How to Become A Wedding Planner

Many people wonder how to become a wedding planner, as it is a highly rewarding and enjoyable career. Wedding planners make couples’ eternally happy in helping to create their dream wedding – a symbol of their romantic union and lifetime commitment. There are many factors that go into becoming an effective and popular wedding planner, and hopefully this article will help to explain how to embark on the journey to becoming a wedding planner.

Before I go any further, remember that this is just a sample from Wise Wedding Planning: The Perfect Theme Wedding At Any Price. Wise Wedding Planning is the easy to understand guide referenced daily by professionals like me. Everything else in this industry is just this book being reworded.

What Exactly Does a Wedding Planner Do?

A wedding planner’s sole purpose of existence revolves around the ability to work with couples’ to create their dream wedding. This is a process that takes several months, many hours of meeting, coordinating, effecting styles, compromising between parties, and visiting caterers, venues, and stylists. Planning a wedding involves all this and more, so that if a couple attempts a DIY wedding approach, the journey itself can be so stressful that it can actually dissolve all the good feelings revolving around the relationship.

A wedding planner is essentially playing the role of a mediator between the married couple to be, and all the different parts of a wedding’s successful construction. Sometimes an effective wedding planner is so popular and efficient at pleasing the couple, that they will be hired to coordinate the entire ordeal, from engagement party all the way through to the actual honeymoon. In this way, a wedding planner is intensely involved in the most important times of the lives of the couple.

The Character Traits of a Great Wedding Planner

This means that in order to be an extraordinary wedding planner, you have got to have certain personality characteristics that enable you to engage in interpersonal communication on an extraordinary level.

Patient & Flexible: A wedding planner must be patient and flexible, in order to cater to a couples’ ever-changing tastes of style or whim – this is a certainty to happen as wedding planning takes pace over so many several months that things change, things fall through, and the wedding planner has to be there to patiently pick up the pieces and fit them back together again.

Creative: A wedding planner must also be creative – this is a character trait that, while it can be cultivated, is best served au naturale. A creative wedding planner thinks outside the box, presenting an engaged couple with a wedding that is not only original and unique to their tastes, but one that is inimitable, and unforgettable to all the guests.

Organized: A wedding planner must be, above all things, impeccably organized. In order to keep important dates, coordinate with caterers, venues, and family members, the wedding planner must be almost inhumanly organized. This is because even the smallest misstep in organization can ruin an entire wedding.

Budget-Savvy: Respecting the budget of the engaged couple is very important. Many wedding planners make the mistake of taking a couples budget and spending every last dime. However, this approach will make you only mediocre. If you can save money for the couple, negotiating prices where possible, your reputation will grow exponentially. This is the wedding planner that every one wants to work with.

Fashionable: This may seem obvious, but a good wedding planner knows the trends that the wedding industry is going through. By attending wedding conventions and shows throughout the year, a wedding planner can stay on top of what is hot and what is not in the wedding world. By producing a fashionable wedding, everyone involved will be pleased. One must also be aware of the non-traditional weddings. For example, some couples want themed weddings. In such cases, it is important to avoid any of the “fashionable” traditional routes in lieu of what would complete the engaged couples’ dream. Other similar cases involve cultural weddings, in which a wedding planner must be well educated in ethnic wedding culture traditions.

How to Become a Wedding Planner

The question on everyone’s mind is actually and exactly how to become a wedding planner. In reality, anyone can become a wedding planner as this is a highly profitable and in demand business, and it remains so anywhere throughout the country. As long as people are getting married, wedding planners will have jobs lined up for them. Being a wedding planner can be very profitable, as well as a fun job, considering that you get to plan for a big happy event.

That being said, the real question should be, how does one become an extraordinary wedding planner? One whose services are given with such care, attention to detail, and patience, that couples actively seek you out rather than you having to put your services out there?

Becoming a wedding planner requires no specific education requirements. While you do not necessarily have to go to college, if you are planning on turning this into a successful entrepreneurship, it might be a good idea to attend a business school for the basics on running a successful business. However, this is not required, as there are no universities that offer degrees in “Wedding Planning.” Becoming a successful online wedding planner is, instead, more of a personal growth journey than anything else. You begin with the baby steps, and learn as you go along, thereby self-educating yourself in the industry.

There are some basic steps that one can take in order to begin.

1. Educate yourself about weddings.
This seemingly obvious step might go without saying, as most people have attended weddings, and made critical notes in their own head about how they might have done things differently. It seems so easy, right? But in order to learn about how the wedding industry works, you must begin to attend wedding and bridal conventions and shows. These occur many times a year throughout the nation, however most occur usually right before spring as the wedding season begins to ramp up. Subscribe yourself to some wedding and bridal magazines – these will keep you at the forefront of what is going on in the industry, as well as introduce you to key players in the business. Conventions and shows can allow you to network.

2. Cultivate your skills.
Read the above list of character traits, and see which ones you might need to cultivate in order to be successful. The one that many people need the most help with is organization. This is something that must be learned – as you become more proficient at organizing weddings, you will learn which organization tricks work for you and which ones don’t – its all mostly a matter of personal preference. Learn how to create timelines, contact cards, and checklists, as well as how to manage your own time effectively.

3. Create a portfolio.
This is how you show the world what a great wedding planner you are. With a portfolio of happy clients, your potential clients can see the breadth and depth of your styles, skills and abilities.

Now that you’ve got a basic outline on how to become a wedding planner, you should know about Wise Wedding Planning. It’s prerequisite reading for anyone serious about planning weddings. As of 2012, I’ve been in this industry for 9 years, and I still reference on a weekly basis. You can get a copy by clicking here.