Are Wedding Businesses Profitable?

Each week I'll cover strategies, ideas, tips, and tricks that will give you your dream wedding business too. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Let's dive in. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 16! Hard to believe I've been doing this for sixteen weeks in a row but that's pretty awesome and I'm so excited to be back here with you guys because today I got a really fun one!

Today we're going to be talking about are wedding businesses profitable? So in case you are thinking about starting a wedding business or you've kind of gone all in and you have your toes dipped in there but you aren't exactly profitable yet and you're wondering are wedding businesses even profitable? Should I go all in on this? Is this something that is will be worth my effort and time? So I kind of wanted to dig into that topic a little bit and give you my experience with wedding businesses now that I've been in the wedding industry for over a decade.

I've got a lot of experience with wedding businesses and I also know a lot of people who have wedding businesses, so I wanted to give you my take on it. Let me just give you a quick answer. Yes, 100% I think wedding businesses are definitely an easier business to get into. They have a lot more potential than most other businesses to become profitable. And I know this firsthand because I tried a handful of other businesses before I got into weddings because I didn't have this urge to get into weddings like right off the bat.

I had an urge to start my own business. I always knew I wanted to start my own business. I always felt like an entrepreneur. I just didn't know how to make it happen. But when I sort of fell into weddings because I got married and planned my own wedding and then realized, this is the perfect place for me to start a business, that's when things kind of got easy and here's why wedding businesses have more potential than most other businesses to become profitable.

It's because your customer, the bride and groom, they have money to spend. They have put aside a chunk of money that they are expecting to spend on their wedding. Not only do they have this money put aside to spend with you, but they're excited to spend their money on your services. There is no better customer than a customer that has money and is excited to spend their money with you. Another thing about brides and grooms and you'll know this once you get into weddings, is that they're not always logical when they're making purchases.

They're a lot of times just making impulse purchases, And so that means there's a lot higher chance for you to get a sale, which is awesome. Right? And lastly, it is socially acceptable for brides and for people to spend money on their wedding like you expect that you're going to spend a lot of money on your wedding everybody's like oh that sucks but like awesome also of course you're going to spend money on your wedding it's not like they they're getting feedback from their family saying you shouldn't spend money on your wedding and no it's probably like well let me help you spend more money on your wedding so there's this makes a huge difference in starting a business when you have a customer who has money to spend, who's excited to spend money with you, they're making often impulse purchases and it's socially acceptable for them to spend money with you so it's a great super awesome wedding you know business to start any business in weddings so I would say % yes it's a great place to be. Now let me give you an example of some businesses that would be harder and this is because the customer now needs to justify their purchase which makes it a little bit harder for them to spend money.

So like any many other businesses, like a massage business, a lawn service business, a house cleaning business, an interior design business, a graphic design business, things that like people they want it but they're also like I don't know if I should spend my money here. I don't know if that's a good idea because I should I could do it myself. I could skip that. I could just find a way to get it done, know, I'll just do it. Those are places where people aren't really excited to spend their money.

Kind of want it, they know they would enjoy it, They they're like, oh, if I had a bunch of money, if I was stinking rich, I would spend my money on this. But they're not feeling like this is they have a chunk of money put aside to spend with you. With weddings, it's not like that. They already have money put aside and they're wanting to spend it. They're expecting to spend it.

So that's why wedding businesses have the potential to be insanely profitable. Another thing that's awesome about wedding businesses that makes us us that work in the wedding industry profitable is that generally speaking, we have very low overhead. So you can get into a lot of wedding businesses with little to no risk. Think about a wedding planner, a photographer. I mean, have to buy a camera and some equipment, maybe fancy up your computer a little bit, but these are stuff you most likely already have.

An officiant. I mean, you're just showing up at the wedding, hair and makeup. You just need one set of makeup kit that you're gonna use over and over. Right? It's more like a service.

You're devoting your time and you're getting paid for your expertise. Not you're not creating a product. You don't have to purchase a bus bunch of equipment right away and you can purchase more equipment as you get money so there's not a lot of overhead which is awesome. In fact chances are that you probably already have everything you need. I mean I know as a wedding planner I didn't need anything except for my computer which I already had, the internet, an email, a website I mean you have to pay for a website but there's not a lot of overhead stuff you have to purchase in order to get your business off the ground and running compared to say like starting a restaurant or a product based business or opening a store of some sort where you have to invest in stuff products in order to sell it.

With wedding businesses a lot of them are service oriented so you don't have to buy stuff to get started, which also means you don't have a lot of expenses, which means greater profit. Right? So that's awesome too. So I know what you're thinking. Yes.

Yay. Wedding businesses have great potential to be highly profitable, but what does profitable even mean? Like, give me some real numbers here. I know that's what I was thinking when I was first starting my wedding business. Like, what what can wedding planners even make?

What is the potential of growth? Like, somebody give me some real facts because I wanna know before I go all in on this business whether it's gonna be worth it or not for me to to make this happen to really give my all to this business. So when I consult with Google, they tell me that a wedding planner makes 30 to $40,000 a year entry level and 70 to $80,000 a year at an expert level. But they don't really give you much more than that, so you don't really know what that means. My personal experience being a wedding planner and again I'm in Hawaii so that is a state that has a lot of weddings so this is going to fluctuate based on where you are and the potential to have a large amount of weddings coming to you or not.

But in my experience, when I first started, I was at a 20 to $40,000 range for probably like the first four years. And then I learned how to restructure my business, how to become more valuable, how to upsell and things like that and now you know ten years in I'm making $120,000 a year. But the way that I run my business now is totally different. I have a bigger team. I'm still doing a small amount of weddings, but I'm making more money.

And that was because of the way I structured my business, which is all stuff I had to learn over time. And I sort of restructured my business several times over the last ten years, and that is what you'll learn to do too as you get deeper into it. So Google also tells me that a wedding photographer makes on average 60 to $80,000 a year, which to me sounds about right. I know lots of wedding photographers and it really depends on the types of weddings you do and the amount you do, like how much you want to hustle or how luxury of weddings you want to try and get into. Here's another one, officiant can make, and this is just from real life experience, I personally know an officiant who charges $350 per wedding which is kind of on the higher end in Hawaii because I've seen some for like $1.50 up to $3.50 and there's some that go up to 500 but $3.50 is like a little bit on the higher end over here.

And she does sometimes three plus weddings a day four times a week. So I and she hustles hard. So she make so if I if I figure out that math right there, that's 48 weddings a month, which comes out to, like, 200,000 a year if she kept that up all year long. But like I said, that's a hustle. Like, that is driving all over the place, doing three four weddings in a day, and just working non stop.

But it definitely has potential to make a ton of money. Hair and makeup artists on Google it says that they make an average of 30 to $60,000 a year but I know some hair and makeup artists that make more. I've also seen the rates for hair and makeup artists dramatically change based on the types of weddings that they want do. So a cheaper budget wedding may, you know, you may charge a hundred 50 for a bridal hair and makeup service, whereas another makeup artist who has been around a little bit longer might charge 450 for a bridal service and add in extra things like a head spa massage or, you know, lash extensions or whatever. And those things, those little upgrades is what allows them to make more money.

You also want to think about how are you able to upgrade your service to increase your profitability. So those are just some basic real numbers around what I know to be true. Like I was saying earlier, let's just take a deeper look into that because those numbers really don't mean anything so don't take them seriously. There's tons of ways to increase profit and ways that you would not make as much money based on the way that you're running your business. So there's like a hustle mentality where you like the officiant that I was telling you about, she can do three or four weddings in a day, but, I mean, that is a lot of work.

That is a lot of stress. That is, you know, constantly running around doing weddings all day long. And is that really the business experience that you want? Of course, you want the ability to do that and maybe you love it and maybe you are a type of person that loves doing that, but that is a type of way you can hustle your way to make over a hundred thousand dollars or you can find other ways to do it. So there's also the structure and quality of your business.

So I don't run my business in that hustle way, I don't have anything against people that do. I just don't like working that way. It isn't my jam. I don't love hustling and doing tons of weddings. I'm not trying to get as many weddings as I can.

I'm trying to get quality weddings who are able to pay more money. So for me, I only do three to six weddings a month, but I have bigger all inclusive packages that have upsells in them so I can make more money off of them and do less weddings. I also have solid systems and processes in place that sort of run the back end of my business so I don't have to put as much front end time and energy into my weddings, which means I can work less. And I've also spent a lot of time working my marketing, my SEO, my sales system so that I have a solid quality amount of new inquiries coming in daily so that means more sales, right? So the way that you structure your business and the quality of your business is also super important to your profitability.

So because I have a solid structure and a good quality experience for my brides and grooms, I can do less weddings and spend more time spend I'm sorry, spend less time working, spend more time to myself and still make a good amount of money, right? Still make over a hundred thousand dollars. Another thing you could do to increase your profitability is to choose more luxury events so they will spend more money, have more money to spend but you got to remember that these couples also have higher expectations so if if that is the type of weddings that you want to go for, then that's another way to become more profitable. Another thing to consider is the cost per wedding. So an easy way to figure out how much am I gonna make a year is, like, how much am I gonna charge per wedding?

And then what is gonna influence that? Like, the types of weddings, luxury versus budget. Am I gonna do extra freelance work? Am I gonna if I'm a photographer, I'm gonna pick up, like, family photo shoots and baby shower shoots and Christmas photos and stuff like that. That would be extra freelance work and extra ways to make profit.

Are you gonna have a team under you? Are you gonna need to pay out that team to make your job easier so that you can make more money as a business, but you're taking home a little less, but then your experience is better. Right? And then there's also extra things like tips. And that's something that Google doesn't take into account when I'm looking at these Google real numbers, right, of what a photographer makes, what a wedding planner makes, what an officiant makes.

They are not taking into account the tips that we get in the wedding industry, which is very, very lucrative and amazing. I mean, I just did a wedding yesterday, and I got a $400 tip. And it I have in the past got thousand dollar tip. You know? One time I think I got $1,800 tip and that isn't super uncommon.

A lot of brides and grooms are expecting to tip their vendors on top of their service fees. And it's always nice to get those little extras, but you don't take into account all of those thousand dollar tips that you get. Right? And that adds up too. So that is another awesome thing about wedding businesses is the tips.

So what if you're wondering, like, this is all great. These are all awesome reasons to to get into weddings, and I see that they can be profitable, but now I'm a little confused. Why isn't my wedding business profitable? And now even though there's like a high chance of success it doesn't mean that wedding businesses are easy. So I just wanted to clarify that.

Yes they are able to make a ton of money. They have potential to be extremely lucrative to make you over a hundred thousand dollars or more. It's a lot easier to get into a wedding business than into another business, but that doesn't mean that they're easy. That's because starting any business from scratch is not going to be easy. It just isn't.

It's going to take determination, grit. You have to be all in. You have to you have to have an attitude of, I'm going to make this work no matter what. You also have to get really good at sales and marketing and messaging. You have to get really good at learning how to build connection with customers, with vendors.

You have to learn how to genuinely connect with them on a very real level, And that's gonna come hand in hand with your sales. You have to get really good at implementing back end systems and processes that make your business run smoothly and allow you to scale. And that's all stuff that you learn. The more you get into weddings and the more weddings you get under your belt, you're gonna have to build some back end systems and you're gonna have to figure that stuff out. You're gonna need to learn how to build connections with other vendors.

The more connections that you have, the more referrals that you get, the more weddings that you book, the more profit you make. Right? You're gonna also have to learn, and this comes over time naturally, but just gaining confidence in yourself, in your business, in your offer so that you get better at selling and better at executing weddings too. You're gonna have to learn how to over deliver without overworking. You need to be seen as the expert.

So what I mean by that is, like, can potential customers find you online? Do you have tons of five star reviews everywhere? Have they heard your name be mentioned before from other vendors? You need to learn how to build trust, trust with the bride and groom. Does the couple know that they're in good hands with you just based off your online presence, like your website, your social, your testimonials?

And do you trust in yourself, in your abilities, in your business, in your ability to give them their dream wedding experience, their dream photos or ceremony or whatever. So all of those things are super important to making your wedding business profitable. And none of that stuff is easy. All that stuff takes time, takes energy, takes trial and error, and you're gonna have to figure stuff out along the way, and that is gonna be something you're constantly doing. So over the years, months, I mean, for me, took years, but you might be able to do it quicker.

You're gonna have to figure out all of this stuff. And the more of that you get in place, the more profitable your business will be. And so if you're not profitable yet, don't feel bad because all of us start off this way and there are a ton of things you need to figure out and become an expert at before your business becomes profitable. It's not just about being a good photographer. It's about being great at marketing, being great at selling, being great at, you know, creating systems and building out a team and all of that stuff.

And that is stuff you're gonna have to figure out as you go. And the more weddings you get, the more you'll be forced to figure out this stuff more and more. And it'll also help you to, like, reinvent your business over and over and make it better and better. Which is also really cool and how profit comes more naturally. So how you start to make more and more money with doing less work, with less time.

That's kind of where I'm at now and where I think you want to be, where you're doing less weddings. I mean, maybe you're the kind of person that likes to hustle or if not, then I think you want to try to create a wedding business that allows you to do less weddings and make more money. Right? So that's what you should be constantly thinking about as you're building and growing your business. So I wanted to give you something that you could perhaps implement right now to make more profit if you're in a place of struggle.

So here are six things you can do to increase profitability. Number one, start building connections with other vendors in the wedding industry, preferably not ones that are in your niche. So if you're a wedding photographer, I mean, you can. You can build relationships with other photographers, but you also want to try to work out building relationships with officiants, with wedding planners, with hair and makeup artists, because those are the people that you're going to be referring your couples out to. You need to know these people.

You need to be like buddies. You need to be friends. So get involved in the wedding industry. Start meeting people, do coffee dates, to know people on a one on one basis because the more people you know, the more referrals you'll get, the better it will be for your business. So start building connections.

Number two, work on getting your business seen online everywhere. So that means getting on free listings, getting your website ranked on Google, you know SEO, like get your Google business site up, get your testimonial sites up, get your business seen online in multiple places. You want to take up a whole page of Google when somebody searches your name. You want to be seen online so that potential brides and grooms see you as a professional. They see you as a reputable legit company that they can trust.

Number three: Testimonials. Work on your testimonials, work on getting testimonials in multiple locations. On Yelp, on WeddingWire, on Google, all over the place and get as many quality testimonials as you can. The more the better. Four.

I would work also on creating unique flyers or like printed flyer, you know, like PDF flyers or experiences for your customers to make their experience working with you unique or better. So an example of this I've seen from hair and makeup artists like five ways to prepare for your big day for hair and makeup. You know, put don't wear wear a button down shirt, wash your hair the night before, things like that. Or a wedding photographer could do like our favorite poses or here's some homework on a list of things that we need from you from, you know, different groupings of family members so that we can make your day better. So just things that you can send to the couple throughout the planning process to make them know that you're a professional and like you know your shit.

It will reassure them that they've made a good purchase hiring you and it will keep them busy along the way before their wedding day. A lot of times a lot of us vendors, I mean not wedding planners per se, but a lot of you other vendors, you don't have a lot of communication up to the wedding day. Just keeping you top of mind is super helpful to the bride and groom. I would want, and I do this even with wedding planning, I have tons of little flyers. In fact, have a whole insider guide website that I invite them to that gives them lots and lots of information of stuff that they have questions on.

Where are the best places to go in Hawaii to get food? Where are the best hotels? Things that I think I know they would love to get. That's just like a little extra that makes their experience working with me so much better. And it really has helped me get tons of referrals.

I have so many people that are like, Oh, I worked with this couple who you married five years ago and they told me about you. And then they come to Hawaii and they work with me too, which is so cool. So there are lots of little unique ways to make your couples experience super special. Number five, back end systems. So this could be invoicing, the way you organize your weddings, things like that, email back end systems.

You wanna start working on these things now because that will create an increase of profitability later. These back end systems is what allows your business to scale. And even though it seems kind of like a waste of time, it will actually save you tons of time and allow you to make tons more money. So start working on them now. And number six, and this is a big one, but you gotta master marketing, sales, and messaging.

An easier way to do this would be to take a course, specifically one related to wedding businesses and marketing to brides and grooms, sales and messaging specifically to brides and grooms. I have one at the wedding at my company, weddingproacademy.com, but there are tons of other ones. You want to get really good at mastering marketing and sale sales so that brides and grooms feel connected to you and already drawn to you and you make the sale more quickly and more easily. You build a genuine connection with them which makes them feel like you're an expert and that they want to work with you and they can't wait to pay you money. So that's really where you want to get to, a place where everybody that you talk to, you pretty much have them in the bag because of your sales and marketing system that you have set up on the back end with your social media, with your website, with your messaging.

So those are six things you could do to work on getting to a place where profitability will come more naturally and more easily. I hope you found that helpful. Let's do a quick recap. Are wedding businesses profitable? Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! They're profitable! They definitely have a huge potential to be really really profitable.

I know some people who have wedding businesses who are making over $200,000 a year. Does that mean that it's going to be easy? No. Not necessarily. It might mean that you have to hustle really hard or you need to spend a lot of time putting in really quality back end systems and processes and building your authority and credibility and expertise.

So yes, there is a huge potential for your wedding business to be profitable, but you're gonna have to put in the work. And every single wedding business is so unique. So you need to figure out what it is that makes yours special and then how to sell that specialness and how to make your business profitable. So that may be through extras like add ons, or maybe you niche down, or maybe it's through hustling in the beginning and nothing wrong with that. Like, every time every business that is just getting started should do some hustling because you don't know exactly what types of weddings are your people.

You don't know yet which ones you're going to be best at, which ones you're going to love most. So taking all of the weddings and hustling a little bit is a really great approach when you're first getting started. I hope you guys found this episode helpful and if you are building a wedding business you definitely are in the right place. There is a huge potential for profitability and you just kind of really have to dig your heels in and be all in on it and learn everything you can and really trust that this is where you need to be and that you're going to make it. Hope everybody has a wonderful Friday and a great weekend and I will see you next week.

Bye for now!