A wedding planner is there to help the bride and groom with any and all parts of their special day. This might range from assisting with the outfit selection and theme creation to procuring a suitable venue and contributing to the cuisine planning.
A wedding planner’s profession may seem beautiful on the surface, but it actually calls for a lot of self-assurance, organization, patience, enthusiasm, and creativity. As a wedding coordinator, your preconceptions about the job will be tested over the first several months.
Check out our ultimate list of Wedding Planners in Melbourne to help you organise a stress-free wedding.
The capacity to maintain on track, priorities goals and activities keep records of transactions, guarantee that all materials and persons are present and accounted for, and guide people through the various stages of the wedding plan and celebration can be taxing.
An excellent wedding planner should also be patient. If you just just wait, everything will work out. Your hard work and heartfelt emotions as a wedding coordinator will pay off when the happy couple leaves for their honeymoon.
Many people find that working as a wedding planner is a fun and fulfilling profession; however, there are some things to think about before making the leap. Looking for a Wedding Event Planner? Look no further, Vines of the Yarra Valley have you covered.
Is It Possible That I Would Enjoy Working as a Wedding Planner?
Some people appear to have a natural talent for organizing weddings. For some, a career in the wedding industry is a natural fit because of their enthusiasm for the industry. What qualities and expertise are necessary for a career as a wedding planner?
One Among Your Talents Is Planning
You prefer to have everything planned out in advance and have little tolerance for uncertainty. You may be the type of person who enjoys taking charge and making sure that everyone in the group is on the same page in terms of when, where, and what time the outing will take place.
Some people may think you overdo it when planning gatherings because you’re so efficient. However, this quality is ideal for those who are organising a wedding. If you enjoy organising and managing complex events, wedding planning can be the perfect profession for you.
You’re Dedicated
Sadly, some people’s worse traits come out to play at weddings. The term “Bridezilla” has become synonymous with wedding horror stories in which the bride is dissatisfied with how her big day went and demands that every detail be perfect.
Here is where dedication really matters. As the groom, you will see this through to the end and make sure everything goes smoothly on the big day. Your dedication to the couple and willingness to see them through the hard patches are essential, even if your clients is incredibly difficult to work with.
Your Passion for Weddings
Having a strong interest in weddings is a plus. You need to have a genuine interest in every facet of the event, from the attire and accessories to the flowers and catering to the entertainment and setting.
You’re fascinated by weddings, and you can’t get enough articles on the latest wedding trends and the expectations of modern couples. This may be the next step for you if you’re a true wedding enthusiast.
You Have Excellent Bargaining Skills
Even if the store has fixed prices, you’ll probably still try to haggle with the clerk to get a lower price. You are the type of customer that will always try to negotiate a better deal for themselves, whether it’s asking for free window tinting when buying a car or asking for a lower price on an item of clothes.
A career as a wedding planner might suit you if you enjoy bargaining. You’ll be able to bargain with customers and vendors to acquire the lowest possible costs across the board.
You are a Master of Mayhem.
An orchestra needs a conductor to bring together a disparate collection of instruments and make beautiful music.
They are able to handle the mountain of paperwork, client meetings, vendor problems, transportation concerns, and anything else that comes up over the course of wedding preparation and coordination because to their impeccable organizing skills.
Typical Duties of a Wedding Planner
A wedding planner may be an employee of an established wedding or event management firm, or they may operate independently. Professional wedding planners need to be able to adapt to a wide range of budgets, as they are employed for events of varying sizes.
Helping the groom and bride decide on the entertainment, colors, flowers, attire, theme, wedding party specifics, food, and wedding’s location are all part of a wedding planner’s remit.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates that a wedding planner’s duties also include arranging with third parties such as the wedding’s officiant, cake maker, florist, and limousine driver. In a nutshell, a wedding planner handles everything so the groom and bride can relax and enjoy the special day.
Basic duties of the job
- As a wedding planner, you’ll have a wide range of responsibilities and tasks to manage. Among them are some examples:
- Having a conversation with couples about their wedding day goals.
- Planning the wedding’s finances
- Counseling on the norms and practices associated with weddings
- Putting together a quote database for use in your work
- Making financial arrangements with vendors including florists, photographers, caterers, and event spaces
- Sharing the planning process with the couple
- It is important to keep track of your spending to ensure that you don’t go beyond.
- Being there guarantees that the event will go off without a hitch.
- Attending to administrative duties, such as scheduling and filing paperwork for new clients and meetings
- Spreading the word about your company on various social media platforms and on the web
- Concurrently focusing on multiple tasks
Competencies Needed
A wedding planner’s interpersonal skills, including communication and the ability to get along with a wide range of people, are essential. You will be in charge of ensuring that the bride and groom’s respective bridal parties remain composed and productive throughout the entire wedding planning and preparation process.
You need to be able to work well with other experts in the wedding planner sector and thrive in a fast-paced, often stressful environment. Career preparation in this sector might be aided by experience or training in interpersonal interactions, event planning, company management, or a similar field. One other way to learn the ropes is to observe or intern for a successful wedding planner.
Energy and Dedication
The time commitment involved in a wedding planning career is one of the main distinctions between regular work and this field. Putting in extra time outside of the standard 9 to 5 workday is essential to your success as a planner, both monetarily and professionally.
If you’re new to the industry and looking to make a good impression, you should take the 9 o’clock call from a customer who demands an urgent answer to their pressing query with a smile.
And before you respond, keep in mind that panicked brides won’t always follow those limits, and an inattentive wedding planner can turn into a very disgruntled client, regardless of who was at fault.
If you’re serious about becoming a wedding planner, you should embrace the unplanned calls and meetings that come with the job. Without dedication and the ability to adapt to change, you will be knocked out by the challenges you face at work and forced to start looking for a new job.
Truthfulness and uprightness.
Most of your day as a wedding planner will be spent talking to clients, clients’ guests, and vendors. In a single day, you might respond to the same question 10 times if you’re communicating with dozens of people for the same event.
The dreaded if this outfit makes the bride seem fat, could also arise. You should be able to respond honestly and appropriately to their inquiries. No one wants to hear the words, that dress does make the bride’s hips look a bit wide, from a hired hand, especially if the words come out in a snide tone.
Some sellers will try to compensate you financially for favoring their products. Keep in mind that you are representing your client here, therefore you should check that the recommended vendor meets their requirements and is affordable.
You need to be willing to put the requirements of your clients ahead of your own, even if it means taking a hit on your commission. Reputation is everything in this industry, so don’t jeopardize it for the sake of a few extra money.
Quick Decision-Making
It is your role as the wedding planner to keep your cool and start working out the kinks as soon as possible. Unless absolutely necessary, do not let the bride know. They paid you to deal with any difficulties that may emerge; you shouldn’t be turning the tables on them.
Having a strong referral network and access to essential resources at your disposal requires you to cultivate meaningful connections with other vendors. Your primary responsibility is to make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch and that the couple has a wonderful time on their special day.
Hearing and Comprehending
One of the most important skills a wedding planner may have is the ability to actively listen. A person with this skill can actively engage in a conversation, discover the other person’s true intentions, and prompt them for information.
Being a wedding coordinator requires a high level of sensitivity. Multiple people’s opinions and preferences will need to be taken into account when you organise this event. When tensions rise and emotions run high, the wedding planner often finds themselves in the middle of a fight.
You need to be a steadying influence on others around you, even in the midst of crisis. Disagreements between the bride and her mother are not uncommon, and neither are broken up families or unreliable service providers.
At times you may feel the want to walk away but remember that your primary concern should always be putting out flames rather than adding fuel to them. Be steady in the face of chaos and do what you can to make the event fun for everyone involved rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame.
Mutual Comprehension Across Cultures
It’s important to be sensitive to the cultural norms of the people you might do business with. A skilled wedding planner will be able to prepare a wedding for couples from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds.
This would not only make it possible for everyone to find gainful employment, but it would also be a lot of fun to witness and participate in the many fascinating cultural wedding traditions around the world.
Let’s say you’re interested in expanding your clientele and learning more about local wedding traditions from a variety of countries. A deeper understanding of these countries and their wedding customs can help you plan a more diverse range of memorable celebrations.
The Capacity to Set and Attain Goals
You need the ability to plan in order to work in the wedding planning industry. The ability to organize and carry out tasks well is crucial for the success of any wedding or career. In order to pull off a successful wedding, you need to know your clients’ wants and expectations, set a realistic timeline, and coordinate all of the necessary events and materials.
Together with your clients, establish milestones and deadlines for achieving those goals. It is possible to divide every given occurrence into smaller sub-events, and then proceed to the next stage once the previous one has been reached. Goals should be defined for each step.
For instance, you may plan for the venue to be finalized before any decorations are ordered. Sit down with clients after completing each stage to ensure they are satisfied with the work so far.
Aspirational Perspective
The services of professional wedding planners really come into their own here. As you get to know your clientele, you’ll start to imagine the wedding from the bride’s perspective. Put your imagination to work crafting the situation, and check in with your customers to make sure it’s just what they were hoping for.
You may use sketches, CGI, or examples of other events you’ve coordinated to show clients what you have in mind for their wedding.
Interest in Highly Emotional Experiences
Clients will be able to tell if you aren’t truly enthusiastic about every facet of wedding planning. Fun wedding planners understand the importance of stoking the flames of the guests’ enthusiasm and creating an atmosphere that fosters their participation and enjoyment.
Put your energy into planning events that will make everyone there feel something. It’s one of the rare professions where the goal is actively to induce tears in the audience. A successful event is one in which the feeling move attendees to tears, music, atmosphere, and theme.
You need to have a passion for weddings and for being a significant part of your clients’ lives, since you will get both. Your clients will always recall you as that one special individual who put in extra effort to make their special day one they will never forget.
Need help planning your wedding? Check out our list of Wedding Event Planners here.
Flexibility
The wedding day may throw a wrench in even the best-laid plans if the caterer is late, the bride gets a stain on her dress, or a groomsman disappears.
Even if something goes wrong during an event, a good planner can figure out a way to fix it and make it even better. In order to keep the wedding on schedule, it is important to have a backup plan for each of the events.
Focus on the Particulars
Although it has become something of a catchphrase, “attention to every detail” is still essential in the field of expert wedding planning. Client are paying for the planner’s eagle eyes and ears, so it’s in everyone’s best interest if problems can be avoided.
A person who isn’t naturally diligent about even the smallest details would have a difficult time managing a huge group of invited guests and vendors, keeping to a strict schedule, and ensuring that everything and everyone looks fantastic at all times.
Self-Reliance, or the Willingness to Take Charge and Get the Job Done
In every film depicting a wedding, a well-dressed wedding planner flits around with a clipboard, directing the activities of various service providers. The work is actually far more physical than that.
Event coordinators spend their days pinning tablecloths, carrying boxes, folding programmes, and creating favors. Smiles on their faces, they are kneeling to help the bride with her dress, pushing dirty glasses and napkins away from the food table so they don’t spoil the shots, and sometimes running from one end of the site to the other.
Services of Expert Wedding Organizers
That’s why it pays to plan a big, lavish wedding: more guests means more money.
A wedding planner’s operating expenses sometimes include the cost of flying to exotic locales for wedding receptions and the cost of tasting a variety of gourmet foods. Planning parties and other special events could be an excellent career choice if you enjoy doing so and find the nitty-gritty aspects to be fascinating, enjoyable, and challenging rather than tedious.
Drawbacks of Hiring a Wedding Planner
It is common for a wedding planner to have to interact with distant relatives of the bride and groom. There may be tensions among these people since the two sets of parents may have different ideas about how the wedding should go.
During the planning process, the bride and groom often hire a wedding planner to act as an intermediary and make sure their needs are being met.
Weddings may be stressful, expensive, and a huge emotional investment. Potential landmines that might derail a wedding include a bridesmaid forgetting her outfit, a flower arrangement that doesn’t turn out as planned, or a wedding cake that crumbles in the back of the bakery delivery van.
When issues arise, people will be counting on you to think quickly and take decisive action. In most cases, weddings take place on the weekend, so wedding preparation is not like a regular 9-to-5 job where you may relax in the evenings and on the weekends.
Conclusion
The bride and groom can rely on the assistance of a wedding planner for any and all aspects of their big day. Confidence, order, patience, zeal, and originality are all vital in this line of work.
A wedding planner’s patience is essential, as is an understanding that the details will fall into place. We all know at least one “Bridezilla” or “Bride from Hell” story. If you are good at haggling, you might do well in the wedding planning industry.
Since they are hired for events of varied proportions, professional wedding planners need to be flexible enough to work within a wide variety of financial constraints. Planning a wedding involves juggling many different roles and duties.
You’ll be in charge of keeping the bridal parties of the bride and groom calm and efficient as they work to pull off the wedding. Experience or education in event planning, business management, or a related sector could prove useful in getting one’s professional footing.
The unscheduled calls and meetings are a part of the profession, therefore you must learn to welcome them if you want to be a wedding planner. A client who isn’t satisfied with their wedding planner isn’t happy with the planner.
In this field, your reputation is everything, therefore don’t risk it to get any more work done. The ability to feel the emotions of others is crucial for a wedding planner. One must respect the cultural norms of the people with whom one conducts business. A competent wedding planner can accommodate couples from many different ethnic backgrounds.
This would be a great opportunity to learn about and take part in some of the intriguing wedding traditions practised across the world. You need to understand your clients’ needs and goals, create a practical schedule, and orchestrate all of the required activities.
Planners that know how to have fun with weddings know how to keep the guests excited and engaged. It’s one of the only industries where it’s the job description to make the audience cry. A large number of invited guests and vendors would be challenging to manage for someone who isn’t typically careful about the smallest things.
It is in the best interest of both the planner and the client to avoid difficulties, as the client is paying for the planner’s eagle eyes and ears. If you have a passion for the finer details, a career in event planning could be a great fit for you.
It is not uncommon for a wedding planner’s overhead to include meals and travel to far-flung locations for festivities. A bridesmaid forgetting her dress or the flowers not blooming as expected are just two of the many landmines that could derail a wedding.
Content Summary
- For some, a career in the wedding industry is a natural fit because of their enthusiasm for the industry.
- You prefer to have everything planned out in advance and have little tolerance for uncertainty.
- Having a strong interest in weddings is a plus.
- A career as a wedding planner might suit you if you enjoy bargaining.
- Helping the groom and bride decide on the entertainment, colors, flowers, attire, theme, wedding party specifics, food, and wedding’s location are all part of a wedding planner’s remit.
- As a wedding planner, you’ll have a wide range of responsibilities and tasks to manage.
- You need to be able to work well with other experts in the wedding planner sector and thrive in a fast-paced, often stressful environment.
- Career preparation in this sector might be aided by experience or training in interpersonal interactions, event planning, company management, or a similar field.
- One other way to learn the ropes is to observe or intern for a successful wedding planner.
- Putting in extra time outside of the standard 9 to 5 workday is essential to your success as a planner, both monetarily and professionally.
- Without dedication and the ability to adapt to change, you will be knocked out by the challenges you face at work and forced to start looking for a new job.
- Most of your day as a wedding planner will be spent talking to clients, clients’ guests, and vendors.
- Having a strong referral network and access to essential resources at your disposal requires you to cultivate meaningful connections with other vendors.
- Being a wedding coordinator requires a high level of sensitivity.
- You need to be a steadying influence on others around you, even in the midst of crisis.
- It’s important to be sensitive to the cultural norms of the people you might do business with.
- A skilled wedding planner will be able to prepare a wedding for couples from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds.
- You need the ability to plan in order to work in the wedding planning industry.
- In order to keep the wedding on schedule, it is important to have a backup plan for each of the events.
- Although it has become something of a catchphrase, “attention to every detail” is still essential in the field of expert wedding planning.
- That’s why it pays to plan a big, lavish wedding: more guests means more money.
- A wedding planner’s operating expenses sometimes include the cost of flying to exotic locales for wedding receptions and the cost of tasting a variety of gourmet foods.
- Planning parties and other special events could be an excellent career choice if you enjoy doing so and find the nitty-gritty aspects to be fascinating, enjoyable, and challenging rather than tedious.
- It is common for a wedding planner to have to interact with distant relatives of the bride and groom.
- During the planning process, the bride and groom often hire a wedding planner to act as an intermediary and make sure their needs are being met.
- The bride and groom frequently use the services of a wedding planner to liaise between them and the various parties involved in the planning process and to ensure that their wishes are carried out.
