| Wedding Planning |
|
|
|
Excerpt: Thousands of weddings occur each year without the benefit of a bridal consultant; yet, ask any couple who planned every last detail of their wedding whether they would have appreciated some assistance from a professional consultant, and the answer would be a resounding "yes!" So why didn't these couples seek out help? In a word money. Most couples feel that their precious resources are "better spent" elsewhere than on a bridal consultant's fee. So why do these newlyweds admit that in retrospect they should have hired a wedding coordinator? Consider these real life situations and the answer is obvious. Sandra cleverly thought of the ideal way to creatively combine table placecards and reception favors: picture frames. After spending hours comparing the various frames on the market, she ordered them months in advance and then spent many painstaking hours personalizing them for each of her guests. Unbeknownst to Sandra, she paid about $0.25 more per frame than a bridal consultant would have been able to purchase them personalized, not to mention the time she spent shopping for just the right item. A week before her wedding, Sandra carefully packed the frames into a box and gave them to her cousin, whose sole responsibility for Sandra's wedding was to bring the box to the reception hall. The night before her big day, Sandra made sure that her cousin had the box ready for the reception, and was assured that everything was fine. After her ceremony, when Sandra arrived at the reception hall, she learned that her cousin's son suddenly came down with chicken pox and that she did not make it to the reception and neither did Sandra's placecards/favors! After scouting around all of the available reception sites, Karen selected a beautiful hall that supplied its own on-site coordinator, who told her that he could take care of all the details on the wedding day. Karen busily spent the next year selecting the church, florist, photographer, videographer, transportation, and gown. A couple of weeks before her wedding, Karen double-checked with everyone to make sure her selections were clear. The only hiccup was her florist, who mistakenly had written down wildflowers for Karen's bouquet rather than calla lilies! Happy that she had warded off a potential problem, Karen finished the rest of her preparations, including meeting with her on-site coordinator to finalize all of the details. On the day of her wedding, when Karen and her bridesmaids arrived at the church, Karen was reduced to tears to see her bouquet overflowing with wildflowers. Gwen is the only daughter of a family of five. Her fiancé, Donald, has three sisters. Both Gwen and Donald were the first in their families to get married, and their families had strong opinions about how a wedding was "supposed" to be. At every step of the planning, Gwen and Donald were confronted by at least a dozen different voices with disparate ideas. Whenever Gwen and Donald made a decision, be it about the colors, theme or location, several family members felt hurt or disappointed; and they loudly expressed their displeasure. Gwen and Donald were so upset by their families' feuding that they abandoned their dream of a big wedding, and eloped. Sandra, Karen and Gwen and Donald could have had dramatically different experiences had they been working with bridal consultants. Sandra's gifts would have cost less both in terms of price and time spent shopping for and personalizing them had she used a consultant, and they would have been delivered to the reception hall on time; Karen's consultant would have sent the florist back to the shop for the proper bouquet before Karen even left her house for the church; and Gwen and Donald's planning woes would have been smoothed over by the expertise of their consultant, preventing the family fallout that occurred. It's true that bridal consultants do charge a fee for their services. But that fee more than pays for itself when you consider the discounts on services and products that are available only to the consultants through the professionals they use often. And then there's the peace of mind you get from being able to use the consultant's network of reliable vendors. In addition, you are relieved of much of the stress associated with the time required to plan a wedding and you obtain a built-in intermediary to help mediate conflicting points of view presented by well-meaning family members. As opposed to on-site coordinators who are hired by the reception hall to oversee their own workers, a bridal consultant is the bride and groom's advocate with every wedding professional, meaning that the consultant ensures that every detail of their vision for their special day is planned for and carried out. Bridal consultants offer different levels of service to their clients, depending upon their needs. Technically, there are three different types of services: wedding coordinating, wedding day directing and bridal consulting. Wedding coordinators help the engaged couple coordinate and plan every aspect of the rehearsal, wedding, reception and honeymoon. Wedding day directors are hired for the rehearsal, wedding, and reception only to ensure that the couple's pre-made plans are carried out. Both wedding coordinators and wedding day directors usually charge a flat fee. By contrast, bridal consultants advise engaged couples of all the details and logistics that need to be addressed (including the associated timeline) and recommend wedding professionals, usually on an hourly basis. For example, Sandra's dilemmas could have been solved by a wedding coordinator; Karen could have benefited from a wedding day director; and Gwen and Donald could have used a bridal consultant to mediate their families' tensions. Most bridal consultants use these terms interchangeably and offer all three services, at different price-points, so that the couple can choose the level of assistance they want. For these reasons, bridal consultants are not just for celebrities and the super-rich, but are available to help ensure that every bride and groom's wedding is a wonderful experience, from engagement through honeymoon, and every step in-between. Source: http://www.weddingindustry.biz/ (navigate to articles) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Excerpt: Although it’s expected that there will be a greater number of weddings this year (2.2 million) compared to last year (2.1 million), revenue for the industry is expected to drop 6 percent to $56.8 billion in 2009, from $60.4 billion in 2008, according to The Wedding Report, a Tucson, Ariz.-based market research firm that tracks the industry. And the average spending on a single wedding is expected to dip to $20,398 this year, down from $21,814 in 2008. “There’s no question that people are looking to save money,” said Dan Halperin, publisher of Premier Bride’s planning guide and Web site in Boston. Wedding reception venues, one of the most important components of the big day, are also feeling the recession. At the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge, which books between 40 and 50 weddings annually, the wedding side of the business is down about 20 percent this year. Brides are opting for cheaper alternatives, including smaller centerpieces and less expensive liquor, said Belinda M. Mazarello, director of catering and conference services at Hotel Marlowe. “A lot of the brides have set budgets before they even come to us,” Mazarello said. There’s often more wiggle room on those set budgets when it comes to flowers. Less expensive table arrangements for about $100 are being chosen more often than $250 topiary arrangements, according to Yianni Tsaousidis, owner of Boston-based Stapleton Floral. Last year sales at Stapleton were flat compared to 2007, but expenses were much higher. To attract customers in general, Tsaousidis is giving out 20 percent discounts to returning customers. Although he has not yet discounted wedding flowers, he acknowledges that competition is fierce. “We’re getting brides who are going to a lot of different flower shops, they’re shopping around,” Tsaousidis said. At Konditor Meister, brides are simply foregoing the bakery’s most elaborate $2,000 wedding cakes that take hours to prepare and are piled high with rolled chocolate flowers, ribbons and fresh flowers. Instead, they’re favoring simpler confections. “Those cakes are going by the wayside,” said Rebecca Moesinger, co-owner and president of the Braintree bakery. People in the wedding industry are trying to fend off bargain-hunters. Photographer Eric Limon, whose wedding packages start at $4,500, says that in response to the uptick in requests for discounts, he’s piling on free extra services. But he’s not planning on lowering his prices, and so far his bookings have held steady. Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2009/02/16/story10.htmlc --------------------------------------------------------------- Excerpt: Planner / Consultant Average Spending 2008 2009 2012 2014 A La Carte Services $851 $797 $829 $877 Day-of-Coordinator $679 $636 $661 $699 For Getting Started $641 $600 $624 $661 Full Service $1,940 $1,816 $1,889 $2,000 Month-of-Direction $995 $931 $969 $1,026 --------------------------------------------------------------- Estimated Market Value 2008 2009 2012 2014 A La Carte Services $111,839,935 $105,955,443 $112,731,532 $123,260,719 Day-of-Coordinator $178,470,777 $169,103,292 $179,772,117 $196,486,300 For Getting Started $84,241,361 $79,765,704 $84,854,615 $92,902,321 Full Service $722,381,717 $684,035,226 $727,814,170 $796,439,460 Month-of-Direction $152,558,783 $144,398,081 $153,730,997 $168,236,124 Source: http://www.theweddingreport.com/wmdb/index.cfm?action=db.viewdetail&func=item&cat=5 --------------------------------------------------------------- Excerpt: April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Connie Banks was planning a “bride’s dream” at Tuscany of Garden Oaks, a Houston banquet hall with ceilings painted to resemble the Sistine Chapel. Then the hall’s owner filed for bankruptcy. Banks, whose family paid $22,000 for the space and catering, was suddenly left with no place to put the 250 people on her wedding list. “I still feel guilty my parents lost all that money,” said Banks, a 24-year-old teacher who found a new venue at the additional cost of having to change the date to a Friday from a Saturday this June. “I also feel guilty guests will have to take more time off from work to attend a Friday wedding.” The $60 billion-a-year U.S. wedding industry is contracting along with the rest of the economy, said Millie Martini Bratten, editor-in-chief of Conde Nast’s Brides magazine in New York. Couples are scaling back on champagne and chocolate fountains, and business failures by florists and caterers are forcing changes in plans. “People don’t time when they fall in love with the economic cycles,” Martini Bratten said. “But when times are tight, we do see a pull-back in spending.” The average cost of tying the knot in the U.S. fell 24 percent last year from 2007, to $21,814, and slipped in the first quarter to $19,196, according to Tucson, Arizona-based Wedding Report, a research firm. The number of vows exchanged will probably drop this year because every economic contraction since 1945 has been followed by a decline in weddings, said Shane McMurray, the firm’s chief executive officer. He said there were 100,000 fewer in 2002 than 2001, when the U.S. was in a recession for eight months. Cocktail Parties The economy has shed about 5.1 million jobs since December 2007, the most in a post-World War II slump, according to the Labor Department. The U.S. jobless rate is 8.5 percent, the highest since 1983. Wedding industry unemployment can’t be calculated because photographers, dress makers and others usually don’t limit their work to one kind of event, McMurray said. “Ninety percent of wedding vendors are small businesses, so these folks are obviously struggling,” he said. In Manhattan, couples are downsizing by opting for cocktail parties instead of sit-down dinners, said Amy Aversa, owner of Sweet Basil Catering in New York. “It’s definitely forcing caterers to get more creative,” said Aversa, who estimates her average client is spending 30 percent less this year. $2,200 More To trim the budget for a September reception, Aversa said she’s using fewer fresh flowers in centerpieces and filling empty spaces with candles and photographs. She’s also getting more requests for cupcakes rather than multilayered bridal cakes. For Margarita Lambos in Charlotte, North Carolina, the cost of the shrinking economy was $6,200. Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDVUEORQd3Pc |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
