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First Steps to Start Your Wedding Planning Business
101 Plays9 months ago
An overview of eight steps to get your wedding planning business up and running.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Host
00:00:04
Speaker
Hi there. Welcome to the Business of Wedding Planning podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
This is the podcast where we help aspiring and new wedding planners start and grow their businesses.
Starting a Wedding Planning Business
00:00:15
Speaker
I'm Amber Peterson, and today we are diving into the first steps of launching your dream wedding planning business. This episode is a part of a five part series that has been designed to guide you through the initial stages of this very exciting, but sometimes confusing or challenging journey.
Reality vs. Perception of Wedding Planning
00:00:38
Speaker
Let's start by exploring the wedding industry and just really thinking and understanding about what the role of a wedding planner is. If you have talked to anyone in your life about being a wedding planner, they probably have some ideas about what that looks like. And often those ideas come from what we see in movies or just the end result that they see at a wedding. But,
00:01:03
Speaker
I know and probably most of you know that the pretty glamorous side of wedding planning is a very small amount of that role. Being a wedding planner is mentally and physically challenging and you are not just pulling pretty linens and suggesting flowers. You are often either
00:01:30
Speaker
doing yourself or having your team do things like crawl under tables to find the best places for outlets and helping couples with a emergency plan B when the weather changes.
Career Scope and Challenges
00:01:43
Speaker
Things that are highly stressful but are so important to a smooth wedding day.
00:01:51
Speaker
So, before you take a single step into the world of wedding planning, really think about, are you up for the whole thing? Are you choosing this career because you loved planning your own wedding? Which, no shame in that. That is exactly how I got into wedding planning.
00:02:12
Speaker
But I can tell you that for myself there is a very big difference from being the bride in the wedding and also telling people what to do to get all your plans to come together and Being the actual wedding planner who is entrusted with doing all of the things so spend some time really thinking about what about being in this profession is attractive to you and
00:02:39
Speaker
uh, what is it that you are hoping to, uh, what's, what's the hope of your, um, career and wedding planning? And what does that look like for you?
Resources and Networking for Beginners
00:02:53
Speaker
I can tell you though, that it is a incredibly rewarding career and there, even though it can be very stressful at times, there's nothing like seeing all of a couple's plans come together and knowing that you helped make that happen.
00:03:10
Speaker
If you are brand new, there are a lot of resources.
00:03:14
Speaker
If you're brand new and you're not quite sure where to start, there are a lot of great resources for courses about wedding planning, the ins and outs of what actually goes into planning a wedding. There are numerous that you can find where if you are at a point where you're like, I love the idea of this career, but I'm just not sure
00:03:41
Speaker
What does that even look like those certification courses or wedding planning or event management courses are a great resource. Also if you have a connection to a local wedding planner in your market.
00:03:55
Speaker
You might also consider applying for an assistant position for a season or see if there are any opportunities to shadow. There's nothing like actually being at a wedding to see what the role of wedding planner actually is. So if you have the opportunity to get any hands-on experience, that can be the quickest way to really decide like, is this the right career path for me?
00:04:24
Speaker
The next thing is to really think about your local market and do some research. Make sure that you have a good understanding of who is in your market, of both other wedding vendors, venues, and the other planners. You want to build relationships with people who can not only refer you business and who you can refer business to, but these are the people that you will likely be
00:04:54
Speaker
hired to do weddings with. So you want to have good relationships with your local community. There are also what you can attend wedding shows, you can join professional associations and online communities to start engaging with people locally in your area.
00:05:15
Speaker
I am a introvert, a huge introvert. So when I started my planning business, I avoided this, like making connections, networking, all of that, because I just didn't want to put myself out there. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable I feel walking into a room where I don't know anyone and just having to make small talk, worst nightmare.
00:05:37
Speaker
Um, but above anything else that you do when you're starting a business, making connections with other professionals in your industry should be the top of your priority list before any marketing activities, um, anything like that have start
00:05:56
Speaker
creating those connections in a meaningful way, because I can tell you that once I did this, once I was like, you know what, my business isn't growing as quickly as I would like. I just need to get over my anxiety and shyness and go to an event and start meeting people. And that is exactly what I did. And I cannot tell you the
00:06:21
Speaker
change that I saw in my business in a season. I went from a handful of weddings a year to being fully booked and adding more assistance and associate planner. And that happened in the space of a year. And that was based just on relationships that I had created in my local
Defining Business Goals and Niche
00:06:40
Speaker
market. So even if you are the most
00:06:44
Speaker
shy person and you just can't even imagine, I can tell you most people are so nice. And I mean, we are all in the business of helping couples have amazing weddings. There is, there's just a kindness in people that do this. So just put yourself out there and start making those relationships. Now the next step would be to create a business plan. Now,
00:07:15
Speaker
When you think of a business plan, I know when I hear those words, I think like the Small Business Association and this like lengthy report that I need to write.
00:07:25
Speaker
I personally did not go that route. I sat down, defined some goals that I had for the next three years, spent some time thinking about what was my vision for this business? How many weddings did I want to plan? Who do I want to serve? Things like
00:07:47
Speaker
that can just help you have a pathway forward. So you're not just like, I'm a wedding planner and I don't quite know where I want this business to go. Instead you have some, um, road markers that you can follow. So the most important thing when you're sitting down and working on whatever form of business plan you're writing, um, is understanding who your target client is.
00:08:15
Speaker
I know that sometimes people are resistant to like defining a niche in the wedding planning market or only focusing on one target client. But if you have this on lock, if you have this in your head, everything becomes easier. Your marketing becomes easier. Choosing your continuing education becomes easier because
00:08:42
Speaker
If you are trying to serve everyone and speak to everyone with your messaging, you're speaking to no one. Most couples, this is the first time they have had to hire a wedding planner and they don't quite know what they need.
00:08:58
Speaker
Until they are told like this is what my job is because just like a lot of people in our lives when we tell them we're wedding planners They have a certain picture in their head of what that is couples have a certain idea of what a wedding planner is so Knowing exactly who you want to serve is going to help you long term to make everything else in your business a bit easier, so
00:09:24
Speaker
We have blog posts on Planners Lounge about finding your niche in the market that I will link in the show notes, but you could really niche down in a variety of ways. You could focus only on certain venues that you plan weddings at, or maybe you only plan adventure elopements, or you only do
00:09:52
Speaker
home weddings, so people who are planning weddings in their backyards.
Service Offerings and Pricing Strategies
00:09:55
Speaker
So not only is this going to speak directly to that type of client that wants those, so like if you're if you plan backyard weddings, then someone who is looking at a
00:10:08
Speaker
downtown hotel in a big city, that's not your client. You don't want to waste time with going through the whole consultation process and targeting them with your marketing messaging and all of that when in the end that's not your wheelhouse and those aren't the type of weddings that you plan and you're probably not going to connect with that couple.
00:10:31
Speaker
Spend some time thinking about is there a niche in the wedding planning market that you can fill in your local market or is there a type of client that you envision. That is your ideal target client that you want to spend time sharing your marketing message with so that i cannot tell you how important that is that is it is worth the time to really deep dive into that.
00:10:59
Speaker
Once you have your business plan and your target market in mind, let's move on to your services and pricing. So decide what you're going to offer. There is a definite standard of kind of what planners think they should offer. So usually it's full planning, partial planning, and
00:11:22
Speaker
Some people call it day of coordination. That's not really an accurate descriptor. So I've called it wedding day management or month of coordination. Those are things cause you really start working with the couples far beyond the day of their wedding. Um, but you don't have to offer all these things and you can create other things that you'd like to offer. So you,
00:11:49
Speaker
Spend some time thinking about like, what do you actually want to offer? There are planners that I have met where they only do month of coordination. They don't do full or partial planning. Their whole thing is just coming in for couples that need someone like the last six weeks before the wedding. On the flip side, I know planners who they only do full service planning and design. They do not take any other type of clients. So think about what you want to offer and
00:12:17
Speaker
These things can be fluid. So if you decide, OK, in my first year, I'm just going to go with full partial and month of coordination, that's great. Maybe in a year you'll be like, you know what I really didn't like doing was the partial planning that was not fun for me. And so you get rid of it. Pricing and services should be revisited annually to make sure that one, you enjoy doing it. You still are.
00:12:47
Speaker
actually booking clients with the services that you offer, but also you should be revisiting your pricing every year and making sure that you are profitable, that the services that you're offering are actually bringing you money in and you're not losing money, and that you are adjusting based on economic factors, cost of living, cost of delivering services, things like that.
Legal Essentials for Wedding Planners
00:13:18
Speaker
The other part of finances that you want to think about if you're brand new is what are your startup costs? What are your ongoing expenses going to be? And just having that all in mind. We will dive much deeper into pricing in later episodes, but
00:13:40
Speaker
A lot of planners, especially in the beginning, they, let's say you offer full planning and you charge $5,000. I'm going to choose a round number because it's easier for me to do math that way. And you realize because you're tracking your hours, you are
00:14:00
Speaker
keeping a good track of how much you're spending for, you know, marketing, things like that, client acquisition. And you might find at the end that charging $5,000 for full planning, you are making a couple dollars an hour. That's not sustainable. So it's
00:14:24
Speaker
important to set pricing, but also to constantly be evaluating, is this actually profitable for me? Because you don't want to get a few years into your business and then realize that you basically are making no money and you're very tired and burned out because you're trying to take on more clients because you need to make money. So
00:14:50
Speaker
being very good about checking those numbers is going to help you keep your pricing not only competitive with your market, but also making sure that you're actually paying yourself a salary.
00:15:06
Speaker
The next step is to register your business with your state and choose your legal structure. So choosing a business name, making sure that you have all the licenses needed for your state, county, whatever is required for your area, and then also getting an insurance policy. You want to make sure that everything is
00:15:33
Speaker
all done legally and you have all the appropriate licenses, insurances, and everything in case anything were to go wrong. And then the last part is creating contracts. Now, in the beginning, it can be tempting to just go online and look for a contract and adjust it, but
00:15:59
Speaker
If COVID taught us anything is that you want a super, super, super cohesive contract that covers anything that you could imagine.
00:16:12
Speaker
So, I would always recommend that even if you just are hiring a lawyer for a consultation to review what you have and make suggestions, it will never hurt you to have a lawyer review the contracts you have because they are there to protect your business.
Branding and Marketing Strategies
00:16:33
Speaker
When things go sideways with a client or something happens in the world and you have to refer back to that contract, you will be very happy that it was reviewed by a professional.
00:16:45
Speaker
Once your business is legally registered, you have all the appropriate contracts, insurance, everything in place, then it is time to really start with marketing. And that starts with the branding of your business. So your brand identity should be a reflection of your business, business's personality and appeal to your target market. So,
00:17:14
Speaker
This means, you know, a logo, your colors, um, developing a website, your social media presence, things like that. Um, and then figuring out what is your marketing plan going to be going forward. Um, there are going to be a ton of places that people are
00:17:37
Speaker
looking for your marketing dollars to be spent. I mean, they will come out of the woodwork, especially once you register your business. I get mailers all the time to spend money on some kind of marketing or advertising. My recommendation is always to, first of all, if you know who your target market is, you should know where are they hanging out. So if you are,
00:18:07
Speaker
Um, if you're planning, um, I'm going to continue with the backyard wedding. Um, example, if that's what you plan, then advertising in a big, uh, print publication, which at least in our area still exists, um, that primarily targets like a city might not be the best place to spend your money. Um, now, if you are.
00:18:37
Speaker
you know, planning weddings at specific venues, then what might be the best is to partner with that venue to hold an open house or something like that. So you have to think about where are my target clients, where are they getting information and how can I meet them there? Not, I'll just put myself everywhere and hope that someone stumbles across me. So,
00:18:59
Speaker
With marketing, choose a few places you think will be most effective and commit to those marketing activities. There are a lot of things that take time to pay off. So for example, as I mentioned before, I worked in content marketing for a lot of wedding businesses and
00:19:21
Speaker
That means writing blogs, social media, getting people, guesting on podcasts, things like that. And those things are amazing and they help drive traffic to your website, but it is not overnight.
00:19:38
Speaker
usually it would be like a three to five month lead time before, you know, if we had published a blog post and shared it to Pinterest and all of these different platforms, it would be a while before suddenly we'd see a resulting spike in website traffic. And then you want to track that traffic to see are they opting into your newsletter list, things like that.
00:20:05
Speaker
Again, we will dive deeper into marketing practices as the podcast progresses, but to start out if you have marketing money to spend, just choose a few and really think about is my target market there. Now, if you do not have a lot of marketing dollars to spend, then my number one recommendation would be to spend your time networking and building relationships with other people in your local market.
00:20:34
Speaker
Those connections are going to be where you can refer your clients to with, you know, you'll know these vendors, you trust them, you know, they'll take good care of your clients. And so you want to know people who can refer you, you can refer your clients to, but these connections are also people who will refer you their clients.
00:20:57
Speaker
And that is going to help your business grow faster than any blog post or display ad on a website will ever do that.
Episode Wrap-up and Feedback Request
00:21:10
Speaker
So I would have networking and making connections be the top of your marketing plan. And then from there, look at the paid options.
00:21:20
Speaker
That brings us to the end of our first episode. These are just touching on the things that you want to do when you're getting ready to start a wedding planning business. We will deep dive further into each of these later on. And I'm going to link to a variety of blog posts on the Planners Lounge website that can give you more information about these now in the show notes.
00:21:46
Speaker
Um, our next episode is going to be all about creating a brand. So we're going to deep dive into the branding aspect of creating your wedding planning business. And that will drop next week. Um, I am again, so excited to be here to be launching this podcast.
00:22:09
Speaker
and I hope that you will find it helpful. If there is ever a topic that you would like us to speak about or a expert that we could bring in that you would love to hear from, please send an email to info at plannerslounge.com. We are always happy for feedback and I hope that you have an amazing week.