Preparing a resume

Even if you’ve never been paid to plan a wedding, you can still write a powerful resume that can help you to get a job in the wedding industry.

Even if the only weddings you plan are for yourself, friends and family members, you will still have wedding planning experience! The key is to present that experience in a way that is attractive to employers.

Employers want to know you have the specific skills necessary to do the job they are hiring for. A resume containing too much irrelevant information could be rejected before the employer has even finished reading it. Therefore, instead of submitting a traditional resume focusing on each job you have ever held and what you did, create a functional resume focusing on the skills and experience the employer is looking for.

The following types of experience may be helpful for almost any types of jobs in the wedding industry.

• Sales
• Customer service
• Wedding or event coordination.

Other basic principles of preparing an effective resume are the same as for any job. For example, try to keep your resume to a single page unless you have extensive relevant experience. Also, you don’t need to go back further than 10 years on your resume, since some employers may judge what you learned before then to be out-dated.

Download a sample resume and cover letter in the lesson materials.