About Us
Wedlockers is an SEO powered digital platform that makes finding awesome wedding vendors quick & easy. Our world-leading search engine delivers exactly what customers are looking for at the exact moment they’re searching for it.
For couples, Wedlockers is a large and transparent wedding marketplace with:
- ALL of Australia's best venues & vendors (not only paid advertisers)
- An open source of qualified information
- The world's best search engine for weddings
For vendors, Wedlockers offers a brand partnership that connects your business with customers who LOVE what you do. All Australian wedding venues & vendors are encouraged to create a free business listing making your products & service visible to 240k+ visitors per year.
Subscription packages are available to further grow your business.
Who We Are
Wedlockers is owned & operated by founding partners Rachael Hastie & David Shearer (Yoke IT).
Rachael launched the business in 2017 as a non-tech founder with a wedding vendor background. David joined the business as a partner in 2020 bringing technical expertise in-house.
Our Story
Before Wedlockers, I’d started a wedding video business that operated from a humble office nook in my lounge room. When couples came for a meeting, my husband would hide our kids in a bedroom up the hall and attempt to keep them quiet until the clients had left. Invariably, one of the children would kick the other or some other noisy altercation would ensue and our professional lounge set up would unfold into its daily domestic reality.
Clients who dug authentic, booked.
To prepare for these meetings which happened 2 or 3 times per week came a substantial to-do list. Responding to enquiries, organising meetings, preparing tailored quotes, tidying the house, rescheduling, plus all the marketing, branding and advertising work that preempted client enquiries.
Like all small businesses, I was flat sticks. Finding opportunities to be more productive was imperative to growing the brand. But when two more noise makers were born to our household no amount of gold-standard efficiency could help. While the business went to a new home I contemplated the value of time:
If each wedding in Australia took 5 hours less to plan, multiplied by 100,000 weddings per year, Brides & Grooms would save the equivalent time of 240 full time jobs worth over $20 million annually. And if each couple sent 5 - 10 fewer wedding enquiries, business productivity would also increase.
The longest and hardest part of the journey for couples is from just engaged to ready-to-book. To find out what products & services are available for your wedding, and to figure out what’s included & what’s not included and how one service is different from another, couples visit hundreds of different websites and send 100+ wedding enquiries.
Herein lies the issue for wedding vendors. And well done, but good luck to those who have SEO'd their way to the top of search engine results. How’s your inbox?
Have you ever received an enquiry that sounds like this: “Please send packages” And there’s nothing else in the email? That’s the sound of a demoralised couple who’ve just spent 6 hours typing enquiries with bugger all revelations in response. They’ve given up on words. Some are more tenacious than others - you can tell which couples they are because they’ve nailed communication efficiency:
“Hello. How much?” Qudos to that couple!
Our solution was to create a more connected and transparent marketplace with a new business model and technology that would better service its members. Free business listings and a powerful search engine are the hallmarks of Wedlockers - bringing Brides & Grooms to vendors they LOVE.
Rachael xx