Last month I mentioned I met a vendor, Unveiled, who sells wedding favors, gifts and accessories. Today I had the pleasure of having coffee with the owner, Sally Otsuka, and Cheryl Bethe and I got the opportunity to look closely at many of the items in their store and learn what is popular with brides.

I know you, like many wedding planners, may sell your own line of wedding accessories but you still might want to refer their site to your clients for items that you don’t carry. Sally and Cheryl visit gift shows around the country to bring back unusual and delightful things to fill their shop and online store. They also create some products of their own.

Brides love their table name cards, table number cards, place cards, menu cards, favor tags and programs, all of which they customize for each wedding.

Also popular are gifts they created that are almost exclusive to their store, “Her Floral Highness” gift box for the flower girl and the “Ring Protection Agent” gift box for the for the ring bearer.

Check out their online store, or visit their shop in Walnut Creek, California, when you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, to see their entire line of products.

Get Married Media, which brings us the Get Married television show and a magazine of the same name, announced the results of their online survey of more than 1500 brides.

Here are 4 of the results and what they mean to you as you create services and market them to your brides and grooms:

1) The average age of brides today is 28, and more than half of those surveyed being over the age of 26

This means they have probably been working for a few years, may have an established career and need your help getting things done.

2) 92% are paying for some portion of their weddings

They have more control over what their weddings looks like and who they hire to help them with their planning.

3) 44%  found that the most surprising wedding stress is establishing the wedding budget

You may want to offer a service in which you work with couples to help them put together their wedding budgets. Or you can give classes teaching couples to create their own budgets.

4) Grooms have the strongest opinion about the venue, catering, music and photography

Keep this in mind even if you are just working with the bride, the groom may want to weigh in on these areas before the bride signs the dotted line on any contracts.

More information and details about the survey can be found on the Get Married website.

I just watched another episode of the TLC show, “Four Weddings”, the show in which four brides judge each others’ weddings with the winner getting a luxury honeymoon.

Some negative comments that the brides had about each others’ weddings that you might help you plan better weddings:

The presentation of the food was more important than taste at one wedding

The food and the wedding cake have to not only look good, they have to taste good also. Make sure your brides offer a wide variety of selections, especially since may people today are vegetarians, and have the food served promptly so guests aren’t waiting around hungry with nothing to do.

A Sunday night wedding was inconsiderate

Venues usually charge less for wedding receptions held on Sundays since it is not a peak wedding day. However most people work on Mondays so if your bride is considering a Sunday, you might want to talk to her about doing it early.

Music during cocktails can be too loud

People aren’t surprised when dance music is a little loud but when guests are trying to mingle and enjoy cocktails, they want only background music so they can hear each other speak.

The photo above is of The Venetian Catering and Special Events in New Jersey where one of the four brides had her wedding.

The show is rebroadcast during the week so check the listings on TLC’s website.

I sometimes get emails from new wedding planners saying they are having trouble marketing their wedding planning business and getting clients. They tell me they have a website and blog, they have a Fan page on Facebook and use Twitter and they network. Sounds like they are on the right track but then I investigate further and discover that they are not putting as much energy as they could be into these marketing efforts.

I have them look at different areas of their marketing and have them ask themselves some questions to see where they might be able to improve or increase their efforts. You might want to ask yourself these questions and review your marketing also:

The target market

Did you do enough research to know that there is a market for your products and services? Did you design your services and your marketing around them? If not, you might want to make some changes.

Website

Do you have content that is targeted at your niche? Are you showing photographs from your past events? Is it easy to find information? Are you using keywords so your site gets picked up by the search engines?

Blog

Are you posting frequently? Many times I’ve found that wedding planners start blogging almost everyday then after a short time they lose interest and start blogging only once a month. In order to keep brides returning to your blog you have to post often and offer good content. Frequent posting also helps the search engines find you.

Facebook

You have to post often here also. Connect your blog to Facebook so blog posts automatically appear on your personal profile and Fan page after you publish them. Go to your list of friends and invite them to join your Fan page, the worse they can do is ignore you. You should also become a fan of other people’s pages. Wedding vendors, bridal magazines, and celebrity wedding planners all have Fan pages. Become their fan, make comments on their walls, start conversations with other fans to stay visible.

Twitter

Don’t just set up an account and hope that people follow you, go out and find people to follow. Tweet wedding tips, send links to information that you find on the web that might interest your niche and connect your blog so it sends out a tweet when you post. Spend some time on the site everyday.

Networking

Find social and business groups that are in your niche or have access to the people in your niche and get out and mingle. Find wedding vendors and set up coffee meetings to get to know them better so you can exchange referrals. Let the people for whom you have planned events for free know you now have a business and would welcome referrals.

I know I have mentioned these ideas in the past but my point for bringing them up now is to say that you can’t do things half-way if you want to be a success. You have to work as hard on your marketing as you do at putting together a dream wedding for your clients.

As a wedding planner, you are busy juggling information, trying to meet all of your deadlines and keeping yourself organized.

Here are two web-bases services that might help you stay on track with all of your responsibilities:

http://www.rememberthemilk.com

This site lets you enter all of your “to-dos” on their site then get reminders via email, Gmail, text, instant message, Google Calendar or Twitter for free. For a $25 annual fee you can use it with your iPhone, Android, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile services. You might suggest your clients utilize this service so they can keep up with their timelines or do it for them as one of your services.

http://www.evernote.com/

Evernote is like having notebooks or binders on the web. It allows you to clip web pages from your browser, take photos on your phone, leave audio notes, write to-do lists, take notes and organize all of it in your free Evernote account. Use it to clip ideas for inspiration and design that you can also share with your brides.  (There are  helpful videos on their website that will teach you how to get started.)

Take the time to try one of these free services that can make organizing easy for you.

As a wedding planner, you might not think of yourself as a salesperson. In fact the very word “salesperson” may be unattractive to you. But because you are in business for yourself, you actually are a salesperson in addition to being a wedding planner.

Years ago I read an article on selling that suggested making a list of everything that you can do to get clients based on how you have gotten them in the past. Then focusing more time and energy on those areas to increase sales now and in the future. It simple and effective and it really does work.

Here are 4 ways to bring in clients that you may have been successful with in the past that you can focus doing again, add your own items to the list. If you are a brand new wedding planner, these are things you may want to begin doing:

1) Keep in contact with former clients

Many times new clients are referrals from past clients so make sure you stay in touch with brides whose weddings you have planned. Even if you planned their weddings for free, before you started your business, those brides can be sources of great referrals. Also, if you are willing to plan other types of events besides weddings, let your former brides and grooms know that you are available for birthday and anniversary parties, showers, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other celebrations.

2) Follow up with people who have shown an interest in your services

Whether you meet a potential client at a wedding fair, business event or social event, get their contact information and stay in touch via ezines or postcard mailings.

3) Fully utilize the Internet

Brides do a lot of research on the Internet so make sure you have a website that is up-to-date with your latest testimonials and photographs, a blog that you post to frequently (so search engines will find you), a Facebook Fan page and a Twitter account that you visit and comment on every day.

4) Keep up relationships with wedding vendors

Stay in touch with the vendors you have worked with and make it a point to meet new ones to increase your network. This could not only help you get more referrals but also help you learn more about the brides in your niche so you can market to them more effectively.

As a wedding planner, you have probably invested time and money creating an attractive logo, website and marketing materials. But what do you think people remember about you when they think of hiring or referring you? Your “design look” is a part of it, but it is also how you act and dress, what you write on Twitter and Facebook, and what you say in person.

I recently came across an example of what you don’t want to say:

I attended a networking event and a wedding vendor came up and introduced herself to me. I asked her to tell me a little about her business, she started with, “My husband divorced me after 19 years of marriage. . .” She went on to tell some details of that event in her life before sharing with me any information about her business. Because I wasn’t the only one in the room to whom she told her lengthy story, she has now branded herself among the business community as the “vendor shares too much personal information” instead of the “great vendor who does fabulous work”.

It’s not wrong to talk about things that have made an impact in our lives but we have to find the appropriate time and place to do it, then share the appropriate amount of information. Telling detailed personal information to a stranger at a business event is not the appropriate time or place.

Make sure when you are out meeting other vendors and potential clients that you keep your communications professional. You want people to know, like and trust you and think of you as a dynamic, professional wedding planner who could do a great job for them or anyone they refer.

I just got done watching the TLC show that I blogged about yesterday, “Four Weddings”, a reality show in which four brides judge each other’s wedding dress, venue, food and experience, and the winner gets a luxury honeymoon.

Here is some interesting information about brides in this show that might help you, the wedding planner, with your brides:

• One bride was a “novice”, she had only been to three weddings in her life before planning her own event, and her lack of experience was evident in her choices. If you work with a “novice”, take the time to educate her on what is possible for her wedding that is within her budget.

• A DIY bride isn’t necessarily on a low budget. The bride, who was creative and designed her own ceremony and reception decor, and her wedding coat, had a $70,000 budget for 150 guests. So don’t assume a bride is on a low budget if she tells you she wants to do a lot of it herself.

• The same theme can be interpreted in many different ways. Three of the four brides had a “Winter Wonderland” theme but one wanted it to feel “cozy”, another wanted an “enchanted forest” and the third wanted “snowflakes”.

You can still catch replays of the episode this weekend but if you don’t get the show in your area, the videos in this post will give you a sense of what is it like.

The video above features the “Winter Wonderland – Enchanted Florist” designs of the DIY bride.

The video below is of the four brides judging each other’s wedding dresses.

Watch four brides attend and score each other’s weddings, in hopes of winning a dream honeymoon, as  The Learning Channel’s show “Four Weddings” returns on Friday, February 26, 2010. It will be rebroadcast a few times on Saturday. Check your local listings for air times.

In each episode, four brides judge the each other’s weddings in the categories of food, wedding dress, venue and overall experience. Interestingly enough, the wedding budgets vary for each bride and really don’t play a part in how they do their judging.

You will get insight into why brides make the choices they do and be entertained by the comments brides make when they are guests!

The video above contains clips from a previous show in which one bride held her wedding and reception at a race track.

Are you a brand new wedding planner? What experience do you have?

I was just looking at various different question and answer forums on the Internet and found, on a few of the sites, questions such as “What do I tell a potential client if I don’t have any experience as a wedding planner?

First, you don’t ever want to lie and say that you have experience, education or certifications that you don’t have.

Second, if you really don’t have any experience, the best thing to do is to spend some time getting it before you start your own business. You want to be able to give brides and grooms the weddings of their dreams and you will have to some time studying and working to learn how to create their weddings. Find local wedding planners, event designers, florists, photographers or caterers who have busy schedules and are willing to take on interns or apprentices to help them with their weddings. Be ready to work without pay or for very low pay. In fact, you might need to pay to participate in some apprenticeship programs. You can find wedding professionals through bridal, wedding, or special event planning associations.

Third, you might have experience and not realize it. If you have been planning weddings for friends, family and members of your place of worship for free, you have experience. Take a look at what you have done for those events and use the photographs of your work in your portfolio. Get testimonials from the brides you worked with that you can share with potential clients and that you can post on your website and blog.