How to Become a Wedding Planner From Home?

It’s no joke to be a wedding planner. It’s not only one of the most satisfying activities but also one of the most crucial.

The wedding planners take care of practically everything on the wedding day schedule. They are responsible for making sure the wedding is perfect in every way for the happy couple.

For Fairy Godmother Wedding & Event Planning Company’s Denise Ferdinand, “there is nothing better than witnessing months and months of hard work come together to produce the ideal wedding day,” she wrote in a blog post.

One of the best parts about working in this industry is seeing your efforts pay off for you. Watching your efforts bring your client’s fantasies to reality is a fantastic sensation because of how close you become to them as you do business in this industry, and that’s what makes each wedding so special and unique.

Do you want to know the steps to becoming a wedding planner? Continue reading! This article will discuss the preliminary actions you can take and the next ones you can do once you’ve established yourself. We also address some of the couples’ most often-asked questions when organizing a wedding.

You Might Wonder, “What Exactly Does a Wedding Planner Do?”

A wedding planner is someone who assists engaged couples in organizing their weddings. Among the many things they do:

• Taking customer calls and responding to emails
• Locating and contracting with appropriate outside services such as food providers, flower designers, and entertainment providers.
• Finding potential locations and coordinating with location personnel
• They make comprehensive plans for all wedding-related personnel, guests, and service providers.
• Doing administrative work and contract negotiations.
• Invitation and cake choices

The type of wedding you organize will be determined by several things, including the tastes of the client and the services you offer. 

Some married couples opt for more intimate celebrations, while others go all out. A professional wedding planner should be able to accommodate a wide range of client requests.

How to Become a Wedding Planner (Complete Guide)

The following steps need to be taken for you to become a wedding planner:

Qualifications

You don’t need a license, certificate, or degree to be a wedding planner (though that’s not true if you want to start your own business, which we’ll discuss below). 

Whether or not you are qualified for a job depends largely on the discretion of the person or organization you are applying to. 

Unless you already have a great deal of expertise in the field, you should begin your planning career by enrolling in classes, being certified, and joining organizations like the American Association of Certified Wedding Planners.

Start With a Plan and Some Research

The second thing you should do is settle on the niche within the wedding planning industry where you wish to work. You’ll want to consider if you’re more interested in planning a small, large, or destination wedding.

You can also consider whether you’d like to work up the ranks at a wedding planning firm, start your own company, or do both.

After settling on some objectives, you can proceed with a more targeted market analysis.

You may, for instance, research the demand for the kinds of weddings you want to plan, make a list of potential employers, and follow reputable blogs and magazines that offer advice and insights about the field.

Learn from Professionals in the Field of Wedding Planning

Ok, so here’s the deal. The movies and TV shows you watch could give you the wrong impression about wedding planning, but it could be more exciting than it looks. It’s up there with the most nerve-wracking professions on Earth.

You must face stress every day, and I know you face it like the badass babe you are. However, the stress of organizing a wedding can only be understood by personal experience.

You won’t find that by looking through Instagram’s #weddings. To determine whether this benefits you, you must first have firsthand experience because there will be challenges ahead!

Conduct Industry Research

Once you know what you want, you can start looking into several strategies. You can begin by listing all the things you want to know but still need to know the answer to.

Can you give me an estimate of my earning potential? Is there a significant need for wedding planners? Help! I need to find my first customer. Prioritize market research ahead of time, just like you would your goals.

This article serves as an excellent jumping-off point. The Newlywed Report by WeddingWire and the American Wedding Study by Brides.com are further studies worth looking into.

Build Your Contact List

As in any field, networking can help you advance professionally, make valuable connections, and find fresh ideas. More than that, you get to network with prospective event vendors.

Business cards with your name, contact data, and website are a terrific way to spread the word about your services to the many individuals you will meet during wedding preparation.

Joining a wedding planners’ group is another excellent way to network with other professionals in the industry, learn about job openings, and exchange information and advice.

Attend Wedding Planner Training

To become a wedding planner, you need neither formal education nor certification. However, if you want to enter the field but need more experience, it can be helpful to learn the business’s ropes and the ins and outs.

For instance, the mission of the AAC Wedding Planners is to “elevate individuals currently in the business through certification and continuing education and to educate those wishing to become wedding planners.”

The company provides both in-person and virtual training opportunities. A Trained Wedding Planner membership is available to those who finish the course within two months.

You can also take a course at the Lovegevity Wedding Planning Institute to learn the skills necessary to become a Certified Wedding and Event Planner.

After completing the program, students get a certificate, a letter of recommendation, and the Certified Wedding and Event Planning credential.

One graduate said this about Lovegevity: “I would strongly recommend Lovegevity classes to anyone willing to jump and go for your ambitions.”

I was finally on the right track after completing the Certified Wedding Planner course.

Continue Learning

Continuing your education is a great way to remain on top of the newest developments in the wedding industry. 

To achieve this goal, it is recommended that you routinely read relevant trade journals and attend relevant seminars and classes.

If you’re constantly expanding your knowledge base, you could expand your professional network as a side effect. 

It’s a terrific method of learning new things and improving your chances of throwing fantastic parties for your clientele.

Ways to Practice With a Wedding Venue

Working with an independent wedding planner and a venue are slightly distinct experiences. To begin with, your opportunities to interact with the pair are diminished.

It’s not like you used to be close. It is because a venue’s events department is more concerned with safeguarding the venue than protecting the couple.

Simply put, a venue coordinator is the venue’s voice regarding what it needs. Professional wedding planners put the needs of the couple first.

However, as your career in wedding planning progresses, you’ll find that the venue has a lot of final say. A wedding can only take place in a suitable location. It’s helpful to have an insider’s perspective on how they function.

Learning the ins and outs of the venues you’ll be working with regularly will help you negotiate better as a wedding planner.

• Go with a local wedding venue you’d be interested in working with again. It could also be somewhere out of the ordinary, like a restaurant or bar that hosts various activities. That’s a ton of fun and helpful experience right there. If you haven’t organized a Bar Mitzvah, you haven’t lived.
• You can either drop by the location or send a courteous email offering your intern services. Let’s say you want to observe the wedding division.

The Essentials of Running a Successful Wedding Planning Company

How to start a wedding planning business is a topic that might fill a whole blog post by itself. It gets much trickier if you wish to specialize in a specific sort of wedding planning.

Consider the following for a quick summary of the best places to begin.

Connect with People

For a novice wedding planner, your personal and professional connections are invaluable. A wedding is not something you can construct on your own. The success or failure of your business depends on how well-connected you are to extraordinary venues, excellent suppliers, and even other planners.

It’s best to network with as many impressive local experts as possible. Collaboration is commonplace in the wedding industry. Join relevant Facebook groups and attend in-person networking events to get your name out there.

Define Your Ideal Couple

Which employer interests you the most? They’re getting married, but what atmosphere are they hoping to set? If you had to guess, how much money would they allocate toward the wedding? What qualities should a good wedding planner have?

Client avatars are fictional representations of your ideal customers that might be useful in marketing. That way, when marketing time comes, you’ll have a frame of reference for who you’re talking to.

Make Your Fancy Website

Your website needs to look credible if you want more customers. You need more than just a popular social media presence. You’ll need a domain you control to implement your search engine optimization strategies.

These days, many simple methods are available for making websites. It’s a good idea to pay someone to create a website once you have some revenue. Site-building platforms with pre-made templates, such as Squarespace and Wix, are ideal for getting started quickly with an essential web presence.

Start Blogging

If you ask Jenae, she will tell you that a blog may be a powerful tool for marketing your company. Blogging has completely altered my life’s course. I got my website onto Google’s first page because I kept my blog updated with detailed, instructive, and exciting posts.

The key is to address concerns typical of your target market. Try to envision life as others do. Where do their initial worries lie?

Attempting to become a wedding planner with no prior expertise may leave you unprepared. Focus on the details you already understand. 

Consider what you’ve picked up from observing wedding planners and locations. Recall the inquiries you had at the outset. The problem is best described in as much detail as possible.

Establishing a Price for Your Offerings

Your pricing will be determined by the type of planner you are and the number of weddings you want to handle annually. Furthermore, your price strategy will be determined by your market niche.

As a beginner, it is challenging to provide a ballpark figure. Respect for your level of expertise is what I propose. On the other hand, you should uphold the competition to the point that you retain customers.

Wedding planners often charge a minimum of 10% of the total expenditure. It’s normal to aim for the low end, to begin with, and work your way up as your comfort level grows.

Marketing Is Everything

You might have a knack for organizing weddings and becoming the industry standard. There is zero value if no one recognizes you.

Luckily, wedding content performs exceptionally well on the most popular social media sites. Pinterest and Instagram have become the go-to places for engaged couples to share and plan their big day.

---

Frequently Asked Question