Careers: Wedding Planner

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