Wedy on 'Shark Tank': What is the cost and how to buy app for easy wedding planning for venue, pricing, packages
DENVER, COLORADO: Rumaiza Ali, founder of The Wedy App, has spent years engaged in the wedding planning industry. Rumaiza and Anas Ali will now debut Wedy, an app that makes wedding planning simple and affordable, on 'Shark Tank' Season 15, Episode 20.
Sure, the newest efforts from the industry's Teslas, Apples, and Googles dominate the tech news space—and for good reason. Still, the IT titans aren't the only ones driving innovation in the business.
Wedy is now a one-stop wedding planning portal, offering solutions for every phase. Everything is currently feasible at Wedy. All at one location, no headache.
Why waste time in today's fast-paced environment waiting for vendor quotes? Real-time prices and availability might be easily accessed.
Furthermore, why not book your entire wedding online? Wedy makes wedding planning simple and economical by connecting couples with the greatest wedding providers available.
Of course, experienced couples selling used products, as well as category-specific business partners, have the finest product inventories.
What is Wedy on 'Shark Tank'?
Rumaiza had previously orchestrated premium vacation weddings for high-profile clients, so she was familiar with the industry's complexities and expectations. However, it wasn't until she started organizing her own wedding that she recognized the obvious inefficiencies and outmoded traditions that hampered the wedding planning process.
Rumaiza expressed the agony of having to navigate lengthy phone conversations, online paperwork, and complicated pricing systems merely to get providers for her wedding. Reflecting on the present day in which purchasing a car or a home is as simple as going online, she wondered why selecting a wedding location or hiring a photographer was still such a hassle.
Enter The Wedy App, the creation of Rumaiza and her husband, Anas. Wedy is more than just another wedding planning software; it's a comprehensive marketplace that streamlines and simplifies the whole wedding planning process.
The Wedy App, which launched in February 2020, has swiftly gained attention by providing a solution to the industry's long-standing pain problems.
Wedy's purpose is around openness and efficiency. The app serves as a one-stop shop for couples to easily search and book everything from venues and photographers to flowers and caterers.
Couples, like those who rent lodgings on Airbnb, may see availability and cost up front, avoiding the need for constant back-and-forth discussion.
What distinguishes Wedy is its novel approach to payment processing. Couples can choose between paying ahead or financing via Wedy, which allows them to spread their expenditures over time.
This freedom also applies to wedding vendors, who may post their services on Wedy for free and only pay when a service is hired.
In addition to catering to couples, Wedy promotes partnerships with local companies and wedding contractors. Wedy hopes to cultivate a healthy community of dependable vendors by offering a platform for these experts to display their services and handle bookings effectively.
Since its beginnings, The Wedy App has grown significantly in terms of user acceptance and financial backing. With over half a million dollars in vendor profits distributed through the site, Wedy has proven to be an invaluable resource for both couples and wedding suppliers.
Who are the founders of Wedy?
Rumaiza, an architect and award-winning wedding planner, has designed and carried out celebrity destination weddings, with a portfolio of $3 million events. She has overseen more than 400 crew workers on the job site. In conjunction with GIWA, Rumaiza won awards for "Best Floral Artistry" and "Best Upcoming Wedding Planner" at the International Convention of Wedding Fraternity (ICWF).
She is a renowned designer, a fierce defender of products, a meticulous creator, an uncompromising achiever and individualist, and a frequent traveler who lives out of a bag! Among her clientele are prominent car magnates (such as Toyota), Indian athletes, and business magnates.
Rumaiza strategized and established Wedy's product vision while serving as CEO. She stays laser-focused and devoted to creating not only an accessible but also a highly adaptable booking platform to enable the creative economy at scale.
She's an overachiever who can organize chaos and just gets things done! Her instinctive business acumen allows her to predict market trends and cut through the clutter.
At the age of 18, she raised her first seed investment thanks to her tenacity and great leadership abilities. Her accomplishments with this enterprise earned her the titles "Youngest Student Entrepreneur" and "The Rise of Female Founders" in the tabloids.
Currently, she is working to reimagine the events and service business, create good user experiences, and investigate the nexus of weddings, design, and technology.
Rumaiza was born and reared in the lovely city of Chennai, South India, where her father's family emigrated from Saigon. She received her high school diploma in Mathematics and Computer Science from St Michael's Academy. She later earned a Bachelor's degree in Architecture and Interior Design from SRM University.
She started working with Eskay Design as an Architectural Intern before launching The Little House of Cupcakes in 2012.
In 2013, she co-founded The Dreama Theme. After closing the firm, she joined Capital Factory before launching Wedy.
Anas is a tech entrepreneur and co-founder and chief technology officer of Wedy Inc., one of America's fastest-growing wedding businesses. He is now focusing on Wedy's product-led growth as well as financing/payments/growing platform initiatives.
Anas, an Aeronautical Engineer with an MBA in Aviation Management, has strategized and successfully launched over 100 new markets across the United States, managed one-third of Frontier Airlines' revenue of over $600 million, and worked across various commercial teams. Anas used his travel industry knowledge to develop Wedy's product roadmap, test product hypotheses, and deliver the wedding market's first-ever booking software.
Anas is skilled at fusing business concepts with end-to-end product development. He has built a number of firms' extremely successful mobile and web app platforms, most notably Accelerist Inc., the Austin Startup Week WIT winner. Working with HTML5, Bootstrap, CSS, React, React Native, JavaScript, TypeScript, ES6, jQuery Redux (thunk, saga), RESTfull / JSON-pure API Webpack, Babel, MongoDB, and NodeJS, Anas is a MERN Stack developer capable of designing and developing User Interactive (UI) Web and App pages.
Anas received his bachelor's degree in engineering from Hindustan University. Later, he earned an MBA in Finance and Aviation Management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Anas began his work with Phoenix Aviation Consultants as a Technical Crew Assistant. Later, he became an Associate Editor/Publisher at Marketingtechie.org.
After spending some time at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, he joined Accelerist as Interim CTO. He worked for Frontier Airlines for nearly six years before joining Capital Factory.
What is the cost and how to buy Wedy?
Packages begin at $2600, and settings include beach weddings, mountaintop weddings, and everything in between. Couples can pay half up in advance and half right before the wedding, or Wedy can combine the entire cost and finance the package for you.
Currently, the services are only offered in New York, Utah, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Montana, Hawaii, Colorado, Arizona, and California. The firm raised $165K in 2019 and an additional $20K later that year.
Their seed fundraising round was discontinued in 2022 for unexplained reasons.
Where is Wedy now?
Looking ahead, Wedy has big ambitions for development, including entering new markets and securing further investment. Wedy is positioned to transform the wedding planning scene in the next years by continuing to innovate and emphasize user experience.
In essence, Wedy is more than simply a booking platform; it is a change agent in a disruptive sector. With its user-centric approach and unrelenting dedication to openness, Wedy is reinventing what it means to organize the ideal wedding in the digital era.
Who will steal the deal in 'Shark Tank'?
The firm is undoubtedly looking for a Shark to help them expand into new states and maybe globally.
If Kevin O'Leary does not strike a deal with this firm, viewers will be stunned. He has created a complete platform around the wedding market, and its business fits nicely. Remember how he had great success with Honeyfund in Season 6? They are a crowdfunding site for honeymoons. That company has almost $50 million in lifetime sales! Honeyfund, like The Wedy App, makes money through transactions.
Wedy follows a similar business strategy but with a different twist. Mr Wonderful is going to be all over this transaction. It will be fascinating to see whether he structures it like Honeyfund. He handed them $400K for one-third of the transaction income until he had tripled his money--no equity was given up.
'Shark Tank' Season 15, Episode 17, airs on ABC on Friday, March 15, at 8 pm ET. Catch the latest episode featuring products like Blinger, SORx, VSEAT, and Wedy. For those who miss the episode, it will be available on demand the following day and on Hulu. Additionally, viewers can explore past seasons and episodes on Amazon Prime Video and iTunes.