Is the wedding planning market too saturated?
Last weekend I went to my very first wedding expo. Yes, you read that correctly the self proclaimed wannabe wedding planner, attended a bridal expo for the first time. I’ll preface this shocking turn of events with, when it was my time to plan my wedding I was never in town when an expo was occurring and so I could never go. Instead there was a time where my mom and sister attended on my behalf, they enjoyed themselves so much we ended up meeting our baker and florist through them attending. Having had such a good experience and not actually attending myself when the opportunity popped up, allowing me to attend an expo with a friend who is getting married this summer, I jumped in! I was excited that I would experience an expo and also become more informed about Florida wedding vendors. However, my comments about it? It was completely overwhelming, and a surprisingly opportunistic event, meant to feed off of impulse.
There is a certain air about being engaged there's a joy, an excitement it's like you're the only engaged person who ever was. Planning a wedding comes with a lot of hard decisions mostly having to do with money and sticking to a budget. However, it is easy to stray from said budget when you see something possibly on Pinterest that you absolutely must have. Coming from a once engaged bride to be, to a now married Mrs. Bridal expos are overwhelming! My biggest advice would be to go with a designated plan, what do you need to focus on, firstly does your venue have any vendor suggestions? If they do, try and find them at the expo so you can see some displays. It's best to go in with a plan because trust me you will get swept up in the aura, I even imagined having another wedding just to incorporate some new trends featured at this event. As an example there was an ice cream cart complete with a toppings bar, an on the spot spa lounge that comes to your venue that gives guests a la cart spa treatments during the reception, I mean as absurd as you can reach with an idea it was there. There were 20 different florists, 16 different djs, 25 or more wedding planners and what seems like every venue in central Florida.
When I describe this event as opportunistic I mean it in multiple ways, stay with me here when you register for the event before going into the space you get a bag with about $300 in coupons for different vendors that are willing to accept them. Now these coupons you can only use one at a time of course, and they only work if you book onsite before you leave, so you really don't get to have much one on one time and honestly it's not enough time to really get all your questions answered. You are battling with all the other soon to be brides in your midst, you feel like you are getting a generic memorized speech about why this vendor is the best of the bunch and why you should go with them. Most times brides are not there with their grooms to be and so they make these decisions because they are feeling like well hey I'm saving $100 but my advice is take a step back and $100 isn't really all that it seems, it definitely is not worth having a change of heart and losing the $100 anyway, you should always think it over talk it over, never buy on impulse. Never
So that part of the system really turned me off. I will say it brought back an experience I encountered while wedding planning. I made an impulse buy, left a deposit and ended up having a change of heart, after going home and thinking it over, luckily it was arranged where I wouldn't lose my deposit so I had a fairly good experience however, not many end that way. And more often than not you end up losing your money so my best advice is go already knowing you want to book a vendor and ultimately play the system go to the expo knowing you will receive the discount.
Overall, this was an excellent learning experience for me I met a lot of wedding planners, I saw what is popular among some brides but, the thing I noticed the most is how saturated the wedding planning business is, and if I'm honest it was quite intimidating. I began questioning if there was any room for me, I started doubting if I was even prepared for all the work and competition, I began to question my own abilities at being creative, if I was good enough I only have my own wedding planning as experience. However, I did take the experience and I'm going to use it as motivation, motivation to be better to work hard to find a space in this business because I did realize how much I enjoyed being there and enjoyed seeing all the booths and interacting asking questions and suggesting different ideas to my friend, I had a great time so the answer to my title question is that there may seem like wedding planning is overly saturated but there's always space for new ideas. That goes for pretty much anything else you may be striving for there's always room for you and what you have to offer so don't ever back down.
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TGIF and have a great weekend filled with love.