Back then, hiring wedding planners is a luxury. As the number of couples who use the services of wedding coordinators rise, this part of the wedding industry showed a high potential for being a profession or career.
Such viability is evident in the rising number of businesses that offers wedding planning services. The Internet also became the venue of this burgeoning industry in stretching its terrains even to technology and education sector.
Several wedding planners now offer downloadable wedding planning software programs that serves as a guide to couples. Schools also now embrace the idea of offering wedding planning career programs.
As its name suggest, wedding planners, also called wedding consultants, bridal consultants, and wedding coordinators, plan the big day. The question is why the demand for wedding consultants is continually rising.
The Gatlin Education Services (GES) said that a professional wedding consultant is skilled in events planning and monetary management. GES provides online workforce to various colleges and universities for their career programs including certification for wedding planning programs.
The skills include creativity on several aspects of design and decoration, insider’s knowledge with and network of the best vendors in town, and updated information on almost all areas of wedding ceremonies.
GES further put weight on the role of wedding consultants by encapsulating in its job description every detail—it may be small or substantial—of the wedding, such as conception of theme and decorations, contracts, ceremony details, and industry formulas for deliveries.
Specifically, a wedding consultant receives, makes, documents telephone calls, and schedules appointments with clients and vendors, assists clients with their wedding attire selection, tracks budget and plans projects, visits sites for venue selection, troubleshoots and solves problems, manages and delegates task, collects payments, and so on.
With such arduous work of planning a wedding, several brides opt to hire wedding consultants. The SuperWeddings.com’s survey showed that 72% of recently married brides regretted not having hired a wedding consultant while 49% said that hiring one is the vital detail they missed about their entire weddings.
It is no doubt the employment of wedding planners was projected to increase by 20% between 2006 and 2016, according to the United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics. In addition, wedding planners have a relatively high earning—a 10 – 15% of the total wedding expenditures.
GES is just one of the many schools that spurred following the rise in the demand for such profession. GES standardized the curriculum, instruction, and evaluation of the Certified Planning Program across its partner schools. Since 1999, the SuperWeddings has been offering a certification program. An online program though, but it provides a close student – teacher relationship.
In the United Kingdom, the Wedding Planning School’s (WPS) curriculum covers all aspects of wedding and event management. It provides training venues in Bristol, London, Manchester, and Leeds. The WPS also offers certified programs with classes during weekends and home study courses. Another example is the United States Career Institute (USCSI) that offers an online four-month training only for wedding consultants.
