The State of the Wedding Industry

The wedding industry has historically done well even in times of economic uncertainty. Tough financial times simply do not override love and marriage. With that in mind, here is a look at wedding statistics for 2008 as researched and reported by The Wedding Report. Dollar amounts are the average spent for each category across the country. In some cases, such as Bridal Attire, the amount represents the sum of the averages of all items in that category.

Estimated U.S. Weddings: 2,212,923
Total Estimated Wedding Market Value: $62,053,359,662
Average Number of Guests: 166
Total Average Spending: $28,704

· Bridal Attire: $1,903
· Groom Attire: $449
· Hair and Makeup: $166
· Wedding Ceremony: $1,552
· Wedding Officiant: $226
· Rehearsal Dinner: $1,300
· Entertainment: $493 to $1,786
· Flowers: $2,033
· Gifts and Favors: $1,427
· Honeymoon: $3,805
· Stationery: $911
· Jewelry and Rings: $5,803
· Photography and Videography: $3,502
· Wedding Planner: $1,483
· Reception: $15,516
· Transportation: $257 to 690

For the Certified Wedding Planner, here are the estimates for the range of services you provide to your clients.
· “Day Of” Coordination: $500 to $3,000
· Month-of-Direction: $1,200 to $2,150
· Full Service Wedding Coordination: $2,500 to $6,500
· A La Carte Services: $55 to $150 per hour

Additionally, Shane McMurray, CEO and founder of The Wedding Report, writes that “despite the credit crunch, the wedding industry remains steady. Most business reporting sales are good with consumer spending remaining steady. Businesses are also reporting that the number of couples getting married remains steady, three month sales expectations are good, but business cost continues to increase.”

Help Plan for a Wedding and Prepare for a Marriage

In 1996, the U.S. Congress found that marriage is the foundation of a successful society. The financial impact of divorce on families and society in general is so profound, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 included provisions for funding $150 million each year to promote healthy marriages and fatherhood. With the societal costs of divorce estimated to be over $112 billion annually, governmental efforts amount to an ounce of prevention that will not lead to a cure without considerable help.

According to the Administration for Children & Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a healthy marriage is a mutually satisfying relationship that is beneficial to the husband, wife, and children (if present). There must be deep respect for each other and a commitment to ongoing growth, the use of effective communication skills, and the use of successful conflict management skills.

Wedding planning can be costly and stressful, but the Certified Wedding Planner can turn the planning process into an opportunity for a couple to gain the knowledge and skills they will need to have a healthy marriage. Not all clients will look to you for this advice. You will, however, serve them well by having relationship education resources available for brides and grooms looking for help with more than vendors and venues.

Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, and more than one-third of those occur when one or both spouses are between the ages of twenty and twenty four years old. According to the Journal of Family Psychology, premarital relationship education is associated with higher levels of marital satisfaction, lower levels of destructive conflicts, and higher levels of interpersonal commitment to spouses. A study in the March 2006 issue suggests that couples who receive premarital education have a 31% lower chance of divorce.

The Certified Wedding Planner is uniquely positioned to lead newlyweds into a better understanding of what it takes to maintain a healthy relationship. If you focus your clients on planning their wedding as well as preparing for their marriage, you will do your part to help continue to lower the divorce rate and strengthen the institution of marriage as well as our society in general.

This Week in Wedding Planning News

As a busy Certified Wedding Planner, there is precious little time available for keeping up with the latest news and trends in the wedding industry. To help keep you up-to-date on wedding current events, we offer a quick rundown on some of this week’s top industry stories.

As the wedding industry continues to battle the current economic downturn, wedding businesses are evolving to meet the challenge in different ways. Some businesses are merging to combine their products and services in an attempt to increase their market share. A wedding supply website has responded to its local market need for a hands-on source by opening its first brick-and-mortar location.

Other wedding industry marketing news includes a review of a wedding resources portal that bills itself as “The Future of Weddings”, an international corporate event planning group that is launching itself headfirst into the wedding planning business, and a New Jersey shore community rolling out its plans to promote their destination wedding appeal.

With many prospective clients either cutting back on their wedding budgets or forgoing wedding planning altogether, a wedding planning business owner has taken umbrage with TheKnot.com’s article on the recent survey revealing how much time brides-to-be spend at work researching caterers.

This week, weddings were challenged by unexpected military deployments, uproarious opponents of same-sex marriages, and Hurricane Ike induced venue closings. Offbeat weddings featured unusual cake designs, a swinging 40’s theme, and a mass ceremony of seven hundred couples seeking to spark a baby boom. Wedding contests offered an unclaimed $10,000 for the couple who waits and an $80,000 award to engaged cast mates of the CBS Survivor: China show.

In the world of celebrity weddings, Fergie is looking for the best wedding planner, Mena Suvari is learning about wedding planning in Italy, Gisele and Tom Brady are rumored to be game planning a run to the altar, Paris Hilton tries on glass slippers, Madonna and Adam Shankman are producing The Wedding Planner 2, and Captain Kirk and Mr. Sulu aren’t communicating well.

Oh, and pink is the new white.

The Certified Wedding Philanthropist

What do you get for the bride and groom who already have everything? Many Certified Wedding Planners are helping clients celebrate their nuptials with the art of giving while receiving. Keeping charity in mind, there are numerous ways to design a wedding plan that appeals to the better angels of our nature.

Cards for Causes allows a couple to create customized wedding stationery that promotes their favorite charity and donates 20% of the purchase toward that cause. Recipients are alerted to the donation and encouraged to make a contribution of their own.

When setting up a gift registry, organizations such as Just Give, the I Do Foundation, Global Giving, and Changing the Present provide options that either encourage guests to donate directly to a choice of more than a million charities, donate a portion of a gift’s purchase price toward the couple’s chosen beneficiary, or provide gifts that are sent directly to a cause in the couple’s name.

One unique gift registry, Ten Thousand Villages, features Fair Trade products handcrafted by fairly paid artisans in thirty-two countries around the world. Some couples choose to request donations to benefit a local charity. A couple in Washington, D.C. created a perpetual scholarship fund for the groom’s alma mater and requested their guests make donations that benefit disadvantaged children.

For goods and services for the ceremony and reception, consider attending a show such as the Get Hitched, Give Hope event taking place in Seattle this evening. Coordinated by six wedding industry professionals, including wedding and event planners as well as wedding vendors, the event requires participating vendors to donate an item or service to be auctioned or raffled during the show to benefit Brides Against Breast Cancer.

After the “Day Of” events are complete, there are many options for continuing the spirit of giving. Brides Against Breast Cancer is holding a charity wedding gown sale in Los Angeles at the end of the month, with similar events taking place throughout the year around the country. Other options include contributing leftover reception food to a local soup kitchen or homeless shelter, delivering the wedding flowers to a local hospital to brighten patient’s spirits, and donating the wedding gown and other attire to a local thrift store, the Salvation Army, or an organization like the Princess Project.

Many charitable organizations provide wedding favor signs to be used as table place cards to inform guests of donations made in their name and describe the significance of the charity to the couple. If the favored charity is local or does not provide a favor sign service, many stationery companies allow you to create your own donation cards and envelopes.

After the main events, the new husband and wife can continue their philanthropic journey by turning their honeymoon into a life changing event. The travel service i-to-i.com arranges trips overseas to meet new people, get immersed in a new culture, and make a difference abroad. Destinations include Africa, Asia, South America, and Australia where celebrating wedded bliss can be coupled with working with local children or wildlife and helping a local community or environment.

Wedding related charity allows the joy of the “Day Of” to reverberate into the future. The simple act of helping others while enjoying their good fortune can multiply the blessings of your client’s union and help set their marriage on the path of goodness and hope.

Turn Your Wedding Industry Expertise into Additional Revenue

The wedding industry has historically been resistant to economic downturns domestically and internationally. During the current global financial crisis, there are signs that even love and marriage is feeling the pain. As the wedding industry seeks solutions to fewer clients and decreased wedding budgets, it is imperative for your business survival to adapt to the needs of a slumping economy.

Interest in the wedding industry is reaching an all-time high around the world. For the Certified Wedding Planner and wedding industry expert looking for ways to increase income while doing what you love, The Wedding Planning Institute is offering the right vehicle for these troubled times. As a veteran wedding planner or wedding vendor, you can turn your years of experience in the field into a lucrative business helping others to learn more about your specialty.

Like many of our current instructors, also successful wedding industry professionals, you are asked frequently for advice, tips, and guidance from others getting started in your field. This program is your opportunity to earn money while you help others learn from your real world experiences.

WPI is currently accepting proposals from industry professionals who can communicate their expertise in the form of an online course. WPI will work with industry experts to develop their course utilizing the latest trends, industry best practices, and time-honored traditions to provide instruction and valuable information on to our worldwide network of students.

The Wedding Planning Institute is partnered with over 1,800 accredited colleges and universities. Courses will be offered through our partner colleges as online training programs and the Industry Expert will provide training, advice, and feedback to students through our online curriculum system.

As a WPI Industry Expert, you will earn tuition revenue, enhance awareness of your core business, and enjoy networking opportunities throughout the WPI system. The Wedding Planning Institute will also help make your course successful with various marketing efforts, such as press releases, advertisements, direct mail, and college course catalogs to give your course national and international exposure.

For more information, including frequently asked questions and course topics, and to submit a proposal, visit:

http://www.weddingplanninginstitute.com/instructor_partners2.html

The Value of the Certified Wedding Planner

Adam Shankman, director of the 2001 hit film, The Wedding Planner, has announced plans to make a sequel, which will reportedly be produced by Madonna. As a Certified Wedding Planner, you can expect another influx of people wanting to enter the field and increased interest in brides and grooms considering hiring you.

Amidst all the impending hoopla, how does the experienced CWP stand out and show the value of your knowledge and know-how? How do you differentiate your services and results so that your prospective clients find you and not the hobbyist with little training, but tons of inspired confidence?

Brides and grooms today are interested in competence and efficiency. They are using the Internet to research financing, venues, and everything in between. They are also learning about the good and the bad of hiring a wedding planner.

You have the expertise. You know how to find the perfect, unique venue and even how to get the groom involved in planning. The question you have to answer is: Why should a bride and groom hire you?

The wedding blogosphere is filled with attempts to answer this question. At Wedding Planning News, Ideas and Answers, brides and grooms are given a quiz to find out if they should hire a wedding planner. On Wedding by Color, a recent blog entry addresses brides that feel like they were behind in their planning and do not know where to start. The 3 O’ Clock Wedding site features an article titled “How Wedding Planners Help Couples Deal with a Challenging Event.”

Most CWP veterans are using websites and blogs to help establish their value to their clients. Whether you find your prospects through the Internet, word-of-mouth, or more traditional advertising, your job and your business success depends on your ability to communicate your value to the potential client in your first meeting.

Wedding Insurance and the Limited Wedding Budget

When you are working with a bride and groom determined to reduce their wedding budget, where do you draw the line on wedding insurance? Is it optional? Is it a necessary evil? Or is it a budget item that, much like auto insurance, you dislike paying for but thank the heavens you did when something goes awry?

We have all heard wedding horror stories. Many Certified Wedding Planners have experienced them. Someone gets cold feet, a vendor or venue doesn’t deliver as promised, a natural disaster or untimely deployment intervenes, or the owl delivering the priceless family heirlooms decides to call it a day mid-delivery. Not that wedding insurance will always cover runaway grooms or fowl, but there are definite scenarios to consider covering when advising your clients on budget cuts.

In a nutshell, wedding insurance can protect your client’s investment when something out of their control interferes with their well-laid and well-paid plans. For instance, severe weather or other natural disaster can ruin venue plans, a serious illness or death in the family can cast a pall on the proceedings, or the limousine company holding the deposit and travel arrangements may go out of business the previous week. These types of wedding disasters can be mitigated by purchasing wedding insurance.

Other instances where coverage can, if not save the day, lessen the pain caused by someone else’s negligence, bad timing, or horrible luck include if the bride’s gown is damaged beyond repair during alterations, the officiant triple books the wedding day and fails to show up for the ceremony, or the bride or groom is suddenly called for an emergency military deployment.

While there is never a complete remedy for a wedding day dream turned into a nightmare by unforeseen circumstances, wedding policies, ranging from $75 to $1000, can provide some compensation for money lost to deposits, repurchases, and other expenses. In most cases, the person paying for the wedding must be the person taking out the policy.

Many insurance companies offer wedding insurance, but it is up to the CWP to help the couple figure out which company and policy works for their situation. If you research your local carriers just as you would any other vendor, you will be able to identify and recommend the companies and agents best suited for your clients.

As for a bride or groom getting cold feet, wedding insurance cannot keep them from bolting, but it can help reduce the financial pain that accompanies the shock. For more information on wedding mishaps and the potential remedies, visit Wed Safe, a company that specializes in private event insurance. Other sources to learn more about wedding insurance are The Knot, USA Today, and About.com.