The Rebel’s Guide To Getting Married And Planning A Wedding
Society & Culture
We’ve got one final stop on this road trip to Weddingvendorville before we start booking wedding creators and that’s to talk about how the wedding industry isn’t like every other industry.
I believe that one of the leading causes of stress and anxiousness in wedding planning is the beautiful coming together of two people who are, for most likely the first time, planning the biggest event they’ve ever planned, gathering the most people, from the extremities of their family and friendship trees, spending the most amount of money they’ve spent yet, and they’re doing it in an industry unlike any other.
And instead of understanding how the wedding industry is different, people bang on about the "wedding tax" without understanding the complexities of creating weddings and running businesses around that skill.
There’s no industry that can directly be compared with the wedding industry. Just ask all of us who went through the pandemic and tried to get other work. Creating weddings really well is a very specific and valuable skill that doesn’t exactly translate to working 9 to 5 for a global corporation.
You might think that the corporate events industry would be an easy translation, but even the corporate and business events industry is different. If you attend one of those big name conferences or events, the budgets are so much larger, and the events are so much larger. The providers of services have to operate in ways that governments and corporations like, we’re talking tender processes, massive quotes, big numbers, purchase orders, catering for thousands of people, parking and amenities for the same numbers. If you’ve worked in weddings you’ll walk into those government and corporate events and have a real appreciation for doing things on that scale.
But if you’re planning a wedding for 50 to 150 of your closest you’re not calling those people, if only because you don’t want boxed lunches to be handed out, and you don’t want a cookie-cutter corporate event. You’re creating an intimate and personal affair.
The wedding industry is almost exclusively home to micro to small businesses. In my 15 years of meeting and working with wedding vendors I’ve met maybe 10 businesses with staff numbers larger than five people, and revenues of more than $500k. When you contact a wedding vendor it’s more than likely that it’s a solo operator or a duo/couple.
Controversially I’ll say that you don’t want to hire a wedding vendor who does weddings as a side-hustle or a hobby, I simply think your wedding deserves a dedicated artist whose time is devoted to creating the kind of creations you want at your wedding.
Full time wedding creators are limited in the amount of output they can bring to market each year. They’ve done their own maths and come to an understanding that with all of the associated work they might be able to create 15, or 30, or 80 weddings a year. They know their expenses and they have an income goal for their household, so it’s a simple calculation of:
Annual expenses + annual household income + annual taxes = annual required income.Then:
Annual income / number of weddings I can do a year = charge per wedding.I’ve very much over-simplified the process, and each business and each category of wedding creator will have their own specific way of pricing themselves, but that math is a good start.
The expensesThere are just so many costs of business that are not immediately known by the general public. You can start by talking about insurance, registration and government fees, income taxes, state taxes, goods and services taxes, vehicles, maintenance, fuel, etc. Then start talking about the cost of equipment to make the art, whether it’s the $30,000 of camera gear, or the $5,000 PA speaker system. Travel, rental car, flights, accommodation and travel time expenses.
And we’re not even at the --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/therebelsguide/message
How to actually budget for a wedding without going into debt and choose a wedding date based on that budget
Fleshing out your intentions
Clearing the air on elopements
When people like us get married, what happens?
Me, not being chill, about being chill in wedding planning
How to be a rebel!
Why should you have an intentionally planned wedding?
You're getting the damn book
The rebels guide to being a wedding guest
The Withers Wedding Method
Photographing a wedding on an iPhone, and what is a virtual wedding fair?
How do we tell my mother-in-law that we eloped?
The Rebels’ Guide To Staying Married While In Self-Isolation
The Rebels’ Guide to Changing Your Name When You Get Married
The Rebels’ Guide To Re-Planning Your Wedding Now That COVID-19 Ruined It
The Rebels’ Guide To Getting Married Around The Coronavirus
A Rebels' Guide Q&A Episode - My Partner Wants a Wedding, I Want An Elopement
The Rebels' Guide to Beach Weddings
The Rebel’s Guide To Attending a Wedding
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Voices of Misery Podcast
House of Whimsical Terror
Just Dumb Enough Podcast
Stuff You Should Know
Timcast IRL