — such as wine tastings and other intimate gatherings — at peoples’ homes. Her living situation, she said, made that difficult.
“I lived in a 500-square-foot apartment. So, I couldn’t host events at my place. That realization was really the start of the journey,” Tovar said. From there, she began narrowing the focus of the startup to weddings.
Gatherologie also taps into the demand of small businesses, providing a platform where wedding service providers and owners of unique spaces can place listings without any up-front costs. She says Gatherologie receives a percentage of the bookings that go through the site.
A little less than a year in, Gatherologie has received positive feedback from its users. The early success doesn’t surprise Nancy Stauch, a liberal studies professor who says Tovar gives 100 percent both in the classroom and in her business.
“Her energy and dedication to helping her classmates clearly translates to Gatherologie, where helping her clients is her number one goal,” Stauch said.
And although recent evidence suggests millennials are delaying marriage until much later in life than previous generations, Tovar says she isn’t worried.
“Even though we millennials don’t plan on marrying as young, many do plan to marry in their lifetimes. Which is actually great for us because right now millennials are working, they’re establishing themselves, they’re exploring all these possibilities, and in the next five to 10 years, they’re going to start settling down. So we’re entering the market at the right time.”
A full launch of the platform is slated for March 2018.
“It’s nice to know that we’re helping brides and finding them really unique and affordable spaces,” Tovar said.
