by: Patrick Ryan
Creating your own business in this day and age is more important than ever. The trick is to find a niche market and tap into it on the way up. It is no secret that the wedding industry is huge. There are somewhere around 2.5 million weddings every year in the United States Alone! So…. About $40 billion is spent on weddings every year in the U.S. Some believe that number is low! The # then rises to be around 80 billion! Today’s average couple will spend roughly $18 – 30 thousand dollars on their wedding!
The beauty of this kind of business is that it’s not a huge investment. It can easily be done from your home. All you need is to be professional and very very organized to gain people’s trust. But once you have planned a few weddings you’ll find so long as everything went smoothly that people will drop your name to others and more business will come your way.
Things that you’ll need to consider for your new planning business includes:
Image:
When creating a Wedding a Consulting Business one of the most important aspects is your image! You need to create a look that shows both professionalism and beauty. You can hire an expert for this but I suggest just doing it yourself! I create many logos using royalty-free stock photo that I purchase from istockphoto.com. This logo needs to go everywhere, your letterhead, business card, brochures and most importantly “invoices”. Remember image is one of the most important aspects of a business!
Business Supplies
Much of the investment when first starting out will be getting the proper supplies. However in today’s day and age most things can be done relatively quickly and cheap even from the comforts of your own home. Although this may be the case, you need to remember that you must look professional! Brides wont be letting Jo Schmo with a cheap brochure plan their Wedding! You want to wow your potential clients and turn them into potential paying customers.
You need some Planning Software. For this thee are professional options and free options. I prefer the free options since many can do just about everything the paid ones can. I suggest checking out versiontracker.com and doing a search for Wedding. You will be amazed at the software you can get. One of the best pieces of shareware I have found was located here. seatingarrangement.com. Imagine how pleased my recent couple who were having an outdoor tent Wedding was when I gave them a complete professionally drafted paper which included each person, table, chair! The drawing looked as if a large construction firm using AutoCAD did it! Don’t just go out and purchase this software! Take a look around! Thousands of programs exist out there to make you more of a professional Wedding Consultant! Most people can accomplish many of these tasks with Microsoft Word or Exel!
So I have outlined just a few things to consider before starting up your Wedding Planning Business. Take the jump and try your hand. This is a great niche business to set yourself up in. It’s a time consuming process but it’s better to set yourself up now rather than later. I have no doubts you will be a success.