Want to build your career as a wedding planner
A Wedding planner makes dreams turn into reality! This is an ongoing process and is probably the biggest reason that the wedding business has turned into a whole new industry, with a turnover of millions and millions of dollars every year.
The burgeoning wedding industry has given birth to the recent and most sought-after vocation, which is Wedding Planning. Being a wedding planner is a not just in vogue but is also a very rewarding and satisfying career. After all, turning someone’s lifelong dream into a reality can be so exciting.
But like all other vocations, being a successful wedding planner also requires immense hard-work and dedication. If you have been wondering that if being a wedding planner is the right career choice for you, read on.
Being a wedding planner in much different from a standard 9-5 job. There might be days when you would be working for 18 hours in a day. And when you are in such a business, your monthly income too can fluctuate tremendously. Being an entrepreneur, your earning will be directly correlated to the number of weddings you are actively planning and working on.
Weekends and holidays do not exist in a planner’s calendar. The hard work you have to put in is not just mental but physical too. Getting calls early in the morning from vendors telling you about some last-minute cancellations can give anyone a panic attack, but you need to be composed and find the best possible solution. Achieving deadlines, running after vendors, accompanying the bride/ groom and the families to the stylists, rehearsals, venues, you are required to be present everywhere. It can be really exhausting till the time the entire wedding is over.
As a wedding planner, you would meet all kinds of people. From the elite and the elegant to the rich and rural. You need to be equally sensitive to all your clients. Understanding their requirements and offering them the suggestion and ideas that they can put into practice are your foremost duties. An unresponsive wedding planner can never be successful, as last minutes emergencies are bound to occur. Passion comfortably and dedication to your client is necessary if you wish to be a popular wedding planner. Having a calm disposition is also a necessity for you. Weddings are bound to come with their share of family drama. With emotions running high everywhere, it is you who has to be in full control, not just of yourself but the situation too. In these high-stress situations, you need to be the one that can give comfort to your client and extinguish the fires.
Though the onus of a well-organized wedding lies on you, the wedding planner, it does not mean that you can do this all alone. You have to be hand-in-glove with your team of people. A great wedding is a balance between delicious food, beautiful decor, enjoyable music, excellent photography and happy memories for life. As the captain of the ship, you have to ensure that every little detail is taken care of and nothing is missed.
If most of these traits come naturally to you, you will surely make a great wedding planner, but even you miss a few, do not sweat, time and patience will teach you everything. You simply to need to focus and be calm even in the most stressed situations. Frantic brides and stubborn vendors are going to be everyday issues. But having said that, no one can deny the love and passion involved in this profession. When you plan a wedding for someone, you become a part of their dream and in turn build lifelong associations. The satisfaction and appreciation you get from your clients can make all the hard work worthwhile.
Though the onus of a well-organized wedding lies on you, the wedding planner, it does not mean that you can do this all alone. You have to be hand-in-glove with your team of people. A great wedding is a balance between delicious food, beautiful decor, enjoyable music, excellent photography and happy memories for life. As the captain of the ship, you have to ensure that every little detail is taken care of and nothing is missed.
If most of these traits come naturally to you, you will surely make a great wedding planner, but even you miss a few, do not sweat, time and patience will teach you everything. You simply to need to focus and be calm even in the most stressed situations. Frantic brides and stubborn vendors are going to be everyday issues. But having said that, no one can deny the love and passion involved in this profession. When you plan a wedding for someone, you become a part of their dream and in turn build lifelong associations. The satisfaction and appreciation you get from your clients can make all the hard work worthwhile. 
In an industry like wedding planning, every bit of experience helps in establishing a strong footing. Investing in a professional diploma could be a great way to garner the aforementioned experience. Vocational education always gives you the opportunity to understand the skills you need while allowing you to put these skills into practice while you study. If you get a chance to be involved in a live internship, jump at this opportunity. This will give you a first-hand experience of this industry. Once you are qualified, you will feel confident to apply your knowledge and capabilities and help you excel in this career.
Draw Up A Business Plan
When you start up your business, you need to have a well chalked-out plan. Depending on your city, its wedding culture makes a plan that suits the requirements of the locals the best. Put your ideas on to a computer and show your clients a peek of what you can offer.
Keep Innovating
With everyone wanting a different wedding, as a wedding planner you need to be very creative and make each wedding a memorable one. You will have to keep innovating and present new ideas and themes for every wedding you plan.
Invest In A Good Team
A wedding planner cannot function alone, you need to have a good liaison with different vendors who would be providing services. A successful wedding planner needs to have an excellent professional relationship with the florists, caterers, stylists, designers and decorators etc. To organize a smooth wedding, you will have to coordinate perfectly with everyone. Focus on building a team of experienced and passionate folks. A passionate team is always willing to go that extra mile to make a wedding successful.
Networking Is The Nature Of The Game
Whenever you plan a wedding, make sure you spend a lot of time meeting the guests, they are your next probable clients. Always be ready to meet potential customers with your own business cards and be generous in spending them around. If possible visit all wedding-fairs in and around your city and advertise your services. The biggest advertising, however, will be through your work. When you impress others with your work, rest assured work will come soon. Focus on building good relations with your client which is long lasting, thus leaving an impression on their minds.
Learning Through Every Event
Even when you have made your mark in the market unless you keep giving every client a wedding with a difference you might not be able to sustain your position. Remember, even though the wedding planning is an upcoming industry the competition is severe. Draw inspirations from your surroundings. Every wedding that you plan or attend should add to your learning and your experience. Attending different workshops and seminars related to weddings is a great idea to keep tickling your grey cell
Be Optimistic
When you begin your career, things might take off slower than what you had expected. Your telephone might not ring for the first few days, but don’t let yourself get disheartened. Take this as a time to think and come up with innovative ideas. Having a buoyant temper is a necessity in a career like this where there is a lot of seasonal influence.
The scope for a wedding planner in India is massive. With the right training and the right guidance, there is a lot that you can do in the wedding planning industry. And with over a million weddings in the country every year, this recession-proof business can take your career sky high! 
The average person generally spends between 2 to 20 million rupees on a wedding that might be a three or five-day long event. It is also estimated that about 10 million weddings take place in India annually. No doubt the Indian Wedding Industry is now a multi-billion-rupee industry. Expenditure on designer clothes, jewelry, catering, invites, photography and the décor adds up to humongous amounts. It might come as a big surprise, but it is during the wedding season that the amount of gold bought reaches a mammoth 450 tones. Himanshu Kapsime, an Engineer from IIT Delhi, quit his job in the US and started an online wedding portal called shaadisaga.com a few years back. Himanshu says, “This is a recession-proof industry”.
A lavish wedding makes the bride, groom and both families feel like celebrities for a day or two. By treating themselves to an extravagant and splendid party in celebration of their children’s wedding, the whole family feels nothing less than a celebrity for a day or throughout the wedding ceremonies. It feels as if the bride and the groom are the stars and the social media is their display channel. What’s all the more a welcome change is that it’s not just the super-rich that can flaunt a big-fancy wedding, the upper-middle-class Indians are not behind in outsourcing the wedding.
The trends of the elite are filtered down to the common public who are deeply inspired by social media, news channels and magazines. The younger generation is definite to not only adopt and adapt but also mirror and modify. Shweta Acharya of Baraati Inc, has handled over 15 weddings which include 4 destination weddings, one of which was organized in Florence. She says, “A planner makes a wedding come alive. He or she is the chef of a wedding. We have to make sure that the fairytale wedding is delivered with flair so that the client is stress-free”. In most Indian families, saving for the wedding starts very early in life. Now, it’s not just the parents who spend at the wedding, the boy and girl to-be-married can finance a big part of their own wedding too. This extra money makes spending easier and the standard of wedding rises higher and higher.
Youth of today also like to be personally involved in their weddings, not in the working but the planning. As they may not have much of an idea about the ceremonies, the rituals and about pooling the resources together but they do like to add their personal touch in every aspect of the wedding. From the invitation cards to the gift for the guests, from the decor to the menu, they want everything to be in line with their own taste.
What Shweta has pointed out is another big reason for the paradigm shift from the traditional Indian wedding to planned weddings, many people consider organizing a wedding to be quite hectic business. The couple as well as the immediate family have to be involved in the planning while it is only the guests that get to enjoy. The whole event becomes an obligation to keep others entertained. The present generation views the wedding as a holiday and a means to get together with friends and family and make some happy memories. And they do not mind adding 10-20% more to their budget if they can get the peaceful and hassle-free services from the wedding planner. This is a big reason why wedding planners are so much in demand.
Destination Weddings are the newest trend that seems to be staying on for long. With many celebrities going to exotic locations for their wedding, the young couples to-be-married-soon have a new wish-list. More and more couples wish to have a personal and meaningful ceremony in a far-off location, where they can spend some quality with their friends and family.
The younger generation often finds the wedding ceremonies to be replete with tradition. Most of them want high-tech weddings but with a dash of tradition. Weddings still are a once-in-a-lifetime affair, and nobody wants anything to go wrong. That’s the season of hiring specialized services like the photographers, decorators, videographers, stylists, designers and caterers. Though it is still the head of the family who is the ‘chief-organizer’, but then what’s the fun not having some highly charged emotional drama at a wedding. It is these high-pressure moments that make a great laugh years later. After all, it’s all about having a good time! 
The chances of thriving in the wedding industry are very bright. You just need to be aware and analyze the trends and shifts in the wedding business. It has so many sub-divisions and department, and an expert wedding planner has to be a master in all. From the initial chalking out of the wedding plan with his client’s approval to planning the invites and gifts, the designing and the decor, management of destination wedding, hospitality, entertainment, photography etc. This is where your formal education helps you understand the technicalities of this industry. When the students attend sessions and workshops that educate them about the ways of the wedding industry, they also get hands-on experience of many such events.
If you have the educational background in wedding planning, it also helps you learn and master the tricks of the trade. Studying and learning about the wedding planning industry is one part of the formal education that a student receives, what is equally important is the actual training that he receives. It is the internship that the student undergoes which gives him a true picture of how exactly a wedding planner works. The practical training that the students receive helps them to get a better understanding of how things work in the wedding industry.
Most institutes offer an internship to their students. This is the best way to put your newfound skills to test. No matter how much you learn sitting in the classroom, it can never actually measure up to what you learn through your practical experiences. It is during the internship period that many of the students realize how difficult it can be to work under contest pressure of deadlines. The internship period will be a great learning for you and will give you many life-long lessons to remember. The result of your internship will also play a key role in your placement.
With the rise and rise of the wedding industry in India, many startups and event management companies are also trying their luck here. With creativity and new ideas being constantly in demand, the need for more and more young and dynamic wedding planners is on an all-time high. People today are becoming aware of the various options that they have, and it is not just the rich and famous who hire wedding planners. The middle-class families take up a reasonable share of the wedding planner’s schedule. Therefore, there is a rising demand for wedding planners who can organize weddings from a small and humble level to the grandest levels of all.
Thanks to this mammoth growth in the scale of the wedding industry in India, wedding too has become a big business and there is absolutely no doubt that a career in the wedding planning is rather hot and rewarding! According to the data submitted by the Association Of Bridal Consultants, the hiring of wedding planners has seen a gigantic rise from 7% in 2013 to 18% in 2017. With more than 2.5 million wedding a year, there is enough scope for young and talented Wedding Planners to explore the highest reaches in this business. If you too are an aspiring wedding planner, enrol yourself in a reputed Wedding Planning Institute and get geared up to Ace the world! 
The importunacy of a dramatic decor never goes out of trend! Which has become the key highlight of all the wedding ceremonies? The setting needs to be proper right from staging, lighting, flowers, chairs, and tables, to the centerpieces and curtains. The details can get intricate, but the outcome is worth it. Many Bollywood celebrities hire wedding designers to give their venue a complete makeover that suits the swaggy weddings.
Weddings are not only about the perfect locations. For the bride to be, there’s nothing more important than the wedding trousseau, which also includes the wedding dress. Picking one or at times more than one trousseau designer can make all the difference. For example, Sonam Kapoor Ahuja wore outfits from three designers in her wedding ceremonies – Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla, Anuradha Vakil, and Anamika Khanna.
Your jewelry should be unique and one of its kind. When it comes to jewelry what you wear is as important as how you wear it. Its the job of the jewelry designer to guide you to pick the best piece of jewelry that goes perfectly with an outfit. Depending on your style, your comfort level and of course your outfits, the designer can create heavy, light, indo-western, ethnic, contemporary jewelry items whatever suits your body type.
Finding the right wedding planner is as important as finding the right partner as the weddings are getting way more creative and demanding. Food, as they say, is the way to the happy stomach is undoubted can never be avoided. There is no such thing as ‘ordinary’ at a Celebrity wedding. Even the most traditional food is supposed to make a style statement. The presentation of the food that is to be laid out is at times more important than the ingredients. The ‘menu’ is one of the most time and effort consuming aspect of a wedding. Though traditional dishes are a part of the cuisine, many couples believe in going ‘international’.
Giving the “royal-touch” at a wedding is one of the most important aspects of a celebrity wedding. This is probably the most important way to make your wedding a memorable one, not just for yourself but for everyone who attends it. You need to keep it personal. From your guest list to the decor, from the menu to the venue, it should reflect your taste and style. There isn’t anything wrong if you are taking some ideas or in other words ‘inspiration’ from a celebrity wedding, but remember it is after all “Your Wedding”!
So, go ahead, plan your wedding in the grandest way possible! Even if you are not a huge celebrity, your wedding will surely be the talk of the town, and you never know, you might become as famous as a celebrity!