Starting a wedding planning business won’t be a fast track to becoming rich and famous, but many wedding planners are earning the steady income they want. How they are doing it is the topic of my Q&A.
Question
Weddings do not happen every day or every month so how would I get income on a monthly basis?
Answer
Once you start a wedding planning business full time, you give up the monthly (or weekly or biweekly) paychecks that you may be used to getting when you worked for someone else. However, you can still make a steady income planning weddings.
Remember that you won’t be just working on the wedding day, you’ll start working for a bride months in advance. Even if you decide to offer “day of” coordination, you’ll start working for a bride at least a month before her big day. And, you will be charging for the services that you’ll be performing. Also, understand that you won’t wait until the wedding is over to get paid. You’ll get a deposit as soon as your bride signs a contract with you. Then, you’ll bill during the course of the planning, or, you’ll bill for the entire wedding in advance, as celebrity wedding designer Preston Bailey has said he does.
Experienced wedding planners have learned to pick the right niche and market their businesses all year and they get word-of-mouth referrals, so they often handle one or more weddings a month. Also, many have grown their businesses to include other wedding planners and professionals. This way, they can manage more than one wedding in a weekend and offer additional services, such as floral design, catering, or event rental, to bring in even more income.
Of course, as a wedding planner you can make money planning other types of events. Consider social events, such as birthdays and wedding anniversaries or, if you have the knowledge and expertise, you can plan events for businesses. Corporations often don’t have event planners on staff and need help planning conferences, trade shows, product launches, and special events.
Starting a wedding planning business, like going into any business for yourself, can be risky and scary in the beginning. To be successful you’ll need to learn be great not only at planning weddings, but also at running a business and marketing your services. But if you have real passion to be a wedding planner and are willing to do what it takes to run a professional wedding planning business, you can be successful and have the income you want.
