Want to build your career as a wedding planner
Weddings are a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon for each individual and everyone would want to have a dreamlike, all-perfect wedding with no regrets for the future. But no event can be made perfect without proper planning and a timely execution of that plan.
But, planning a perfect event is no kid’s play, as it requires high vigilance and prompt decision-making with a considerable amount of attention towards the necessities. And, that is exactly why we are here, to give you this list of the essential elements that can give your wedding an edge over the others and make your event nothing less than a fairytale.
An ultimate wedding planning toolkit
Following is a list of essential elements that you must take care of if you want to plan your client’s wedding like a professional.
Weddings are definitely a costly affair. And to keep a track of the flow of money, it is important to maintain a budget that can guide us about our expense.
Last minute expenses and sudden unplanned issues are unavoidable so it is also important to keep a chunk out of our budget for that cause. In fact, a better way would be to think beforehand about these ‘pop-up wish list’ items in the beginning and add them so that you are not caught off-guard suddenly.
At last, learn to balance on the expenses. For example, if you have splurged on food, then you might want to cut on expenditure on flowers, decoration etc.
The most important trait of an efficient event manager is the workability of his timeline. So, to make sure that you have ample amount of time to carry out every order and preparation, make sure that you have a precise timeline in your hand that ends at least two weeks prior to the wedding. After all, you need time to revamp yourself for the event too!
- Budget is important, sticking to it is even more important
Weddings are definitely a costly affair. And to keep a track of the flow of money, it is important to maintain a budget that can guide us about our expense.
Last minute expenses and sudden unplanned issues are unavoidable so it is also important to keep a chunk out of our budget for that cause. In fact, a better way would be to think beforehand about these ‘pop-up wish list’ items in the beginning and add them so that you are not caught off-guard suddenly.
At last, learn to balance on the expenses. For example, if you have splurged on food, then you might want to cut on expenditure on flowers, decoration etc.
- Prepare a timeline
The most important trait of an efficient event manager is the workability of his timeline. So, to make sure that you have ample amount of time to carry out every order and preparation, make sure that you have a precise timeline in your hand that ends at least two weeks prior to the wedding. After all, you need time to revamp yourself for the event too!
- Maintain an event record
- Learn to handle your vendors
- Your customer service talks big bucks about you!
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 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! 
Wedding business facilitates the smooth entry of startups. This recession-free aspect of the wedding industry has lured many start-ups to step up. Wedding industry have something for everyone. Just about anyone can start with anything in the wedding industry. From a makeup artist to a hair stylist, from a dress designer to a jewelry designer, from a caterer to a florist, there is always that “something” you can always contribute in one way or the other. Almost everyone wishes to have a remarkable wedding which is memorable and different in its own way, there is an increasing scope for creativity and newness in the flourishing wedding industry.
Seeing the rising scope and the easy finance option. It has undoubtedly marking a passionate impression as the prospective options for many, as of now there aren’t many legal formalities that are required to be fulfilled by a wedding planner as the wedding industry is still on its initial stage. It is undoubtedly the well-paying job too, it depends on the wedding planner if he wishes to have a fixed fee or charges a commission on the basis of the budget of the wedding. Many event planners and managers are now focusing more attention on planning weddings only.
Wedding are the memorable event and everyone thrives to make it a fun event for everyone There is in a demand of special and unique weddings. With almost every one striving to make the wedding like “never before “- kind of a wedding, the trend seems to be staying for every ling time. Weddings include lot of things right from Pre-wedding shoots, honeymoon destinations, bachelor trips, theme weddings which needs to be taken care off. Wedding planners are constantly told to brainstorm to come up with something new and afresh every time.
The flourishing trend of the “Destination Weddings” is making the business of wedding planning more interesting and flourishing thereby opening plethora of opportunities for people to step up and pursue it as career. The recent Virat Kohli- Anushka Sharma wedding was nothing less than the dream wedding by many young couples to be. Weddings are no longer a stressful event that a family has to organize, rather it is becoming more of a holiday not just for the soon-to-be-married couple, but the families and friends too. People choose the wedding dates on long weekends so that they all can get together and make it an opportunity for a family reunion. Depending on one’s budget the destination is chosen and all the ceremonies are planned there accordingly.
Indian wedding looks the most colorful which become the attractive destination for foreigners wishing to have a desi touch in their weddings. Not only Indians are going to foreign countries for a destination wedding, but many foreigners are also choosing India to be their wedding destination. Goa with its beaches and Rajasthan for its royal palaces, are considered to be the best spots. Many wedding planners collaborate with five-star hotels and organize such weddings. The rituals and traditions practiced by the Indians are found to be very appealing to the foreigners who therefore plan to do the same.
Indian Weddings are a resplendent affair. Be it a grand-destination wedding or a humble wedding organized in the Society Park, each wedding holds a special importance. The opulence and merriment attached to a wedding are spreading their wings wide and seem to be showering prosperity all around the Indian Wedding Industry. 
Once you have gained the required theoretical exposure, it’s time to jump into the practical world. Gaining first-hand experience as a wedding planner helps you to understand the ins and outs of the humongous wedding industry.
Getting yourself an internship or volunteering will help you in your career to becoming a wedding planner, as this will give you the chance to network with other industry professionals. The benefits of internships are that you work with established planners – which paves your way to secure a full-time job with them!
Marketing your services is very crucial if you want to excel in the industry of wedding planning, and is crucial to get your business off the ground. Word of mouth will help you to embark on this new career path quickly! Apart from that, social media can definitely be of huge help in reaching out to the possible clients.
It’s advisable to not rush into with an overflowing wedding calendar! Take your own time to pace up. When you will start as a planner, you’ll still be a naïve student where all the experiences will be a helping teacher. Take projects one at a time but execute the same with utmost perfection.
Being a wedding planner, you deliberately need to be able to cope up in stressful situations. If you’re able to handle the stress, part of the battle is already won. You will also need exceptional communication skills – both written and verbal – to be perfect on the job. You must be an “extroverted EXTROVERT” to become a successful wedding planner. You need to convey your ideas to complete strangers with utmost clarity.
Every wedding is like another small show which needs perfect timing and management of every aspect right from budgets and vendors to contracts and subcontracts. Develop a penchant to think “outside the box”. Do things differently and stand out from the crowd if you want to be recognized as a great wedding planning professional!
In the industry of wedding planning, experience is the golden key. Customer loyalty will go a major way in a business segment like wedding planning as thriving in this industry heavily depends on word-of-mouth. This will help you to earn excellent references.
If you really wish to dive into the career of wedding planner, there are zillions of opportunities waiting for you. You need to be proactive in finding opportunities and take an initiative to go out and grab them.
Last bit of advice
Learn everything that you see around and especially from mistakes made by others, and then move on to learning something fresh with a new sense of commitment. Your BEST chance to break into the wedding planning arena is to completely “WOW” everyone at your first wedding with your skills.