If you are a wedding planner, please read and comment on this thread.

Nicole are there specific business courses you would recommend? I actually teach social work administration but it is more nonprofit management. Is there a part of running the business that was particularly challenging? After taking the certificate course, or while doing it, I would like to do a business plan, which hopefully will help me plan for the business aspects. Did you do a business plan? Is there a place that helps gather industry trend data?

Learn Quickbooks so you can do your own bookkeeping. Then I turn everything over to my accountant for tax prep.

Certainly marketing classes would be helpful (I don't know if that is part of the wedding planning courses).

I started my own biz 22 years ago (already had a business background) and have been going to all types of seminars ever since.

BTW sorry just being nosy but your review of your photag didn't post to her actual WW account:

https://www.weddingwire.com/reviews/gina-mclean-photography-raleigh/7604751842aaaa74.html

Ashworth is excellent . and you can do the courses online and you finish at your own pace.

Carrie, something weird happens with bad WW reviews... They either don't show up or somehow get on an alternate page. So be very careful of vendors you find here!

Rosanna, thanks for that vote of confidence/recommendation. Did you take their wedding planner course? Are you actively working as a wedding planner?

The path to planning is littered with the carcasses of brides who planned their own weddings, decided they wanted to plan weddings, took a course & hung a shingle. You start with a considerable advantage because you have done events besides your own.

My advice? Instead of paying for certification, which no one cares about, contact a great pro in every area that you'd refer; photographers, caterers, venues, officiants, florists. Offer to work for them, for free, for a couple of months so you can be knowledgeable about what they do and why they charge what they do. Try and find a planner to intern with. Then move to your own business.

And by the way, nothing weird happens with bad WW reviews; there are plenty of them. The fake ones go away because they are fake, the bad ones that are real stay on the vendors' pages. If you want to get anywhere in this industry, good relationships with other pros are key. Telling other brides here to "be careful" of pros isn't a good way to start.

Celia, you & I have been on this site long enough to know legitimate bad WW reviews often do not stay on vendor pages. Further, ALL brides should be careful of pros! Brides spend a LOT of money & should be very careful about who they choose to provide services on their special day. My point was just don't trust good reviews on a wedding site.

As for my experience & prep, I do have a leg up in that I have planned other events, parties, conferences, assoc. meetings,trainings, etc. the only wedding I have planned start to finish is my own. So I want to learn. I am no too big to admit that I need formal knowledge as well as experience. In my job we teach students theory, history, practice & then they get an internship to prove themselves before we unleash them on the world.That is how I was trained & I think it's a pretty good model.

So while I certification may not be important to some, it will give me the confidence to know that I am giving a bride and groom the best that I can give

I was trained and certified through The Institute of Weddings (instituteofweddings.com) and I highly recommend their program. I had tried getting my business going before taking their course, and I knew I needed some proper guidance. I also signed up with another course before taking the Institute of Weddings course, and I'll let that other other course remain nameless, but suffice it to say, I still felt I had much to learn by the time I was done that other course. I enrolled in the Institute of Weddings course about 6 months later, and BINGO! I realized immediately that I should have done it sooner. The course is very, very detailed and thorough. I learned so much that I just would never have figured out on my own, and it really prepared me for what needed to be done to not only be successful as a business owner, but also for all the logistics of professionally planning weddings. Al lot of people think that because they have experience planning weddings for friends and family, that they can just start doing it professionally. But there really is a huge difference between planning a wedding on a personal level, and doing it in a scenario where you are the professional and you are charging a client money. The Institute of Weddings course teaches the difference in approaches, and all the professional considerations that go into consulting for a client on their wedding. Anyway, Im now t the point where my business is bustling full time, and I'm bringing on my cousin as a permanent full time employee because its at the point that I have too much business for one person to handle. Keep in mind the course I'm talking about it www.instituteofweddings.com. I know before I enrolled, I got quite confused because there are other courses or organizations that have confusingly similar names, and I was getting confused between them. It seems like all the other organizations are pretty much "copycats", because when I looked into the background on the Institute of Weddings, I discovered they are one of the original organizations offering training and certification for wedding planners, like since 20-some years ago when there was only a couple of organizations anywhere in the world where you could get this training. It seems as other organizations came along they were copying them and their name, so watch of for imitators! The one you want is instituteofweddings.com. Hope this helps someone. I know how much I appreciated this kind of feedback when I was looking for a course, and I hope this might save someone having to go through the 'school of hard knocks' like I did, before finally finding a course that really got my career and business on track Good luck to everyone in getting your career rolling!

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Dear friend,

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