Wedding Event Planners

The Dream of Being a Wedding Event Planner...

Many people dream of becoming a wedding planner. They have helped a few friends out with their weddings, and think "hey, this is a piece of cake" (no pun intended). They dream of being the second-most-important person at that wedding (after the bride, but before the groom)....The Wedding Planner! They have Jennifer Lopez-inspired visions dancing through their heads, and dreams of working every day with flowers, cakes, and happy brides oozing with money.

But that is just not reality. Believe it or not, I'm going to try to talk you out of pursuing a career in the wedding planner business. If you want to have a successful career as an event planner, working as a wedding event planner is not the path to take!

Time for the tough love. Please forgive me if this is not what you hoped to find on this page, but please read on: you might thank me later!

...and the Reality

Here are some of the tough realities for wedding event planners:

• Wedding event planners are a dime a dozen. There are many, many people who want to become wedding planners, and not that many brides who are willing to pay for one. It is a very, very competitive business.

• Many brides think they want a wedding planner, but aren't willing to pay for one. They want everything done as cheaply as possible, which means you do a lot of legwork for little return. There are very few brides who have the kind of money to pull out all the stops, like in the movie "The Wedding Planner."

  Corporate events, incentive meetings, festivals, special events, and sports events, on the other hand, still have budgets, but on a larger scale. And, they usually have the attitude of "do what it takes to get the job done." Brides will work you to death to save fifty cents per invitation.

• Many brides don't even realize they need a wedding planner. With all the resources available (such as "how-to" books and wedding planning guides), it is a tough sell to convince someone why they need you.

• You are constantly marketing yourself to new clients. If things go well, you only have each client once. Even with people who get married twice, they usually keep the second one a bit more low-key and definitely don't need a planner. With corporate events, incentive meetings, and special events, there is repeat business, month after month, year after year.

Ok, that's just some of the realities that starry-eyes hopefuls often don't think of. Again, I'm not saying that pursuing a career in events is easy either; but once you get there, it's much more consistent.

However, if you just know in your heart that this is what you want to do, then by all means, go for it! Below are a few links for hopeful wedding event planners.

American Academy of Wedding Professionals
FabJobs: How to Become a Wedding Planner

To continue learning about the various careers in event planning, click here to go back to "What is Event Planning?".

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