By Tope Babatope
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Job Description:

A wedding consultant helps a bride and groom plan either all or any part of their wedding. A business that handles the planning and logistics for a wedding and all the details leading to it.

Start up cost: very low

Potential first year earnings: 100% profit margin

Breakeven time from initial investment: Rapid (one year)

Future growth potential: High

Skills necessary: You will need good organization and research skills, an eye for style, and a flair for negotiation and diplomacy.

No staffing required.

Why it’s a business to start:

Many of the people inclined to have big weddings seem to have the least amount of time to plan them and are likely to hire a service to do it. It’s a sad but accurate commentary on modern life that everybody’s busy nowadays . Between work, business trips, shopping, meeting friends, managing schedules, and the 1,001other details that people deal with everyday , life often seems to fly by in a blur. Who has got time to plan a wedding and deal with florists, caterers, dressmakers, musicians,printers,limousine drivers,photographers,and everyone else involved with making wedding magic? The answer is : the wedding consultant.

Start up:

Humans are the eternal optimists and seem to believe that the fancier the wedding, the greater the odds that the marriage will make it. The  wedding planner is the great conductor whose job it is to make sure that everyone goes away happy and that these grand events are flawless. A wedding planner works with a couple and asks a million questions about their taste in cake, flowers,music, food, wedding vows, venues- you get the idea. For nothing more than a moderate fee, a wedding consultant will all those problems go away for the prospective bride and groom. A wedding consultant tackles the seemingly insurmountable mountain of detail that needs to be resolved before that day arrives. Is it any wonder that more and more brides and grooms to be are clam outing for the services  of qualified wedding consultants and that the wedding consultant field is booming as a result?

Methodology:

A wedding planner must be versatile. He or she must be prepared to do whatever the client wants, from planning the entire wedding to just organizing a small part, such as the flowers or the photography. What qualities  make a good wedding consultant ? One of the most important qualifications is having a good, solid background in the hospitality industry, so that you can handle the logistical arrangements that a wedding requires. There are so many aspects to planning a wedding that a novice can’t hope to know them all- and that’s exactly what clients will be counting on you to provide.

Hospitality industry experience also gives you familiarity with vendors, and knowing which are reliable and which aren’t is critical to the success of both your job performance and the wedding itself.  Vendors are just as eager to please wedding consultants as they are the bride and groom, because they know that reputation is everything in the wedding business.

Networking skills are essential to succeeding as a wedding consultant. Business associates give you referrals and vice versa. Having a strong network within your local wedding industry industry can make or break your business.

Requirements/ Skills

What makes wedding consultant business even better is that it requires little in the way if special equipment, so start- up costs are low. A good computer is necessary, one with a color monitor, color printer, and powerful – enough modem to hasten Internet access and downloads( for all those color pictures of flower arrangements and cakes that the bride saw in some magazine). To facilitate customer communication,  an e-mail account, cellular phone, and fax machine are also necessary. Additional start up monies should be allocated for brochures, business cards and other marketing expenses.

Bottom Line Advice

A word of caution before you run out and get your ” wedding consultant ” business cards printed. Not every part of the country is fertile territory for this type of business. Where you are located also affects the prices that you can charge.