One of our long term members, Isabel Smith has frequently written informative posts for our blog on life as a wedding planner. Last year she wrote an excellent one on valuing your worth as a wedding planner. In this new series for the UKAWP she is discussing her top 5 mistakes and how you can learn from them.

Part 4 of my tour of shame!

TOP MISTAKE NO 2: Taking on too much – and having to do it ALL myself

I am just going to dive in here.  I took on too many weddings last year.

My decision wasn’t purely motivated by greed – only partly.  You know how it is, you are so scared the phone will never ring again, you wouldn’t dream of saying no to a potential client.

Well, let me tell you, it is all fun and games until you’ve been working until 3am every day for a month, are still playing catch up and arguably not giving your A game across the board (and yes, your clients will – and in my case did – notice!).  And those teensy, easy weddings you ‘slot in’ amongst the millions of others might just not turn out to be so easy!

So, lesson 1, know your limits.  Both in terms of time (I don’t have a husband or kids myself, but if I had, they definitely would have left me!), but also energy (funnily enough, I got ill A LOT last year).

I am also a total control freak.  Yes – aren’t we all – it is one of the characteristics of a wedding planner and a business owner, but come on people, it is possible to get help.

When drowning, the best thing I did was employ some other Alliance members to take on some tasks for me (and in one case, to actually take one entire wedding off my hands).  I went from trying to write and action the worlds longest to do list each day (and juggling the priorities within) to having 30 minute team meeting calls each day and finding the list actually get shorter.  No – not everyone does things the way you do, but no, that doesn’t mean they do it worse or can’t help you!

Delegation is king!  Simply accepting you aren’t actually superwoman and are subject to the same 24hours in a day as everyone else also helps!