A wedding is one of the most important, anticipated, and expensive days of most people’s lives.
Depending on the couple, the cost of the event can easily get into five, six, even seven-digit figures.
This means that there is plenty of room for profit for an enterprising individual looking to help a happy couple plan the perfect day.
A wedding can be one of the most complex and intricate events that the soon-to-be newlyweds will plan. There are a tremendous number of moving parts that come together to make a wedding great, from a good bachelor and/or bachelorette party with friends to making sure that the cake is there, the food meets their demands, and that the venue is appropriate.
A wedding consultant acts as something of a ‘master of chaos’ for the wedding ceremony, helping both to plan that magical day and to ensure that the ceremony goes off without a hitch.
How, though, do you become a wedding consultant? Luckily, it is a job that anybody, properly equipped and detail-oriented, can get into. Judging by memberships to various professional associations concerned with wedding consultancy, there are probably around 10,000 such persons in the United States.
Becoming A Wedding Consultant
The path to becoming a wedding consultant is not as rigorous academically as many other jobs. It does not require a specific degree or course of study from a four-year college, though studying will help you to better manage your business and plan weddings. If you choose to pursue some sort of education in the field, you don’t need to go out and find a four-year program; you can do well with an education received through an online course, such as the one offered by Stratford Career Institute.
It would be in your best interest to get some education in the field, as there are many different kinds of weddings and many different cultural takes on how a wedding should go.
Many people who end up working as wedding consultants get into the field without any specialized education at all. One of the most common pathways into the profession is one of the simplest.
In other words, many people who end up as wedding consultants find their way into the field after they plan a wedding, or even a few weddings. Usually, these people did all the work to plan their own weddings, and they may have even helped their friends to plan their special days.
In doing so, they might have come to realize that they quite enjoyed the machinations of planning a wedding, and thus entered the field.
Starting Out As A Wedding Consultant
If you find yourself bitten by the ‘wedding consultant’ bug, and you find the wedding planning job description to be something that you wish to do to earn a living or augment other income, it’s not very hard to get started in the field.
Understanding What People Expect
One of the first steps is to make sure you understand what people want from a wedding. Sure, everyone wants to have a day that they will remember fondly forever, but there’s more to a wedding than that.
Some people are more religious and will expect the wedding to adhere to various traditions rooted in the history of their personal faith. A strictly Orthodox Jewish wedding will look different than a Modern Orthodox Jewish wedding, and both weddings will look very different than a wedding for a Christian or Muslim couple.
Understanding what people are looking for in their wedding is an essential task for anyone who hopes to be a wedding consultant.
Understanding Cultures
While some people confuse with religion with culture, the truth is that even in different regions, even people of the same religion will have wildly different expectations of their weddings. A Hindu wedding in Bali, Indonesia, or for someone from that region, will not look anything similar to a Hindu wedding for someone from Nepal, and both will look different from a wedding for a Hindu couple in India.
It’s important to understand the cultures of people in the area you plan to work in, at the very least to make sure you can understand what they expect to happen at their wedding as well as to avoid cultural faux pas (such as serving beef at any Hindu wedding).
Online coursework can help provide some of the basic knowledge concerning what people in your community may expect from their ceremonies, but it will have to be augmented with experience, and even with some research into local cultures that you are likely to be putting together weddings for.
For those looking to make a life of working as a wedding consultant, realize that traditions and cultural wedding norms are ever-changing, and that keeping up with them, just like keeping up with the wedding trends of the year or season, will require continuous work and research.
Knowing Food
Not every wedding will have food at the reception, but most will have something, whether it is just simple finger food or an elaborate meal including prime rib, chicken cordon bleu, and filet of sole.
For any wedding consultant, it will be important to build and maintain relationships with a number of caterers who can provide everything from a nice spinach puff to a full three-course meal.
Because food expectations at a wedding can be so varied, it’s important to ensure that you maintain good ties to caterers. This means planning meals with them (and engaging their services) in a reasonable and timely manner, ensuring that all changes to the menu are made well in advance, and that the caterer is paid for the work that they do.
Finding A Band or DJ
While bands at weddings have slowly fallen out of vogue, replaced by disc jockeys with access to the internet, that does not mean that music at a wedding (and at the reception) is unimportant.
A good wedding consultant will understand what kind of band is appropriate for the event and will have a few options in their stable for any event. They should probably also have the number of a few DJs, because that seems to be the big trend in weddings.
Attention To Venue And The Wedding Day
What does a wedding planner really do when it comes down to it? They provide their customer with an eye for details that the average person would never consider until it was far too late.
For many people, all they’re thinking about on the wedding is walking down the aisle, perhaps enjoying their wedding night or honeymoon plans, and maybe, if the caterer or baker is fantastic, trying out their dinner selection or cake.
Because of this, a good wedding consultant will be able to help ensure that the wedding day details are taken care of. A great wedding planner will take care of everything from who will play the piano version of ‘Here Comes the Bride’ to who the photographer for the ceremony will be.
Picking the right place for the wedding day, and making sure there are appropriate flowers there, is also an important job for a wedding planner. This requires understanding color schemes, how to properly match them, and how to take advantage of seasonal flora and the building’s design itself to create a beautiful ambiance.
Making A Living As A Wedding Planner
If you’re wondering how to be a wedding planner and what it entails, this is just a small list of what goes into it. The most important thing is to make sure that you understand weddings as they exist in the modern era, as well as how to run a business.
Remember that education, such as the online courses on working as a wedding consultant offered by Stratford Career Institute, is always valuable, and can help to better your understanding of all facets of the wedding planner business. Knowledge is almost always a worthy pursuit, after all.
There are thousands of weddings in major cities across the nation every year. The average cost of a wedding is nearly $20,000, and in urban centers and major cities, that cost can easily double.
If you are looking for a new career that will allow you to profit handsomely while helping people make memories that they will cherish for a lifetime, you might want to consider learning a bit more about being a wedding consultant or planner.
Stratford Career Institute offers a detailed online wedding consultant course that can start you off on the right foot.
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