Wedding Planner Jobs & Careers Overview

For some, a wedding planner career can be a very fulfilling adventure. Perhaps your spark came from a movie you saw or just the desire to see one of the biggest days in people’s lives made perfect. Either way, you’ve got a little work to do to launch your wedding planner career.

Overall, a wedding planner is both creative and organized. If this doesn’t describe you at all, you may not be the right person for the job or perhaps you just need to go through the proper training. If the desire is there, seize it and move forward.

Wedding Planner Career Key Points

Let’s start out with some quick facts about your new career as a wedding planner:

• As a wedding planner, you’ll have the opportunity to work out of your home.
• You’ll need to be comfortable in dealing with people.
• You’ll need to pay attention to small details to ensure everything goes as planned.
• You’ll be partly a counselor to nervous almost-married couples.
• As a wedding planner, you’ll potentially be setting up venues, themes, flowers, food & drink, moment capturing (photos, videos, etc), etc.
• You’ll want to create contacts with florists, bakers, etc.
• Any experience you have with event planning is a serious plus.
• A wedding planner career can be very exciting, but it also takes dedication.
• Those who successfully enjoy a wedding planner career typically have very flexible hours and work days.

Wedding Planner Career Beginning Steps

So, you’ve decided that being a wedding planner is the job for you. Great! Your next steps are determined by your experience and overall ability.

Yes, you can take courses (or read a wedding planner guide and various other books) to get into wedding planning. And it’s highly recommend if you have no experience in upper-level planning. We recommend looking into courses or even a degree program (there might be career training online options that work for you). At the very minimum, read some books about wedding planning and weddings in general.

Next, sit down with a pen and paper (or on the computer if you prefer) and chart out wedding elements. Think long and hard. Perhaps watch some wedding footage (YouTube can help with this). Look at all the details, great and small, that go into a wedding.

When this is done, begin thinking of what goes into making a wedding a reality (as in people to get the job done). You’ve got florists, photographers, bakers, etc. Create an initial contact list for all of these jobs. Again, keep organized. Start to visualize yourself as being the best person to plan weddings.

Wedding Planner – Your First Wedding

Ideally, the best way to start out and get wedding planner experience is to plan the wedding of a friend or relative (or someone connected to them). It’s going to give you great experience and the stress will be far lower. But don’t jump into it. Make sure you’ve completed your homework and are “job ready” before handing your first wedding.

Wedding Planner Jobs Portfolio

Your portfolio is your set of keys to future work. Whenever you plan a wedding, document everything. Make sure lots of pictures are being taken (video especially). Put the best pictures of your best work in your portfolio to show others.

This is just a general overview of wedding planner jobs & careers. The amount of money you can make varies greatly. For example, you could charge a set fee, a percentage fee, get kickbacks from vendors or a combination of these. According to data we found, couples spend about $27,000 on average for a wedding. Check out Careers Starter for more information on your dream careers, including more about starting your wedding planner career.