How to book more weddings

How many weddings you actually need

At an average of $3,000 per full-planning wedding, twenty weddings is $60,000 a year. At $1,200 for day-of coordination you need more, but each one is far less work.

That number changes how you look: you don't need thousands of visits, you need thirty or forty good inquiries a year. And those come from very specific places.

1. Venues, the number one source

Almost every couple books the venue first and looks for a planner after. The venue is standing right there when the couple realizes they can't handle it all.

Almost every venue keeps a preferred vendor list, and getting on that list is what fills a season.

How you get on it: visit in person, not by email. Show them photos of your weddings at similar places. And what really counts, be the planner who's easy to work with when you're there: arrive early, don't create problems for the venue team, and clean up at the end. Venue coordinators recommend whoever makes their night easy, not whoever has the prettiest Instagram.

With five or six venues carrying you on their list, the season fills itself.

2. The other vendors

Photographers, florists, DJs, caterers and event spaces. They all work the same weddings and they all get the same question: "do you know somebody who…?"

It's a two-way network: recommend first, and without asking for anything back. The photographer you sent two weddings to will name you in his next five inquiries.

In this trade, getting along with vendors on the wedding day is worth more than any campaign.

3. The weddings you already did

Every wedding has a hundred to two hundred guests, and every one of them contains couples who'll get married in the next two years, watching you work.

That's why the wedding day is also your best showcase. Let them see you calm, solving things and present. And leave cards with the DJ and at the venue, which is where people ask.

4. The website, which decides more here than in other trades

The bride compares three or four planners and decides who to write by looking at websites. What has to be there:

• **One large photo of your own wedding work**, full screen, not a collage.
• **Complete weddings told start to finish**, three or four. Not a hundred loose centerpiece shots.
• **Different styles.** If everything you show is a beach wedding, the ballroom bride assumes you don't do that.
• **What each package includes**, even without a firm price.
• **A minimum or a range.** "Our weddings start at $X."
• **A five-field form**: name, date, venue, rough budget, and how to reach her. Date required.
• **Your face and your name.** A wedding is booked with a person.

You can look at what a wedding planner's page needs as a reference.

5. Saying the price, which is the hardest part

The fear is that the price scares people off. What actually happens is that leaving it out fills your week with inquiries from couples with a $500 budget for a $30,000 wedding.

Putting "starting at $X" does three things: it filters, it positions you, and it saves meetings. A couple who writes knowing the range arrives at the meeting to decide, not to find out.

6. How to close the inquiry

**Answer the same day.** In weddings, the first planner who answers with substance takes a huge share of inquiries.

**Ask the date before anything else.** If you're not free, say so in the first message and recommend a colleague: that colleague returns the favor.

**Do the video call before sending the quote.** Closing cold by email is much harder than closing after twenty minutes of talking.

**Send the quote inside 48 hours**, with what's included and what isn't.

7. Google reviews, not just Instagram

Instagram shows aesthetics. Google shows that you turned up, fixed things and didn't disappear with the deposit.

Ask every couple for a review two weeks after the wedding, once they're back from the honeymoon and looking at the photos.