When you’re first building your wedding planning business, there are likely a lot of questions inside your entrepreneur brain. You wonder if you’re making the right choices, you’re thinking about how to get to the next level, you wonder when to raise your rates, and you ponder the best way to add to your team. All of those decisions can be difficult to navigate, and any entrepreneur knows that first-hand. In the past twelve years as a business owner and wedding planner, I’ve made all the mistakes and have all the advice to offer. Keep reading to learn how to grow your wedding planning business!

wedding table setting with plates and garland

Network strategically.

When first starting out as a wedding planner, you have to network strategically. Networking doesn’t mean just showing up at events or shouting about your business. Strategic networking is investing in vendor and venue relationships. If you handle your networking properly, venue referrals will be one of the biggest sources of new business. Advertising dollars have a time and place, as a new wedding planner, I wouldn’t put money into that in the beginning. Invest time in finding five to ten local venues to get your foot in the door. Support them authentically. This can be done through social media engagement like sharing photos, commenting on photos and sending DMs. Another way to support them is by writing reviews and becoming a cheerleader of their space. Then, after you’ve built the relationship digitally, set up a tour of the property and find out how you can be an advocate. This can typically be done by planning a styled shoot, an open house, or writing a blog post to showcase the venue. Go into your in-person meeting curious to learn what’s missing for them. What do they need? Creating strong venue relationships are key to a planner’s growth. It may not work for every venue, and you may not get on every preferred list. I encourage you to lean into your curiosity and ask how you can help bring business to them.

Next, make use of free Facebook groups where couples are posting asking for vendor recommendations. In those groups, become a trusted expert that always adds value while not necessarily promoting yourself. Take a listen to Weddings For Real episode 145, which is about utilizing Facebook groups to grow your business.

Another idea for new business owners is to sign up for one or two wedding shows in your first year of business. Wedding shows are a great way to get your talking points down and practice answering questions. In most cases, you’ll be able to book at least a couple of weddings from a show, and you’ll be able to network with the other vendors at the show. This is great for your first two years of business when you’re developing relationships.

center piece at a wedding reception table

Identify your ideal client.

To begin, in the first couple of years, you may not know your ideal client. It takes time to work with many couples to learn who and what you love to work with. Finding the things you don’t love helps you get to what you love. Once you learn that you prefer full-service planning, you can begin making shifts in your business by targeting your ideal clients.

If making this transition is due to wanting to raise your rates, try to refer to your month-of package as event management/wedding coordination. A great example of this is from a friend and fellow wedding planner, Erin McCauley of Chestnut and Vine, who calls her offering wedding logistics coordination. When you refer to it as day-of planning but know how much more goes into it, it diminishes the value and makes it hard for clients to understand that value. A client might not be able to imagine $2,000 for “just” a day of coordinator. I encourage you to package and present it in a way that makes sense and that makes it an easier sell.

After you’ve been in business and have a decent stream of clients, you should transition to having a minimum spend for clients during certain months. Identify peak months of the year, and when a prospective client reaches out, don’t book your lowest package. Instead, protect those peak months for full-service clients. Most of the time, you can trade up the client to a higher level package which leads to you working fewer weekends. Protect those weekends and know that the right client will come. If you have any weekends open, open them at the six-month out mark and fill in where you need to.

Hire once you’re ready to scale.

As a business owner, it always gets to a point where you need to enlist help because it’s too much to handle on your own. And that’s the point right? Whether it’s the actual events or administrative work behind the scenes, you’re going to need help. My top suggestion is not to bring on someone full-time. Find someone that is ready to hustle. Maybe they have a full-time job in a completely different industry but have a passion for events. Bring them on part-time to handle part of your business and offload some tasks to them.

This will allow you to take a step back and see your business from the CEO lens and strategy. Look at your day-to-day tasks and decide what has to be done by you and what can be handled by someone else. Choose something that’s not your strength, like drafting responses to clients, reworking your budget, managing your social media accounts, or something else, and hire for that specific need. Start small and hire them for five to ten hours per week and have them report directly to you. It lets you see their initiative, follow through, and professionalism before shifting to let them handle events on their own. I like to have a three to six month runway to see them in action before evaluating if we’d let them take on event management clients. By that point, they know the workload and we know we can trust them. Start small, find measurable tasks, and help them see the path for growth.

Learn to balance the wedding planner lifestyle.

It’s a balancing act. Start small and keep taking steps forward. You can’t accomplish it all in one day, and it can be overwhelming to take the first step. Have a plan of action and be intentional. If your business is getting pushed down on your to-do list, find thirty minutes a day to put towards your dream. Find thirty minutes earlier in the day before you’re too tired to summon the energy. Take small steps forward that will turn into strides.

Maintain boundaries with your clients.

As a recovering people pleaser, I know the implications of not having boundaries with clients and not being able to separate work and family/life. The wedding industry is extremely demanding, clients are demanding and burnout happens fast. It’s all about setting expectations at the time the client books. Have a listen to episode 151. It’s all about welcome guides, which are my number one tool for planners to create a great client experience with boundaries. Your welcome guide should be filled with what to expect and how to contact you. A digital guide that’s sent at the very beginning isn’t going to cut it. You need to find a way to circle back to it and keep it at the forefront of your clients’ minds. Maintaining balance starts with contract clauses and also includes a clear and transparent onboarding experience.

I hope these tips help you gain clarity about certain areas of your business and help you grow your wedding planning business. This blog post was based off of Weddings For Real episode 152. Have a listen to the episode here! And if you have any follow up questions, drop them in the comments or join the Weddings For Real Facebook group to ask!