Friday night’s episode of the TLC show, “Four Weddings”, the show in which four brides judge each others’ weddings with the winner getting a luxury honeymoon, again gave insights into what makes a wedding great from a guest’s point of view.

Some observations that might help you plan better weddings:

There is such a thing as “too much”

One bride had a very lavish, black-tie optional, wedding that the other brides that felt was nice but “too over-the-top.” With cocktail receptions both before and after the ceremony, then a full sit-down dinner and huge dessert buffet, there was too much to eat. Also, by the time dinner was served, it was midnight and it seemed to one guest bride that it was too late to eat dinner. The wedding did not end until 2am.

There is nothing wrong with a lavish wedding, but you might need to remind your bride that she may not want her wedding to last too far into the night.

Food presentation and taste is important

One bride wasn’t that concerned about the food at her wedding and it showed, the food was poorly presented and seemed to one guest bride to taste like something you microwave.

Food may not be a major concern to your bride but guests always remember the food so work with your bride to select a good caterer.

Consider the pitfalls when the bride selects to have her wedding on a yacht

One bride chose to have her wedding on a beach-like yacht. There was limited space on the ship so everyone was not able to sit during the ceremony and the reception. Also, guests had to juggle their plates of food on their laps because there wasn’t enough room for tables.

This type of ship is great fun for an informal wedding, just make sure guests know they will be on a cruise. One guest bride got seasick so be prepared for people who could suffer from motion sickness. Also like any outdoor wedding, you need to be prepared for rain, wind, heat and cold.

The bride needs to make a conscious decision about alcohol

One bride did not serve alcoholic beverages and the guest brides found the event a bit boring. On the other hand, guests got out of hand when there was an open bar, as seen in the video above. Talk to your bride about the pros and cons of serving alcoholic beverages so she can make an informed decision about what she wants to serve.

The photo below is of the  Tikki Beach party boat in Miami, Florida where one of the four brides had her wedding.

The show will be rebroadcast during the next week so check the listings on TLC’s website.

Fashion and bridal designer Carolina Herrera, showed one of her wedding gowns on yesterday’s episode of ABC television show, “The View”. The wedding dress was ivory and navy with a large blue bow in the back. The dress was actually made with the wrong side of the fabric on the outside.

Carolina’s most famous wedding dress is probably the one she designed for Caroline Kennedy when she married Ed Schlossberg in 1986. She said she had been asked by Caroline’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, to design the dress and Caroline was in charge of the way she wanted to look, her mother never got involved (which is what Carolina thought should happen).

You can see the entire episode of the March 12, 2010 show on the ABC website.

A new wedding planner I was talking with told me she had decided to market to three niches instead of just one. She thought that by having multiple niches, she could make more money. She planned to reach brides in all three niches with the same website, blog, Facebook Fan page and Twitter account.

My question to her was; “How are you going to successfully market to more that one niche with the same marketing message?”

For example, if she selects a niche with DIY brides and one with brides who are corporate executives, they are not going to be interested in the same services from her. The DIY bride may be interested in creating most of her wedding herself and having a wedding planner coordinate her wedding on the “day of.” While the corporate executive bride wants to hire someone whom she can rely on to coordinate all of the details while she is busy at work. So the wedding planner with a “generic” marketing message could end up not having either of them as clients.

If this wedding planner keeps all three niches, she will have to create wedding services and packages for each different niche, create marketing and advertising messages that attracts each niche and create separate websites, blogs and social networking accounts.

You might see some celebrity wedding planners successfully working a lot of different niches and creating a wide variety of products but remember they have been in the business for a long time. Also, they have staff who can handle all of the different parts of their businesses for them. When you juggle multiple niches yourself, you spread yourself too thin and end up not being profitable in any area.

The bottom line for you, if you are a new wedding planner is – do research and select a profitable niche. Then create the services and packages the brides in your niche need and invest your time and energy in selling them.

The February 27, 2010 wedding of Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney, who met on the television show, “The Bachelor”, aired on Monday night. By Tuesday, the Internet and talk shows were full of opinions and comments on how the outdoor wedding event could have been handled better.

Here are 3 things you can learn from the wedding and the comments:

1) You can never predict the weather

It does rain in Southern California and it does get windy. At other times it could be too hot or too filled with bugs. If you bride insists on an outdoor wedding, tell her the possible pitfalls and have an indoor plan also.

2) You may not have total control over the final decision, so plan around it

The wedding planner, Jo Gartin, was not able to give the bride and groom a Plan B, probably because the television network wanted an outdoor wedding and the rain and wind just made the show more dramatic and interesting. Guests were given clear umbrellas, seats were covered and there was probably a hairstylist and makeup artist waiting to do some repair when the wedding party stepped out of the rain.

3) You can not control what people think or say about you

I read comments such as, “Why didn’t the wedding planner get a canopy or clear tent?” “Why didn’t someone give umbrellas to the wedding party?” “What kind of wedding planner doesn’t have a Plan B?” The wedding planner said on the show she wasn’t able to do a Plan B but people either didn’t remember or didn’t see that. A canopy, tent and umbrellas would have blocked the camera’s view and we would probably not been able to see the wedding, making for bad television.

There will be many times when things happen that you cannot control. Do everything you can, do the best that you can and remember the comments are not personal. The bride and groom thought their wedding was perfect which is what probably mattered the most to their wedding planner.

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.