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forced to wear one of your nice dresses and sit
still for an entire eight minutes It was beautiful You
fell in love with weddings like tony had fallen in
love with stephanie the pomp and circumstance the violin music
the tears of happiness being shed by all of the
other stuffed animals you thought to yourself i could get
used to this I want to spend my life in
and around weddings And that feeling never left you even
after you grew up in attended actual weddings attended by
actual human beings So you became a wedding planner and
now you want to tear those little husband and wife
miniatures off the cake and chan them into your eyes
Why While the wedding's air still beautiful for the most
part there's the occasional ceremony held in a hot smelly
barn And once in a while you'll get a couple
Of weirdos who want to get married while decked out
in hobbit year or dressed as frankenstein in the bride
of auras college football mascots or chickens or sans clothing
but generally the wedding's air very pretty everyone's crying happy
tears except for you you're crying sad angry tears of
frustration relief and a desire never to see another human
being again in your life Why Well started it for
a m when the bride called you on your cell
to make sure you double checked with the band to
confirm they're coming you did in the are one more
college by thirty the bride wants to know if you
arrange for the photographer to take pre ceremony photos in
the dressing rooms bridezilla has awakened so yeah you didn't
get a ton of sleep you're already cranky doesn't bode
well for the day you show up at the venue
and old historic estate with a beautiful lawn where the
wedding will take place at seven thirty ceremony isn't until
three but this isn't the sort of gig where you
can just kind of pop in and pop out In
fact you've pretty much felt like you're living with this
Couple for the past three months But today now that
all the vendors have been confirmed the cake has been
ordered The flowers have been purchased the table linens have
been decided upon and the trio of juggling fire breathing
acrobats has been hired Hey there's no accounting for taste
it's about pulling together all of the elements and making
sure the show goes off without a hitch because that's
what it really is a performance that begins when the
music starts playing and doesn't end until the last remaining
wedding Guests stumbled drunkenly into their ubers From the moment
you arrive at the venue you are bombarded by people
making deliveries and other people asking questions You've got to
show the cake guy where the cake goes the flower
guy where the flowers go and the juggling acrobats where
their balls are the venue manager gets up in your
face because one of the delivery vans honked its horn
which is in violation of the neighbourhood noise ordinance Yep
totally your fault and within your control right Well the
caterer starts screaming at you because he was under the
impression he'd only need to feed a hundred people ride
That one hundred twenty even though you called them three
times in the past week to explain that there would
be one hundred twenty and oh the bride has called
another three times one time to ask if it's supposed
to rain another time to ask if someone a table
to khun b moved table five for dinner and another
time i'll just a chat Then the bride's thirteen year
old niece starts playing her violin really badly Maid of
honor totally hung over from the bachelorette party wants to
know where she should put her hand written speech during
the ceremony Well the best man needs help tying a
tie but luckily i found the ring you know not
asked where he found it Your manager agent personal shopper
fashion consultant and baby sitter all at once We have
to perform every one of your functions while more or
less mint in your cool at least on the outside
because that brian is a giant ball of stress and
you cannot add to her anxiety and you're adding it
up in your head that the average marriage in america
lasts about three p point two years during the ceremony
You're keeping an eye on the musicians to make sure
they're not starting too early You're checking with the ushers
to make sure they know where to seat everyone We're
checking with the bartenders to make sure the bar is
fully stocked because people are gonna want a drink No
yeah this career ain't easy on the old nerves but
there are some definite perks Orkin a location wedding who
you might just have yourself a free trip to hawaii
and at least you aren't chained to a desk somewhere
You're moving around usually in beautiful sometimes exotic settings it
could be worse Pay is okay depending on where you
are you could be pulling in everywhere from a couple
grand per wedding in the heart of the midwest to
ten grand a wedding arm or in silicon valley or
even way more for the super high end affairs books
some twenty million dollar wedding for a couple of muckety
mucks and you could be pulling in over a hundred
grand for your efforts It also depends on whether or
not you're a solo planner or you work for a
wedding planning company the upside of working for a company
Well the gigs are more regular and steady and your
job's a whole lot more secure the downside Well the
company's taking a big fat cut so you make a
lot less per wedding plus you'll have one of those
boss things standing over you Another downside Weddings aren't exactly
on the rise fill any als don't get married no
one's in a rush to have kids like they used
to be i can't imagine why young people can't really
afford nice expensive weddings or pricy wedding planners and the
divorce rate has stalled in recent decades mainly because people
are getting married so much later in life so there's
a chance they'll make a drunken mistake one night in
vegas when they're twenty two and be looking to remarry
a year later And yeah in the wedding planning business
divorces your friend there's also the matter of many venues
having on site wedding planners some of these people are
jack of all trades you know they mow the lawn
they clean the gutters they dispose of the bodies and
so on so your options aren't exactly slim but they're
slimming but if you're able to get rolling like book
forty weddings a year in that around five grand a
wedding Well that's a very comfortable two hundred thousand dollars
of income for you were going a forty parties a
year One of the best things about becoming a wedding
planner is that you don't have to go to college
for four plus years First you may just need to
take a certification course to be legit at which point
you can start booking and planning away and if going
it alone you'll need a business license and probably a
driver license to Unless you're working with a bunch of
clients who want to get married in your living room
you also need to become a master of self promotion
that means business card schmoozing it conferences assembling a portfolio
and getting plenty of eyeballs Looking at it you'll need
to plan weddings yes but you'll also be in charge
of planning your own life Those wedding planning up your
alley Do you think you could handle the pressure If
so all you need to do is say i do