Are you approaching the end of the year determined to make 2020 different? Have you decided that 2020 is the year you will take that first step into training as a wedding planner? If so I would love to help guide you. Since I launched the UKAWP in 2004 I have trained 600+ wedding planners, but also mentored and supported hundreds more. I love this industry and sincerely want you to thrive and succeed. Here are some guidelines to get you started on what to do first.

Build Your Wedding Planning Business 10 day course

Get a taster into the wedding planning industry by signing up to our FREE 10 days to build your wedding planning business course. You can join here , this also gives you access to a facebook group where I have given lots of facebook live training on both wedding planning and business, you can join the group here.

Treat this new career seriously and value your worth

My biggest tip is please don’t launch on a whim. Think seriously about whether wedding planning is the right career for you. Do you have the time, passion and patience? Understand that being successful is not about posting pretty images on social media or launching a website. If you are serious, and want to run a profitable wedding planning business, then ensure you get the knowledge and skills to succeed. Spending £500 on a UKAWP course could save you thousands in future business mistakes AND potentially bring you clients as you know how to market yourself.

How much do you value your new career?

Do you want to train with an organisation with a proven track record? Or do you want to choose the cheapest route? These questions may seem harsh but there has been an increase in wedding planners signing up to discount courses, but then calling me in tears as they don’t know what to do next.

The truth is launching an online course has become easier and easier, thus trying to decide who to train with is an incredibly hard decision.

You can even train to be a wedding planner for £25 through heavily discounted coupon websites. But sadly the information within these courses is wrong, out of date and not relevant to our market. Please watch the below video where I expose the truth about cheap online courses

Decide what you need help with the most?

1) Learning how to plan a wedding efficiently for clients

2) Learning how to start and run a profitable wedding planning business?

It is important you know the answer to this question. Some wedding planners need only to do one course as they already have some skills whether event based or business based. When looking at training organisations ensure they cover the modules you need to learn. In our opinion too often new wedding planners take courses on how to plan a wedding but omit any of the business courses. I have seen hundreds of wedding planners fail to make money because they underestimated how important the business of wedding planning is.

How do you prefer to learn?

We are all different so how do you prefer to learn? Online or in person attending masterclasses or workshops?

IN PERSON – you get to interact with other students and bond over the weekend, plus you get to hear real life scenarios from your tutor as they teach you how to become a wedding planner. With the Business of Wedding Planning course students also get the bonus of having mock consultations with Bernadette which although scary is a fundamentally helpful task to master before you have a real consultation. Students also benefit from Bernadette’s almost ninja skills of identifying who your ideal client will be, and how to market to them.

ONLINE COURSE – the benefit of the online courses is you don’t need to spend a whole weekend learning, you instead can split this over weeks and months. You can learn at your own time, even using your commute to watch videos or go through your course notes.

 

How should I compare courses?

We appreciate you may wish to compare wedding planner courses before choosing the right one for you. A few things you should ask when making enquiries:

• Who wrote the course and is it a US or UK text?
  • Was it written by a successful wedding planner? This is essential in our opinion
• Who conducts the training and what is their background/experience?
  • Many recent courses have launched where the trainer/owner has not actually experienced success as a wedding planner. They have written the course because they are struggling for business. You want to learn from someone who has been successful and truly understands the business.
• Can you speak with previous students for feedback? Can they point you towards successful past students?
• When was the course created / last updated?
• What support is given after the course?

 

To learn more about our courses visit our training page, because we know everyone is different we offer both in person and online courses.  Please note our in person courses only happen twice a year and the next date is the end of February 2020.

Photos by Anneli Marinovich and Phil Drinkwater