Wedding Planner Courses

Every year thousands of people get married and many will hire a wedding planner. Not everybody's lucky enough to be Kate Middleton and marrying a Prince who is heir to the throne, but they do want the best they can afford on their big and special day - and you can help them to achieve their dreams. You can easily learn to be a wedding planner and make a great income for yourself organising and planning weddings for brides, so they feel like a Princess for the day!

Some people find themselves becoming wedding planners when they're asked by a friend to plan their wedding and they find the whole process fascinating and want to do a professional job, so they enrol on a course so they are sure they get it right - and others at the wedding are eager to hire them too so their day goes smoothly.

There are many different wedding planner courses and routes into the industry, so it's up to you to choose the best wedding planner course that fits your location, needs and budget, but all of them will give you an in-depth understanding of exactly how to plan the perfect wedding.

How Much Can a Wedding Planner Earn?

Wedding planners are self employed, so you take on as little or as much work as you want, a lot of them choose to work part-time, giving them a fabulous work:life balance.

Wedding Planners will price their services in one of two ways:

Charge A Commission

This method of charging for wedding planning services is by charging a commission based on the total cost of the wedding. As an example, a wedding costing £20,000 might gross you an income of 15% of this, or £3,000.

If you're organising just two weddings per month, then this could easily be £72,000/year,

The average wedding planner will work on 20-40 weddings per year.

Charge a Fee

A fee based on the number of hours the planner estimates it will take them. Often in these cases the wedding planner will also be picking up commission payments from the suppliers they use. As an hourly rate, you might easily be able to start off charging £25-35/hour for your time, but at these prices it is essential you provide good value and you might choose to use a freelance admin person to help you out with some of the grunt work too.

You won't need any qualifications to go on wedding planner courses, but there are a variety of qualifications you can aim for - and many respected institutions that provide wedding planner courses both in distance learning and some classroom tuition.

Mostly, wedding planner courses will be home study, or distance learning. This makes sense because the people who tend to go on them will already be in full-time work and are looking to change direction, or they will be stay at home mums looking for a new career, so unable to just free themselves up for a formal classroom training session.

Wedding planner courses might be offering anything from a simple Certificate, for a one-day training session, through to a Diploma, or an Advanced Diploma, for a course studied over several weeks or months. 

One of the good things about training to be a wedding planner is that the cost of your training can often easily be covered by your first booking, so for the cost of the course versus how long it takes you to make your money back it's virtually an instant winner.

Some typical wedding planner course costs are:

• From about £195 for a one-day intensive workshop
• To £400-500 for a Diploma.

It is possible to spend more than this if you want to really sky-rocket your qualifications, knowledge and income potential in the shortest possible time. Cheap wedding planner courses will usually leave you lacking in some skills, or knowledge, that's essential to actually get going immediately, so try to avoid cheap wedding planner courses if you can. Paying for a professional wedding planner course from the start will save you time/stress and money very quickly.

Formal Qualifications

A more formal, recognised, wedding planner qualification, with certification, would be a Level 3/Level 4 course in Event Management and Wedding Planning, which would cost just a bit more at £670, but then you can work in the industry more easily as you have a recognised qualification.

I'm sure you have in mind the sort of wedding planner you want to be, so just pick the course that suits you best. Most will have a satisfaction guarantee and money back period because they want to build on their good reputation.

Once you set yourself up in business, you'll have to find yourself some customers. Getting work as a wedding planner isn't as difficult as a lot of other businesses. Most brides seem to have a virtually bottomless pit of money to spend on their perfect day and if your rates are reasonable then they'll hire you to make sure they get everything just perfect!

Some ways you can find clients as a wedding planner are:

• Joining online forums, especially those that enable you to have a signature where you can advertise.
• Local, small adverts in newspapers
• Advertise in Bride magazines
• Hire, or share, a table at local Bridal exhibitions and fayres - or even organise one yourself
• Get out and talk to the owners of local bridalwear shops, hairdressers and bridal makeup artists.
• Introduce yourself to wedding car hire companies, get to know what cars they've got and let them know you're in business
• Contact wedding DJs and ask them to put your name forward
• Cultivate a good relationship with local flower shops
• Get yourself some business cards made up and always carry a few around with you, everybody knows somebody that's getting married in the next 1-2 years, so start handing those cards out!
• Contact the local churches
• Speak with local wedding venues and hotels that hold receptions.

As a wedding planner, you have to remember you are NOT planning your own wedding, you must be able to separate yourself from your dream in order to carry out the exact wishes of the bride to be. Some essential skills you'll need are:

• To be exceedingly well organised, able to lay your hands instantly on information, details, costs
• To be good under pressure, sometimes you'll find yourself in the middle of a crisis with a sobbing bride on the phone and a venue that's just cancelled
• To be a good listener.
• To be naturally detail-obsessed, OCD tendencies are ideal here! It's the tiny things that matter.
  
• To be mathematically savvy, to be able to keep the budgets and costs under control.
• To possess the ability to keep those around you calm.
• To appear confident and professional at all times