10 Ways to be Productive during Wedding Season

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It’s already June and wedding season has been in full swing for a while now. We are all busy and you are all enjoying planning, working and making brides happy with your special services. I am not sure how many weddings you plan or work in a year, but I typically do 30-40 full wedding planning services for my clients per year. This is the perfect recipe for a burn out. me at the end of the day. Each wedding takes me about 150 hours to plan per couple. This is a total of 4500-6000 hours a year. That is a about 250 days of work out of 365 days. Okay that is a lots of math. Really that is a lot. How can you manage this without burning out. We have outlined the 10 Ways to be Productive during Wedding Season as a wedding professional. Remember some of you may have family, vacation plans, you need rest and you need a life too.

10 ways to be Productive during Wedding Season

1.  Plan your week in advance and schedule in some you time, family time and work time. Depending in which wedding vendor category your work  falls in, you can work out your schedule accordingly. For wedding planners, a majority of our brides are only available after work – which is after 5 pm. Some florists are open from 9-6 pm. We suggest planning out your week to meet clients, meet vendors and do paper work. Here is an example of my work week: Monday is my rest day (I do not meet any clients or vendors.) I get up at 8 am, do some house work, cook, work out and at around 11 am start working. Monday is the day I do all my social and marketing work. I schedule all my social media for the week coming up, I write 3 blogs and schedule them, I post a few ads if necessary, look up Facebook groups for potential new business and market my business. This takes me about 3.5 hours to do. I respond to only new client inquires if I have any and schedule any initial consultation meetings for the week on Mondays. I go about prepping the consultation meetings (files and portfolios). Tuesday is my day to finalize all details for the wedding coming that weekend. Update my check lists, confirm final items with vendors, meet up vendors for final notes if necessary, confirm floor plans and details. That evening I meet my couple for my final meetings and go through our final check list that they need to sign and approve. (Get all our check lists here). I also respond to all my other clients emails, questions and updates. Wednesday morning is my me time. I read, work out, relax but just do me. In the afternoon or evening I meet my other clients for Face to Face meetings, meet new potential clients. I send out contracts, update my finances and do follow ups. My Thursday is the same as Wednesday, only one change. I do my wedding rehearsals on Thursdays. If I have a wedding on Friday- then I am working the wedding if not, I am prepping for my Saturday wedding. Friday is when I put my out of office email notification on telling clients and vendors I would get back to them by Tuesday. Sunday is Family day. What’s your week like? 
2. Create wedding templates for your wedding business that will make it easy for you in the long run. Have a contract template that you edit when a client wants one or when some is ready to book. Have a wedding budget template for when a bride asks for one. Create something that you can easily grab and edit as you need. This saves you so much time. No time for creating templates, grab yours below: 
3. Automate your email system. When clients contact you from your website, have a system that sends them a well designed “Welcome Email” that makes the potential bride excited to be potentially working with you. Your email should tell them exactly when they should expect to hear back from you. The rule is to respond to all your potential clients within 24 hours. What Free items can you include in that email? I always add a 1 page portfolio of our best work, 10 reason PDF of why they should work with us, a PDF format of past clients testimonial and 1 page form to fill out and send back, asking more details about their wedding and a Free Budget Template. Don’t forget to share your social media pages for them to follow. For example my email in regards to social media will say:  We will get back to you within 24 hours, if you want to follow us on Facebook / Instagram to see what we are doing behind the scenes- do it here (Include link). What does this do for you? This positions you to be the top choice wedding vendor they will choose to book with. It stops them from contacting other potentials as you have given them exciting things to work on, look at and read more about. This should keep them occupied until you can get back to them. 
4. What other ways can you be productive during wedding season? You should have the right tools in place that will make your wedding business and your marketing efforts seamless! I use Pinterest to help plan my clients’ wedding and my profile is fully filled in order to help clients find me. Aisle Planner is the best tool for wedding planners to use. Mail Chimp is the email provider I use to send my brides automated emails. If you are not sure what other tools you should be using, we have the 10 Tools that you can use right here!    
5. Use a great wedding referral program to help you book more brides. This cuts down a lot of time when it comes to marketing your business. Remember, just because you are busy, does not mean you should not find time to market and capture more weddings for the following year. Having a great referral plan in place will help you book up your year easily and effortlessly. Read about the different ways to set up a wedding referral program right here.
6. Make your wedding website work for you. Your website should be producing you leads on a daily basis. If you website is not doing this, then you have it set up all wrong. In order to really attract brides, your about us page (most visited page on a website) should be extremely welcoming and must speak to the bride. Don’t forget to add your FREEBIE option on this page (For example- get our Freebie for new brides here- your very one budget calculator or Find out how much your wedding will cost here: ” This is the best way to capture your leads. Your website should have a great wedding blog, an attractive portfolio (If you don’t have a portfolio do a few style shoot to add to your work) and an attractive contact us page. Don’t forget your services page. Each page should have a lead magnet (sign up here to get something FREE) as this is the best way to get leads and email addresses. Your website should be working for you even when you are asleep. You should be waking up to 4-5 inquires every morning. If you are not, consider giving your website a small Facelift. You might not be targeting your wedding site to your clients correctly. Our E-Book gives you a few great tips and tricks for to implement today to start seeing results. Get it here! 
7. Hire help – you can not do it all. Don’t have time to do all your social media and content marketing, look into hiring help! Culture Chic offers the best social media marketing your business will need to take you to the next level. This is because we use these same strategies to book us over 30 weddings a year. We know the key words that work, the engagement that the clients needs on social media and what to blog about. If you need help with your day to day operations, why not hire a summer intern or two? They are eager to learn and will take a lot of the work load away from you. You can find this by partnering with colleges that offer event management programs.
8. Automate your social media – I touched on this lightly on my first comment but this one is huge. Social media is the best way to attract brides. We talk about this a lot all over our blog. You need to be able to automate your system. I spend one day (about 3.5 hours on this) to able to schedule all my posts. My Facebook and Pinterest are connected to my twitter, so when I post on these platforms, they automatically post on Twitter. I also use Board Booster to automate all my Pinterest accounts. You do not need to use every social media platform out there, but focus on those that will bring you the most results. To find out exactly which one we recommend, read this blog! 
9. Become a thought leader in the wedding industry. The more you do well and share your knowledge, the more people would want to work with you and recommend you. Know your wedding industry and show this by doing TV interviews, blog interviews and show this off on your social media platforms. Eventually people will automatically want to work with you. Vendors will recommend you and brides will also send you work. This becomes an easy process for you.
10. Lastly but not the least option, consider hiring a coach that is in the same wedding category as you. They will save the time as they will coach you on what to do and what not to do. In the long run they will save you money, long days of stress and will offer you tips that work for you. We have a list of great wedding coaches here, include some in our team! 

Who wants to work 365 days a week with no rest or profit to show for it? Not me. So go ahead and automate your wedding business to success with these tips.