The best perks, the biggest mistakes and one ‘complete myth’ – life as a wedding planner
If you’ve ever spent your Monday morning commute daydreaming about starting afresh with your career, this feature is for you.
Each week in the Money blog, we speak to someone from a different profession to discover what it’s really like. This week we chat to Hannah Rose, a multi-award winning wedding planner and event manager.
You’re not going to be earning a luxury yacht from it… For a wedding coordinator working within a venue, you are looking at around £20-30k, but you can earn higher as a private planner, but this comes with a lot more costs and also long hours, stress and pressure.
If you want to be a wedding coordinator… start in service with a catering company, it’s the best way to learn the flow of a wedding day, basics such as laying tables, and the things that can go wrong.
There are no “breaks” on a wedding day… It’s not all as pretty and glamorous as it seems. It’s long hours, hard work, and stressful at points. You get to the point where you haven’t had time to stop and eat, your feet are aching, and you just need to keep going.
You may also have the nicest couple but… that doesn’t mean their guests are, too.
It’s a complete myth that adding the word “wedding” makes something more expensive… this is highly frustrating for the wedding industry! Everything is quoted on as per our time, and generally, weddings take more time and effort than other events.
The best perk of the job is… menu tastings.
The biggest mistakes couples make is… not putting their personalities into their day and listening to too many opinions. The day is about YOU, so make it about you.
The worst speech we’ve heard was not the content but the length… We once had a father of the bride who spoke for nearly an hour.
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My favourite part of the day… is watching the aisle walk at the start of the ceremony, or seeing the couple dancing together at the end of the night, having the best time – makes it all worth it!
Our hours are all over the place… In winter, when there are generally less weddings happening (our weddings tend to take place May-September), you tend to do more office hours, and have more weekends available. In summer, you are working up to six days a week to fit in admin and the physical wedding days. Wedding days are generally 8/9am start, 1/2am finish.
It’s not just about the wedding day… You have to work through couples’ requests, take meetings with couples and suppliers, site visits and tastings. We also spend a lot of time managing the business, such as blogs, maintaining the website, social media, and many other tasks to grow the business, along with networking to make sure we always have a solid network of amazing suppliers for our couples.