Do you want to start a wedding business at home? Are you worried about starting your business during the pandemic or without any prior experience in the industry? Would you like to know how to start your wedding business at home the right way?
There are 6 essential steps to starting a wedding business at home. The 6 essential steps to start your wedding business at home are:
- Get your head in the game
- Setting yourself up for success
- Know your numbers
- Open for business
- Authority and credibility
6. The extra mile
Those of you reading, who are already aware of my 12 steps to get more wedding leads and bookings program will recognize the last 3 points from that program, and just as for that program – these points are essential for beginners too.
There’s a simple formula when it comes to starting or growing your wedding business, and if you know and understand how to implement this formula into your wedding business today – you’ll be able to grow authentically and naturally for years to come.
How I Started my Wedding Business at Home
Back in 2009, I started my wedding planning business journey. I didn’t have any background knowledge of how to run a business and absolutely no experience of wedding planning or weddings in general. In fact, it’s quite a funny story.
At the time, I was going through a separation from my ex-husband, and although I had a regular ‘well-paid’ job – I was feeling bored and had this underlying feeling that I wanted to do something for myself. But I had no idea what to do – especially with no real experience in any one thing.
My mom was and still is a fan of magazines, and at that time, she had bought a magazine called Ideas. The edition was all about entrepreneurship and starting your own business. I remember picking it up and asking if I could take it home to read.
That night – as I read through each page – I could feel something start to shift in my mind – I was so mesmerized by all the ideas they had for at-home businesses, and one of them that really stood out to me was wedding planning.
I remember the title now – businesses you can start at home with no money. There was a list with all sorts of ideas – but I was fixed on the idea of starting my own wedding planning business at home.
The following day I set out on my wedding planning business journey, and now, here I am, twelve years later with a portfolio of more than 300 weddings – I am the owner of a national bridal fair events company, I’m a marketing and SEO specialist, and I provide wedding business coaching to clients from all over the world.
Get Your Head in the Game
Starting a wedding business at home will be overwhelming at times. You will have moments when you want to give up and other times when you’re ready and willing to take on the world. The best way to overcome and stay on track with your wedding business success is to get your head straight and your surroundings in order.
Is your surrounding environment ready for you to start your business? Do you have a home office or desk area? Are you drowning in debt? Do you have a full-time job to work around?
Whatever your personal circumstances, you will want to create space to enjoy your new wedding business journey. My advice as a mother of four with multiple businesses and exclusive clients to service and nurture is to get as organized as you can.
This involved scheduling, automating, and delegating as much as you can. This may not be necessary when you first start out, but as your wedding business grows – you will want and need to offload everything that you cannot keep up with on your own.
Setting Yourself up for Success
The first essential step for your wedding business success is to set yourself up for wedding leads and bookings. By that I mean – setting your business up with the basics so that when you start to go out into the big world of weddings – you’re ready to go!
The obvious first step is to pick a wedding business name. This can set you back for weeks, especially if you can’t decide on a name, or if somebody else has a similar name already. My advice is to simplify it to 3.
You can read about it here if you don’t know about my Simplify to 3 Method for everything. Once you’ve narrowed it down to 3 names – it will be much easier for you to pick the best name for your wedding business.
Next, you will want to purchase your domain and hosting so that you can start building your website and set up your professional wedding business email address.
One day in the future – you will have your first wedding booking – so you will want to be ready with your contract and invoices and you will need a bank account to accept your client’s payments.
A big mistake I made early on was keeping everything in my personal account – it created all sorts of issues for me later down the line so I strongly recommend that you register your business early and get a business bank account.
I can go on and on with extra steps for this essential level for your wedding business success but then this article will be more like a 300-page book so let’s move on to the next essential step for those of you wanting to start your wedding business at home.
Know Your Numbers
I’ve actually created a guide for this part in the process because it is such a valuable lesson for wedding business pros wanting to price their wedding business the right way to ensure they’re not exchanging time for money.
There are lots of different articles out there with different points of view when it comes to pricing your wedding business services and products, but from my experience – there’s a simple calculative process to follow to ensure you are charging your services based on what you want and need rather than copying what your competitors are doing.
The Basic Idea
The basic idea of the Know Your Numbers method is for you to determine your prices based on you and your needs. For example – one of the questions is – how much do you want to make this year?
But if you go a step before that – I ask you to calculate how much you need to make this year first because there’s a big difference in what you need to earn compared to what you want to earn.
Setting your prices correctly from the get-go will provide you with the best opportunity for ongoing future success, but there’s an extra part in this section that you also need to consider and that is – how will you get your first client?
Open for Business
Being open for business means that you are ready to accept clients!
Are you ready to accept wedding business clients?
If you’re wondering what I mean by being ‘open for business:
Do you have a brand design and brand voice?
Are you using 3 price points?
Are you building a social media following?
Do you have a professional website?
These 4 essential parts of the open-for business level will need to be in place before you start to promote your new wedding business to the world.
Authority and Credibility
There are 4 parts to this level, including your blogging, your google ranking, email marketing, and online presence.
As a brand-new wedding business owner, you will struggle to enjoy the benefits from this level straight away as it can take time to establish authority and credibility, but there are a couple of steps that you can take to speed up your success at this level.
Start to add wedding-related articles to your website every month (or week if you have the time) – I can’t stress how important this is for the future of your business.
Add a form to your website to capture leads. I have a get more wedding leads challenge which goes into greater detail about this.
Join as many wedding directory websites as you can afford but remember to align with those that feature high up on Google already.
I go into great detail about how wedding directories can benefit your website’s Google ranking position in my coaching program, but just to explain this as quickly as I can here – the higher the wedding directory ranks on Google – the more chance you will have to be seen and found by bridal couples and the better chance your own wedding business website will have to rank high on Google for your chosen keywords.
The Extra Mile
The final part of the process to discuss here for those of you looking to start a wedding business at home is the extra mile level. This level includes advanced steps, including your referrals, in-person events, advertising and PR, and your paid ads.
Getting this right as early as you can in your new wedding business career will set you up for long-term success and financial freedom. These advanced steps will provide you with ongoing leads, bookings, and future opportunities for wedding business growth.
Conclusion
If you’re starting a wedding business at home – it can get very lonely, and you may feel overwhelmed at times. One of the biggest regrets we all have is wasting time and money.
The good news is that you don’t have to do this alone – The Wedding Business Pro Content Hub website has been designed to help start-ups like you build and grow their wedding business the right way.
Until the next time,
