How to Start Your Career As a Wedding Planner

By Luiza Kensell

The wedding industry is one of the most sought-after sectors nowadays, with thousands of young people dreaming about a career in this fast-growing business. If you are among them, here are some tips and recommendations to start your career as a wedding planner as soon and as successfully as possible.

Earn Basic Experience

Like any other profession, wedding planning also requires some background and experience. If you didn’t have the chance to get hired at an agency, try to earn some experience on your own as a wedding planner. If you have any skills in other industries that go hand in hand with wedding planning, insist on those abilities for a while until you earn some experience.

Correlated fields like wedding photography, brides’ clothing, and catering will give you the chance to learn more about this domain from your clients or the people they hired to organize the event. Pay attention to how they work and picture yourself in their position.

This job is exciting and quite rewarding, but it comes along with plenty extra hours and stressful tasks. So, before you go any further, make sure you’re ready to handle it.

As soon as you learn the basics of the trade, you can start practicing. Ask your closest friends or relatives to allow you to organize their wedding or handle some tasks for their even. It will give you the necessary hands-on experience that might enable you to organize weddings on your own.

No matter how you do it, the point is that you have to start somehow, so don’t waste any more time.

Find the Right People to Work with

Once you decide to start cashing in, you need to create a database. This job requires you to collaborate with several specialists from other sectors. Mainly, the ones we mentioned above.

Thus, you need to have several options to turn to when it’s time to call a florist, photographer, caterer. You might also need to help the couple pick the right wedding venue. This means you need to know the addresses and features of the most popular wedding locations by heart.

You will also need to get some contacts for each one of them. In time, you will learn who are the most professional people you should work with. But initially, you will have to trust your intuition and check out references or ratings if you find any.

The advantage in this job is that you’ll get promoted by word of mouth. Of course, a discount can always make a difference.

Bottom line: treat providers respectfully, and you’ll get the same treatment and a recommendation. If you also agree on the money, you can build long-term relationships that will be beneficial for both parties.

Advertise Your Wedding Planner Brand

Talking about promotion, you need to let people know you’re out there. Good marketing is the key to any successful business. Think about the basic advertising means everyone uses:

• Portfolio: this will show people why they should pick you instead of turning to your competitors. The portfolio should include pictures and facts about your most successful weddings. The couple will pay close attention to it before they choose to go on, so make it count. When you show your work, discuss relevant details like costs and timing. They have to know what to expect.
• Brochures: these are basic promotional materials you will encourage your prospects to keep at the end of your meeting. It’s also useful to place them in public places like cafes, restaurants or beauty salons.
• Testimonials: video testimonials are the most reliable reviews nowadays, so convince some couples to grant you a short interview you can post on your website and social platforms.
• Social media: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, create an account on each one of them and post comments and pictures regularly.
• A beautiful website: Your page must look impeccable. All the photographs on your website should be taken by professionals. The theme, menu, content, and everything else has to look like 2016. Don’t settle for cheap designs, in the long term it will only lower your authority and damage your conversion rates.
• Traditional advertising: promoting your brand in local newspapers, on the radio or TV is a great way to reach out to anybody out there. Traditional media is evergreen, and you should use it to leverage your business.

For more tips to help you advertise your wedding planning business go online and do some research. It’s incredible how much useful information you can find if you are patient and ready to dig in.

Arm yourself with confidence as you prepare for a wedding planner career. With hard work and a little bit of luck, you can earn a lot of money doing what you love.

What questions do you have about starting your new business?

Luiza Kensell is a personal development coach and a freelance writer, who loves sharing her insights on anything related to marriage. “The wedding is the most beautiful and important event,” says Luiza. In her free time, Luiza is a regular contributor at TenGiftIdeas – a website dedicated to finding the perfect gift for every occasion.