Wedding Planning As A Profession
On average, weddings in the United States cost around $29,000, and brides spend over 200 hours planning the big day. That’s a lot of money and effort. With over 2.5 million weddings occurring in the US each year, there’s a growing demand for wedding planners – someone who can step in and take the pressure off the happy couple, leaving them time and energy to anticipate the ceremony and reception, rather than ending up stressed and drained when the big day arrives.
As a wedding planner, you will take on a range of roles – planner, creator, director, advisor, and coordinator – possibly even counselor! Your people and organizational skills will be put to good use. And you will find the outcome incredibly rewarding – helping to create a wedding day that your clients will remember for the rest of their lives.
This course has been carefully designed to help you through the process, by providing a step-by-step guide to getting started and becoming successful in your new career. This guide will help you gain the skills, savvy and confidence you need to oversee all the details of a wedding, and to prepare for a magnificent event.
Wedding planners have been around as long as there have been weddings. Mostly, however, they’ve been unpaid for all their hard work. Family members, mothers, sisters, friends – whoever had a natural aptitude for organizing things probably took on the mantle of wedding planner – perhaps you’ve even taken on that role in the past!
But in this day and age, when time is precious and people are working longer hours and perhaps living far away from their immediate family, hiring a professional wedding planner is becoming more and more common.
Judy from The Bella Hotel tells the story of her first experience with a wedding planner:
“As a functions organizer, I’m familiar with all kinds of weddings. But recently I had the pleasure of helping to organize the reception for a couple that employed the services of a wedding planner. It made everything so much easier for me – and seemingly for the couple as well. I could see that it just took the pressure off them. I met them in the early stages, when they were considering different venues, but from there on in, I dealt with the wedding planner.
On the day of the wedding, when they arrived after the ceremony, the bride and groom were relaxed and smiling, mingling with the guests, not even remotely stressed. Now I can tell you that is NOT the usual scenario. Even on the day of the wedding, often the bride and groom, or the bride’s mother, or the bridesmaids – are still organizing things, still trying to direct the venue staff, worrying about the details instead of enjoying the experience. Their wedding planner simply took care of all that for them – quietly, with no fuss. I was impressed – she just took it all in her stride and made things happen.