7 Key Skills to Becoming a Successful Wedding Planner
Becoming a wedding planner involves more than just planning a wedding. You must understand the business aspect of your service and learn to manage your time to earn the most profits. You will be the face of your business and your own public relations representative. Every day you will have the opportunity to build — or damage — your reputation as a businessperson.
As your business and your expertise grow, you will probably begin planning multiple weddings at once. It is essential that you strive to provide the best, personalized attention to each couple when planning their big day, without losing your sanity.
The 7 Key Skills
No one said that becoming a wedding planner was a job for the faint of heart. Not everyone can succeed as a wedding consultant. A good wedding planner is:
- Calm. You will be the bride’s (and the groom’s!) rock. From miscommunications with vendors to major meltdowns at the ceremony, you must be able to keep your cool in the wake of a calamity. A wedding planner should always have a Plan B ready for action in case of an emergency.
- Charming. You are the face of your business and your clients’ representative. Impeccable communication and social skills are imperative. Your reputation as a wedding consultant depends on your ability to network and maintain great working relationships with vendors and venues. Wedding planners must know how to communicate and work with all personality types. Not everyone you encounter will be pleasant and easy to please. You must be able to defuse any situation to get the results your client desires.
- A Great Negotiator. The bride and groom will be counting on you to order flowers, hire the band and photographer, recommend a caterer, and help find venues for the ceremony and reception. You must be able to find the best service for the lowest price. This becomes easier as you create a reputation for yourself and develop professional relationships with vendors and venues. Your connections will get you better deals, which you can pass on to your customers.
- Good with Money. Starting a wedding planner business requires that you be able to manage your own expenses and stick to a budget, as well as be responsible for someone else’s money and budget. Previous experience with money management is vital — even if your only experience consists of controlling the household finances.
- Organized. A wedding consultant might be responsible for almost every aspect of the big day: the venues, theme, flowers, food, refreshments, attire, photography, honeymoon, and other details of the wedding. Keeping track of all the nuances, contract dates, and deadlines requires an enormous amount of organization and attention to detail. Your calendar will be your new best friend.
- A Plethora of Knowledge. A good wedding planner has fashion sense, good taste in music, and an eye for color, flowers, and themes. You must be able to keep up with the latest bridal trends and fads, hot honeymoon destinations, and of course, traditional wedding etiquette. Many wedding consultants also learn about different religious ceremonies and traditions so that they can accommodate couples of any faith.
- Able to Maintain a Sense of Humor. From indecisive or emotional brides to controlling parents and absentee vendors, your work is cut out for you. When you are dealing in dreams, the ability to keep things in perspective is essential.
Beginning your own wedding planning business will be a learning experience. No one knows everything from day one, and as the old saying goes, practice makes perfect.
At-A-Glance Wedding Planner Checklist
So you two are getting married? Why not do everything you can to make it a wedding to remember? Here are the items you will want to consider carefully while formulating your wedding plans:
Secular or Non-secular?
Decide whether you want a simple civil ceremony or a church-affiliated wedding.
This should be a straightforward decision, but if you run into a snag on this point, don’t worry; you can work it out. It’ll just be the first of many compromises!
If you want a church wedding, make an appointment to talk to the church representative that handles such things and go from there.
Money
Weddings cost money. It’s one of a handful of life-changing events, and an investment to make it everything you ever wanted it to be is appropriate.
Talk it over. Come up with a dollar figure and start gathering estimates. Once you two have decided how much you want to spend, however, don’t go over that amount. This is the first big investment you’ll make, and you want it to be a pleasant one.
Get Informed
Make your list of “must-haves,” such as wedding gown, invitations, flowers, rings and reception. Then call for estimates on each of those items.
If your estimates total less than your wedding budget, you can go on to items on your second-tier list, your “wanna-haves.” This list would include such items as a hairdresser, a photographer, a stag night, a hen party and professional music, both for the wedding ceremony and the reception.
The Moment You’ve Waited For
Did you forget the honeymoon? Not likely!
You may look at the costs you’ve racked up on paper so far and despair, thinking you’ll only have money left over for a night at the bowling alley! If that’s the case, go back over all your lists and prune. Or give yourselves more time to save the money you’ll need to create your perfect experience. The honeymoon, after all, is the consummation of the marriage. Make it a time to remember forever.
Finding a Wedding Planner
Are you in love with the dream of the perfect wedding yet overwhelmed with all the details and responsibility put upon you to plan your dream day yourself? A reliable wedding planner can help make the day you’ll always remember a wonderful experience instead of a memory worthy of a nervous breakdown.
Also called wedding consultants or coordinators, wedding planners are the bride’s right hand down to every detail in the ceremony and reception. She can be there the moment after the ring is on the finger to the last guest at the reception. The bride has the choice to give as much or as little responsibility to the planner as she desires.
But how do you know if you should hire a wedding planner? Here are a few examples where a wedding planner can help:
- The first and probably most important aim of a wedding planner is to relieve as much stress for the bride as possible while still making her feel in control of the event.
- If you are planning on a budget, your wedding planner will be sensitive and also be capable to balance the expenses. A good planner will prioritize what needs more or less monetary attention. Also, you will more likely go over your budget if you plan alone. Your wedding planner will not only make you stick to your prearranged budget, but also knows many vendors and can find special deals you would otherwise not be able to attain.
- A wedding planner will be flexible enough to accommodate your dreams for your perfect wedding, they should have the creativity to both encourage and execute your unique ideas. This is your wedding. You know what will make it memorable, and your planner should help make this dream come true. However, these professionals know what is and is not acceptable for a wedding ceremony. A good wedding planner will be honest about your not so great ideas such as the best man’s beer funneling contest.
- If the ceremony is planned out of state, a planner in that area will be familiar with geography and will know the best vendors for that area.
- One of the most important qualities of your perfect wedding planner is a shared sense of taste. Ask her what type of weddings she likes and ask to see samples of her past events. The right planner can narrow down choices in a certain category depending on your taste. Instead of thousands of invitations, a wedding planner will weed out the obviously unsatisfactory ones and let you choose from the top three.
- Finally, wedding planners know all the questions everyone else forgets to ask. If the ceremony is outside, she will remember where the bathrooms are or if portable ones need to be rented. It is the wedding planner’s job to leave no corner untouched.
There are many online resources you can use to search for the closest planners in your area. Remember to interview each applicant to see if they are qualified and if you both see eye to eye. Once your perfect wedding planner is hired, relax and know your big day is in good hands.
Online wedding planner
The Internet has proven to be a lifesaver of sorts in all areas of our lives. We can handle all of our finances online, buy a house online and now even plan our wedding online. With an online wedding planner all you need to do is fill in some standard information and you’ll be well on your way to a happy and successful wedding day.
The way these programs work is fairly straightforward. Depending on the size and location of your wedding you can use an online wedding planner to help you choose the venue as well as plan the meal. An online wedding planner can even compare the cost of dresses or tuxedo rentals, which helps you save not only valuable time in research but also money as well.
A calendar is essential when it comes to planning an event like a wedding. Of course picking the actual date of the marriage is the first step, but you also need to jot down other notable dates including when to send out the invitations, when to confirm the menu with the caterer and when wedding dress fittings are scheduled for. An online wedding planner can take care of all of this. In fact your online wedding planner may also have a feature that sends you automatic email reminders of notable dates so you don’t forget a thing.
If you are utilizing the help of a family member or perhaps a maid of honor, you can send them the link to your online wedding planner too. They’ll be able to quickly check what needs to be done and add anything you may have overlooked. A wedding can be a stressful time for the bride-to-be so having someone else with access to your online wedding planner looking things over will ensure that the day goes as smoothly as possible.
One feature that some planners have is the ability to keep track of who is and isn’t attending your wedding, along with their contact snail mail or email addresses. This is such a help when it comes time to send out all of those thank you notes after the big day. You simply log into your online wedding planner and you’ll have the guest’s name, their address and what they gave you as a gift. It makes the process of saying thank you so much easier.
Finding one is easy with a simple search. It’s a great idea to begin using one early in the wedding planning process as it’s better to plan earlier rather than later. With the aid of an online wedding planner, the only hitch that day will be the one between you and your fiancée.
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