Wedding Pro Q+A

This question is from a destination wedding photographer:

I'm a destination wedding photographer and I'm frustrated with how hard it is to get referrals from the top luxury wedding planners. They always seem to book the same photographers.

I know some of these photographers personally, and honestly? My work is just as strong. But somehow I'm always on the outside looking in. I've tried building relationships, sent holiday gifts, even had drinks with some of them at conferences, but when it comes to actual referrals, they go with their usual people.

What am I doing wrong? How do you actually become one of their "go-to" people instead of just someone they're polite to?

Answer from Liene:

You know that recent-yet-already-outdated TikTok trend, “Advice I’d give if I wasn’t scared of hurting your feelings”?

This answer is going to be a bit of that.

Since every planner has different criteria for how they select their vendor partners, there is no tried and true “secret” for getting hired. Instead, I’m going to focus on common things that actively prevent wedding pros from getting referred by luxury wedding planners.

Please know that everything I say below is done with a genuine desire to see you get out of your own way.

Enough with the DMs already

First and foremost, stop cold DMing eleventy billion wedding planners every day.

Yes, you should be cultivating new relationships and nurturing existing ones in a genuine manner. That’s a given.

But let’s be real: if you're consistently not getting hired again by the ideal planners you've already worked with, you need to sit down and have a serious “Come to Jesus” chat with yourself on why that is.

Here are seven questions you should be able to answer with an unequivocal “yes.”

If you can’t, you’ll know what to work on:

1. Are you a good hang?

This is important for any type of wedding, but for international destination weddings it is a much more critical factor than people like to admit.

Being a good hang isn’t about being an introvert vs extrovert. It’s about what it’s like to hang out with you.

• Are you easy to get along with or are you a drag?

• Are you easy to travel with?

• Do you roll with the punches or do you complain non-stop?

• Do you monopolize conversations?

• Are you on time or are you consistently late and keeping others waiting?

• How do you handle cultural differences and language barriers?

For destination weddings, you don't need to be besties with the other vendors, but you do need to be able to be around each other for multiple days at a time. After all, you’re not just seeing each other during the wedding events themselves, you’ll likely be hanging out in some form while off-duty as well.

Maya Angelou famously said, "I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by how they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights."

International projects are often where things go sideways fast and true personalities come to light.

This is something that can be hard to suss out through social media and is a major reason why in-person industry events like conferences and networking parties are important. They're not just about meeting potential vendor partners, they're also about observing how your industry colleagues interact in the real world and, more importantly, how well you click (or don’t) with them.

Sometimes, you may not click with someone's personality and that is perfectly okay. We all know people where we think: "You're a nice person but I can handle you for a 90 minute lunch, maximum." And we are all that person for someone else.

There are others we can spend a week with and not grow tired of and vice versa.

There’s another famous saying, “If you meet an A-hole in the morning, you met an A-hole. If you meet A-holes all day long, you’re the A-hole.”

If after hanging out with people you’re finding that no one wants to be around you for extended periods of time, then it’s probably you and not the rooms you’re in.

Being yourself doesn’t mean you never work on yourself. Which habits or patterns might you need to break and replace with new ones?

2. Can you be flexible and take direction?

By the time a wedding weekend rolls around, there were a million decisions made behind the scenes that were discussed ad nauseam. You just may not have been privy to them.

If someone on the planner's team tells you something needs to be done in a way that seems out of the norm, do not respond with, “I’m going to do it how I’ve always done it” or “We’ve never done it that way.” Trust that they've had multiple Zooms and emails to discuss how and why this specific thing needs to work in this specific way for this specific client at this specific event.

The planner’s responsibility is to the bigger picture and they do not have the time to break down all the reasoning that went into a decision – they just need you on board and willing to do your part to make everything go smoothly.

Of course, there are certain things about your process you should never compromise on, especially if doing so will impact your ability to deliver your end product at the level of quality you’re known for.

If you find yourself digging your heels in, be honest: Would the ask truly compromise the quality of your work? Or would it merely compromise your comfort zone? If it's the latter, get over it.

3. Are you a team player?

This one goes hand-in-hand with the first two.

• Are you collaborative?

• Do you want to see everyone shine?

• Do you recognize that you are not the star of the show and act accordingly?

• Do you do your part in a way that makes things easier for others?

• Is your own team respectful of the larger vendor team?

These are all especially important for complex, multi-day installs and strikes.

It should go without saying that every vendor and their respective teams shouldn’t dip into the food in the catering hold area, that they shouldn’t leave candy wrappers, empty soda bottles, or cigarette butts strewn about, and that they shouldn’t count on the venue or planner’s staff to haul their garbage bags and boxes to the dumpster post-strike.

And yet it apparently needs to be said again and again and again.

Planners talk and the ones who are considering you will likely ask their friends about what your entire team is like to work with when it comes to production itself. Being supportive of the entire team and leaving every place better than you found it will go a long way in getting you referred.

4. Are you discreet?

For weddings that come with NDAs, discretion is paramount.

We all know wedding pros who act brand new when they’re around someone famous or are all too happy to break an NDA or confidentiality agreement the second they sign it.

Do you get so starstruck that you sneak selfies with celebs in the background while you're sitting in First Class next to Vanna White?

Do you leak info "anonymously" to TMZ, Deux Moi, or even just wedding industry Instagram accounts? If so, you should know it's pretty easy to figure out who you are and which wedding an anonymous IG story is about. I've had multiple ultra-luxury planners tell me they automatically blacklist any vendor who submits any type of info on NDA weddings, whether they’ve worked with them yet or not.

High profile wedding clients tend to have high profile wedding guests. Planners want to ensure you're not just going to keep your cool around these people but that you are someone they are "safe" to be around. That you won't share snippets of conversations you overheard, or which guest was doing a line in the bathroom, or who was making out in the hallway of the reception with someone who was definitely not their spouse.

If you can't be trusted to keep it cute and keep your mouth shut, you won't be referred.

5. Are you genuinely inclusive?

I'm not a planner, but in my role as a wedding business consultant I am in charge of the preferred vendor lists for several of my luxury hotel and venue clients.

Do you have a history of being racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, etc? This can manifest in all sorts of ways, from making hateful comments to withholding opportunities.

If so, you're not going on the list.

Your clients may be straight, but their sister who is their maid of honor may be trans. If you can't be trusted to treat every person with genuine respect – including not engaging in micro aggressions – you're not getting referred.

This isn't just about being a decent human being, it's also about liability and risk assessment. I'm not willing to knowingly expose one of my clients to a potential discrimination lawsuit simply because a vendor's work is pretty. "You are the company you keep" doesn't just apply to you as a person, it also applies to your brand.

6. Do you keep your hands to yourself?

81% of women and 43% of men have been sexually harassed, with 38% of women experiencing this harassment in the workplace.

In the wedding industry, the number of women sexually harassed at work is 67%. This includes harassment by colleagues, wedding clients, and wedding guests.

No planner wants to hire a wedding pro they can’t trust to behave appropriately around their clients, the guests, and the rest of the larger vendor team.

Maybe you’re good at keeping your hands to yourself on the wedding day, but remember, the industry conferences and networking events are where planners are observing whether or not you’re someone they can trust. Your behavior there counts, too.

7. Do you dress appropriately?

One of the factors that keeps vendors from being referred by high-end planners is how they choose to dress for a wedding.

You can argue on Threads all you want that this is unfair, that clothing choices are superficial and shouldn’t matter – and you are entitled to your opinion.

You also will not get the luxury weddings you want if you refuse to dress appropriately according to how the planner defines the dress code for that event.

Appropriate wardrobe will differ according to things like:

• A culture or subculture’s standards of modesty

• Cultural or religious traditions

• An event’s level of formality

• The setting of an event

“Stagehand black” exists because the stagehands need to blend into the dark background around the stage without the theater audience seeing them.

While this practice has been widely adopted by the wedding industry, it is not an appropriate dress code for every wedding. In some instances, wearing all black will make you stick out like a sore thumb.

Your black jeans and black polo at a black-tie wedding is inappropriate.

So is your messy top-knot, nametag, or branded t-shirt during a wedding with a “Sunday best” dress code (install and strike usually have different dress codes where you can be more casual).

Your full black suit at an elegantly laid back beach barbecue welcome party is also out of place.

Once you get to the luxury level, it’s a good idea to build a wardrobe stipend into your pricing for you and your team members. Aside from a branded t-shirt or hat, the clothes you wear to an event never count as a tax write-off, so make sure you’re budgeting appropriately up front.

The saying “if you want to sell luxury, you have to look luxury” is a myth. You do not need to spend a zillion dollars on designer labels if you do not want to. You do however, need to wear clothes that fit you, are clean and pressed, and are appropriate for the context of the occasion.

What about the quality of my work?

You’ll notice none of these questions have to do with the quality of your work. That’s because at the luxury level, it’s a given that your work has to be good in order for you to be referred.

If your work isn’t as solid as you might have thought, obviously start there.

While there are always a few mediocre wedding pros who slip in, it’s usually because they are nailing these seven areas.

In the wedding industry, soft skills are just as important as the hard skills your craft requires and the talent you bring to the table.

Ask Liene

Have a question on running a wedding company?

From sticky client issues to navigating the challenges that come with success, Liene weighs in with her trademark compassionate yet no-nonsense advice.

To submit a question for our Wedding Pro Q+A series, send us an email. We’ll keep you anonymous.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

2025 Wedding Market Reports

More Splendid

Wedding Pro Q+A

This question is from a destination wedding planner based in the United States:

What are your thoughts on planners who charge 10% to wedding vendors for referrals? (This seems to be very common in Europe.) Is it fair/unfair/BS/marketing/a tax writeoff?

I was recently asked to “charge” a referral fee to vendors and it didn’t sit well with me.

Answer from Liene:

Planners and venues charging commissions or taking kickbacks from other wedding professionals has been a topic of heated debate in the wedding industry for decades. It is a practice that has fallen in and out of favor over the years but never truly gone away.

In addition, commissions and kickbacks aren’t limited to 10%. I know some wedding planners, luxury travel advisors, and a few venues who charge vendors 40%.

Commissions happen in the wedding industry in every country — whether legal or not. I have recently heard several wedding pros claim that this practice doesn’t really happen anymore in the luxury wedding industry in the US and all I can say to that is: you sweet Summer child.

My answer is unlikely to settle this debate once and for all but it will shed some clarity on the nuances of the topic and common misunderstandings when it comes to commissions and kickbacks.

Are a commission and kickback the same thing?

First things first, let’s define these terms in the context of the wedding, event, and hospitality industries:

1) COMMISSION: a payment from one vendor to another vendor in the form of money, goods, or services in exchange for a qualified lead and/or booked client.

Commissions are disclosed up front to the client, typically in vendor contracts.

Other names for commissions include:

• Referral Fee or Referral Reward

• Finder’s Fee

• Introduction Fee

• Connection Fee

• Procurement Fee

• Sourcing Fee

• Affiliate Fee

• Lead Generation Fee

• Vendor Partnership Fee

• Booking Incentive

• Success Fee

• Cut

2) KICKBACK: an undisclosed payment from one vendor to another vendor in the form of money, goods, or services in exchange for preferential treatment or referrals.

The keyword here is undisclosed. If the client does not know about the vendor-to-vendor payment, it’s a kickback.

Other names for kickbacks include:

• Undisclosed Commission

• Secret Incentive

• Quid Pro Quo Payment

• Bribe

• Payoff

• Ghost Commission

• Hidden Fee Arrangement

• Courtesy Fee

• Payola

• Side Payment

The difference between commissions and kickbacks comes down to consumer awareness, consent, and autonomy:

• If the client is aware that the commission is factored into the final cost and consents to it ahead of time, you’re usually legally okay to accept (or pay out) that commission.

• If the vendor-to-vendor payment is not disclosed to the client and they were unable to factor that into their purchasing decisions, then it is considered a kickback. Same with an undisclosed markup.

Are wedding industry kickbacks illegal?

The short answer, of course, is the favorite go-to of business consultants and attorneys everywhere: it depends.

Depending on where you live or work, accepting or paying kickbacks as a wedding, event, or hospitality professional may or may not be illegal.

A few examples:

• In the US, kickbacks are illegal nationwide in the healthcare, government, real estate, and financial services sectors but are sometimes a nebulous grey area when it comes to other industries.
  
  In some states, including Texas and California, undisclosed markups and kickbacks are illegal for every industry — including weddings and events. Also in Texas, the amount of a commission or markup has to be explicitly stated in the contract. Vague language such as, “A reasonable commission will be assessed” is not allowed.
  

• In Italy, these types of undisclosed payments between two or more businesses are considered “private commercial bribery” and are illegal under their domestic anti-bribery laws.
  

• In Australia, the laws on kickbacks in the private commercial sector aren’t regulated at the Commonwealth level but do vary by state or territory. For example, they are illegal in NSW and the consequences there include fines, restitution, and/or imprisonment of up to seven years.
  

• In the UK, paying or accepting kickbacks is illegal under the Bribery Act of 2010. This law applies to both the public and private sectors and also applies to companies based outside of the UK doing business with any company within the UK.
  

• In Ireland, kickbacks between private companies are illegal, including small “facilitation payments” to speed things along. This law applies to Irish citizens and companies no matter where the work is taking place. For example, a planner based in Ireland doing a destination wedding in Portugal cannot charge vendors a kickback.
  

• In France, kickbacks between private companies are considered “domestic bribery” and are illegal. Consequences for accepting or paying kickbacks can include fines of up to €500,000 for individual employees and up to €2.5 million for companies, as well as the employee or business owner being banned from running or owning a company for up to 15 years or, in some cases, permanently.

It would be delusional to think that kickbacks don’t happen between wedding pros in certain places where they are illegal. They happen every day — either due to a wedding pro’s genuine ignorance of the law or their intentional disregard of it.

As a professional business consultant, I legally cannot advise you to do something that would break the law. Nor do I want to. I can acknowledge the truth that kickbacks being illegal in certain places yet still expected might complicate your relationships with some vendors, particularly those who have no problem running their businesses unscrupulously.

As always, run your decisions by your own lawyers. For this topic, you’ll want to talk to an attorney who specializes in commercial and anti-trust law.

Isn’t it mostly inexperienced or flat-fee planners who charge kickbacks?

No, it’s not and I really hate this sales tactic talking point, which is typically used by percentage based planners to justify their pricing model. If that’s you, please get a new sales pitch.

Plenty of flat-fee planners do not take kickbacks.

Plenty of percentage-model planners do.

Plenty of inexperienced planners do not take kickbacks.

Plenty of experienced planners do.

Plenty of European planners do not take kickbacks.

Plenty of American planners do.

There are very experienced American planners who charge their clients 30% of the wedding budget who also take undisclosed 30% kickbacks from their vendors. Some of these same planners swear up and down on podcasts and conference stages that they never, ever take kickbacks. When a potential client asks them if they take kickbacks, they straight up lie and say no.

There are also very experienced planners who charge their clients 30% of the wedding budget who do not take kickbacks.

Greed and a lackluster moral compass aren’t limited to one pricing model, the amount charged, number of years in the game, or geographic region.

Is it ever fair to charge a wedding pro a commission?

A Splendid Note: Since we’ve established that a kickback is an undisclosed commission, when I refer to commissions from here on out, it’s going to be with the assumption that you’ve disclosed it to the client and it is in legal bounds.

Here’s an easy question for determining whether or not a commission is fair: Does it artificially inflate the price without adding value?

If the answer is yes, it’s generally unfair both to the client and the vendor paying it. You’re just asking them to tack an extra 10-30% on to the price for no real reason: that money is not providing additional labor, goods, or services, it’s not a luxury brand positioning premium (as that was already calculated in the vendor’s original price), it’s not a planner-sourced referral because the client found the vendor through the photographer, not you.

If the commission doesn’t represent real value, you’re just asking for extra cash and earning yourself a reputation as a greedy planner.

When the Planner Brings the Sale

If the 10-30% is a referral fee or essentially a sales commission for bringing that vendor the client, then there is an argument to be made that instead of spending that money on Google or Meta ads or another marketing acquisition method, they are paying that customer acquisition cost (CAC) to you for doing the work of reaching, qualifying, and bringing in that client.

You, as the planner, are essentially acting as that vendor’s sales rep and the commission is the reward for your work on their behalf. After all, it is likely your initial marketing spend that brought that client to you. It is not the job of your marketing budget to underwrite the customer acquisition costs of your entire vendor network, so why should you be the only one paying to acquire clients? If the client then signs with a vendor they had never heard of because you referred them, the commission is essentially a way to share that acquisition cost (a form of co-marketing). This can definitely be a fair deal to the vendor paying the commission.

Another example of when paying the commission is worth it: as a keynote speaker, I sometimes work with speakers bureaus. Speakers bureaus are similar to Hollywood agents and literary agents in that they don’t charge me to work with them, but do take a commission of any speaking engagements they book for me.

I am more than happy to pay them the commission as it means I didn’t have to deal with the back and forth of negotiations — they handled it for me. This is disclosed in my contracts and I feel it is completely fair for me to compensate them for that work, especially since the organizations coming through the bureaus usually have never heard of me. It wasn’t my marketing that attracted the client in the first place, it was the speaker bureau’s.

Now, if an organization reaches out to me directly and I handle negotiations, I do not pay the speakers bureau a commission on that speaking engagement. I did the sales and marketing to land that client, not them.

Hotels work similarly — they pay the commission as part of their CAC to whoever brings in that sale, whether it’s a travel advisor, online booking platform like Expedia, etc. This is also why you can often get a better rate by booking directly through the hotel itself.

In my opinion, it’s not fair to charge a vendor a commission when you did not refer them or do anything to bring them that client.

When is a commission pay to play?

A commission becomes pay to play when you only work with people who will pay it and refuse to refer vendors who don’t.

Your client pricing should be set so that you can refer the vendor that is the best fit for the client, whether that vendor agrees to pay you a commission or not.

How can I make enough money if I don’t charge commission?

Commissions are like gratuities in that if your business depends on them, you have a broken pricing strategy.

Your pricing should bring in enough revenue on its own without relying on people to pay an additional commission or gratuity.

If you need to charge a 15% commission to vendors on top of the planning or venue fees you already charge a client in order to earn the actual amount of money you need, then raise your prices.

If you cannot pay your employees enough without them being tipped 20% by a client, raise your prices. A gratuity should always be a nice-to-receive gift, never something you depend on to meet payroll or keep the lights on. (Restaurants are a separate conversation.)

Yes, that may make you more expensive at first glance. If it does, you will have to adjust your sales process and your marketing to build more trust ahead of time. Yes, it is hard work. Welcome to entrepreneurship.

What’s the difference between a planner charging a percentage fee and charging a commission?

A lot of the confusion around commissions in the industry is due to people conflating a project percentage pricing model with a percentage commission. They are NOT the same thing and the terms should never be used interchangeably.

• A project percentage fee is a pricing model that determines how a planner, designer, or other wedding pro charges a client for their wedding or events. The payment is made by a client to a vendor.

• A commission fee is paid by a vendor to a vendor.

  • A planner using an escrow pass-through model to pay a wedding pro their normal fee on behalf of the client is NOT a commission. It is the money the client owes the end vendor that the planner is managing and distributing for them.

Are commissions a tax writeoff?

Here’s everyone’s favorite answer again: it depends.

RECEIVING A COMMISSION

In the US, a person receiving a commission payment is required to claim it as income (it falls under “supplemental wages”) and pays taxes on it.

PAYING A COMMISSION

In the US, commissions can sometimes be a tax deduction for the company paying them.

If you’re paying an employee, independent contractor, or other third-party a commission as a payment for driving sales and revenue, you can generally write it off as business expense.

The IRS requires you keep proper documentation and invoices for these payments.

Yes, that means a planner or venue needs to officially invoice you for the commission fee in order for you to pay them. Not claiming it on their books or taxes turns that legal commission into an illegal kickback.

As always there are exceptions to this and the IRS can decide the commission amount is too high to be considered fair, so talk to your tax attorney or accountant.

Should I charge a commission as a wedding planner?

Whether or not you charge a commission is ultimately up to you.

Again, if you’re charging a commission only because you need that extra money from the vendor and won’t make enough from the client without it, then change your business’s pricing strategy.

If charging a commission costs you your reputation, it’s not worth it.

If charging a commission costs you your peace of mind or gives you the ick, I would personally say it’s not worth it. That’s a personal measure though, so will be different for everyone.

The key is that fair commissions reward legitimate sales and marketing activities and value creation, not just influence or favoritism.

Ask Liene

Have a question on running a wedding company?

From sticky client issues to navigating the challenges that come with success, Liene weighs in with her trademark compassionate yet no-nonsense advice.

To submit a question for our Wedding Pro Q+A series, send us an email. We’ll keep you anonymous.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

2025 Wedding Market Reports

More Splendid

New Tariff Updates for Wedding Pros

New updates to the US tariff policies have been announced since this post was originally published on April 8th.

For accuracy, please substitute the most recently updated numbers in the respective examples while referencing The Comprehensive Guide to Tariffs for Wedding Pros.

APRIL 13

• The exemption on semiconductors and electronics announced April 12 is only temporary and they will now be subject to tariffs “in about a month” according to US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick

  • This was announced on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, a Sunday morning news program on ABC:
    
    Jonathan Karl (news anchor): "So you're saying the big tariffs on things like smart phones and laptops, iPhones...those tariffs are temporarily off but they're going to be coming right back on in a month or so?"
    
    Howard Lutnick: "Correct...This is not like a permanent sort of exemption."

    • Updates on the 90 day pause begins at the 2:38 timestamp and the interview with Lutnick begins at the 6:42 timestamp of Sunday morning’s full episode

APRIL 12

• Certain semiconductors and electronic devices, such as smartphones, computers, and various components will now be exempt from the “reciprocal” tariffs

  • These products are still subject to the 20% Fentanyl tariffs

  • Exemption will depend on the device’s specific HTS code

  • See updated guidance (CSMS #64724565) from CBP (US Customs and Border Patrol).

APRIL 10

• The White House clarified that the new total tariff on China will now total 145% to account for both IEEPA tariffs (20% Fentanyl and 125% “reciprocal”).

APRIL 9

1. Trump announces “90 day pause” on tariffs, because people were “getting yippy.”

   • All countries scheduled to go higher than the universal baseline 10% tariff on April 9 were placed on a “90 day pause,” with the exception of China

   • This pause is ONLY on the rate increases planned to begin on April 9
     

2. All tariffs active prior to April 9th are still active, including the 10% universal baseline tariff rate that went into effect on April 5
   

3. Trump announced a new “reciprocal” tariff rate of 125% on China, up from the previous total rate of 104%

   • For shipments that previously qualified for the de minimis exemption, the new tariff rate for goods sent via international postal network is now whichever of the following two rates is greater:

     • 1) 90% of the shipment’s value, or

     • 2) $75 flat fee until June 1; $150 flat fee afterward

       • previous numbers were 30%, $25, and $50 respectively

     • Goods shipped through companies not included in the international postal network – such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, etc – are subject to the full tariff rate
       

4. The original de minimis exemption elimination dates are still active

The Comprehensive Guide to Tariffs for Wedding Pros

On Wednesday, April 2nd, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order implementing sweeping changes to US tariff policies.

I’ve been holding off on writing about the new US tariffs and how they’ll impact the wedding industry until this announcement. While changes to these new policies may still occur in the future, the following post is accurate as of 5pm Eastern, Tuesday afternoon, April 8th.

A few notes before we dive in:

1. I’ve written this in an “explain this like I’m five years old” (ELI5) format. I know you are intelligent, but this approach will keep us from getting too much into the weeds. Tariffs are complicated and the purpose of this post is to help you run your wedding business, not arm you with a PhD in Supply Chain Management.
   

2. I’ve also organized this post in a Q&A format and have included real questions on tariffs that wedding pros sent in through my Instagram stories. All questions are being kept anonymous.
   

3. These new policies effect everyone, no matter who you may have supported in the 2024 election. Bad math is bad math no matter which side of the political aisle the calculations come from.

Top 5 facts you need to know about the new tariffs

I expand more on all of this below, but these five facts are worth sharing up front:

1. Tariffs are NEVER paid by the foreign corporation or government of shipment origin.
   

2. These tariffs are in addition to existing tariffs. They do not replace them.
   

3. The de minimis exemption is being eliminated for everyone, not just China and Hong Kong.
   

4. Most force majeure clauses do not protect you against tariff increases. Review your contract with a real attorney.
   

5. It is currently impossible to run a wedding business on a 100% American-made supply chain. You cannot solve the issues caused by these new tariffs by only buying local.

What is a tariff?

• A tariff is a delivery tax on the value of goods shipped into one country from another country.

  • Other names for a tariff include: customs duty, customs tax, import fee, import tax

  • 100% of tariff revenue goes to the government of the country charging them

Is a tariff calculated on the price the importer pays the foreign seller or on a product’s full retail rate?

A tariff is assessed on the “declared value” of the shipment at the Customs port of entry.

• This is usually the amount you paid the foreign company you purchased from.

• A tariff is not assessed on MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price) nor the final marked up price set by the US retailer.

Let’s say you order a table for $500 from a foreign company and do a simple keystone markup so you can sell it to a client for $1000. You will pay the tariff on the $500 value the foreign supplier charged you, not on the final price you set.

Are tariffs good or bad?

A tariff itself is an amoral economic tool.

Whether a tariff has a positive or negative impact depends on how it is implemented and leveraged.

The recent tariff policy changes that Trump announced will do much more harm than good. Larry Summers – former US Treasury Secretary – said, “A very crude estimate of Trump’s tariffs puts the projected loss at US$20 trillion dollars, or well over US$200,000 per family of four.”

These new tariffs are misguided, punitive, and will cause undue burden on American businesses and consumers.

• American businesses bear the up-front cost of tariffs since they are required to spend extra capital to pay the tariff bill.

  • The tariff bill must be paid before Customs will release the imported shipment to a business. No Net 30 or other credit terms are allowed.

• The American business accounts for the tariff fee as an acquisition cost, which is included in their COGS (cost of goods sold).

  • COGS are used in calculating the price point a business will resell the product at.

  • Higher COGS means higher prices in order to maintain a profit.

• The end consumer pays the new higher retail price, which means the cost of the tariff has ultimately been passed on to them.

  • Because the new tariffs are being levied across the board, nearly every single thing Americans buy is about to get more expensive, whether it is for their wedding or their household.

To add insult to injury, on April 8th, the White House confirmed that China will now face an additional 50% tariff. That means that the new minimum effective tariff rate on imports from China is 104%.

• If a florist orders $100 worth of borosilicate glass vases directly from a company in China, the florist will now pay a tariff of $104 on top of the $100 order cost. The total cost of ordering those vases just went up to $204.

  • Very few factories in the US make borosilicate glass. Of the few that do, most make it for large commercial and residential construction products, laboratory equipment, medical devices, etc – not artistic decor items.

    • These US companies do not make the artistic decor items because, while it is a huge market, it is not nearly as big as the ones they are focused on. The added cost of expanding their factories, hiring new skilled labor and artisans, creating new packaging processes, etc in order to start producing decor goods is not worth it to them.

      • This means there isn’t really a US alternative for florists to source these types of vases from and there is unlikely to be one any time soon.

Here’s a 90-second video explainer on tariffs from the Tax Foundation, a think tank that leans center-Right politically:

(If reading via email, click here to view video)

Another major impact of all this on the wedding industry is the fact that the stock market tanked in the days following Trump’s announcement of the new tariffs on April 2nd.

49% of couples who had a luxury wedding (budgets of $96k-$500k) and 47% of couples who had an ultra-luxury wedding ($500k+) last year paid for it by liquidating investments in order to free up cash.

2025 and 2026 couples who were planning on paying for their weddings with investments can no longer count on their portfolios being what they were.

While wealthy wedding clients will still spend, it may not be as much they were initially planning. In this sense, this is very much like it was in 2008.

When do the new tariffs go into effect?

Here is the schedule of when the new tariffs go into effect. The dates and amounts are accurate as of April 8th.

MARCH 12

25% tariff on steel and aluminum, including derivative products

• Tents with steel or aluminum frames are considered a “derivative product”

APRIL 3

25% tariff on imported automobiles, including passenger vehicles, SUVs, minivans, light trucks, and cargo vans

• For automobile imports from Mexico or Canada: any parts manufactured in the US and shipped to Mexico or Canada for the auto assembly process will be exempt from the 25%.

  • This is similar to how you can only write your home office off on your taxes, not your entire house.

• A 25% tariff on imported auto parts goes into effect May 2

  • Even cars manufactured at factories in the United States use component parts that are not made in US factories.

APRIL 5

10% baseline tariff on all trade partner countries

APRIL 9

10%-50% tariff on all trade partner countries

Extra 50% on imports from China, in addition to the new rate announced April 2nd.

• This brings the minimum tariff rate for China to 104%.

MAY 2

Elimination of de minimis exemption for China and Hong Kong

• Imports under $800 will now be subject to the full tariff rates.

FUTURE DATE TBA

Elimination of de minimis exemption for ALL trade partner countries

• Imports under $800 will now be subject to the full tariff rates.

• Specific date to be announced.

• See Section 3(h) of the Executive Order.

What are the new tariff rates for each country?

The below gallery shows the new Trump Tariff rates for each country, arranged in alphabetical order. (Click on the images to enlarge.)

Note: the additional 50% tariff the White House announced on April 8th is not included in the chart below.

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Do the new tariffs replace the old ones?

1) No, the new tariffs are cumulative, meaning they are added on TOP of the tariffs that were already in place.

For example: the pre-existing tariff for goods from China was 20%. The new tariff rate is 34%. That meant that up until yesterday, the new total tariff fee for shipments from China was going to be 54% (20%+34%=54%).

Then, on Tuesday, April 8th, the White House confirmed that an extra 50% tariff would be placed on the previously announced tariffs for imports from China.

This means that the new total tariff fee for shipments from China will be a minimum of 104% (20%+34%+54%).

2) There are some exceptions (aka “carve outs”) to tariffs being cumulative.

• In February, Trump increased tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 25%, which went into effect on March 12th. Aluminum and steel are exempt from the new tariffs announced on April 2nd.

Who pays a tariff?

A tariff is paid by the company or person RECEIVING the shipment for a product.

• The person or company receiving the incoming shipment is the importer.

• Tariffs are NOT paid by the company, person, or government of the country the product is sent from.

  • The person or company sending the shipment is the exporter.

  • A shipment method called Delivery Duty Paid (DDP) can make it seem like the exporter is footing the bill for the tariff fee. They are not. You as the importer are still the one financially responsible for paying the tariff. I explain more about this below.

Can I write off tariff fees on my taxes?

No, businesses cannot deduct the cost of tariffs from their taxes.

• Tariffs are considered an acquisition cost and are included in your COGS (cost of goods sold).

Why does Trump say that foreign governments pay the tariffs?

I don’t know why Trump keeps falsely claiming that foreign governments pay for the tariffs.

A foreign government NEVER pays the tariff on a US import.

NEVER, EVER.

Neither does the foreign company or individual selling you the product.

The individual or company importing the shipment into the United States is ALWAYS the one who is financially responsible for paying the tariff.

When is payment for a tariff due?

Tariffs are paid by the importer once the product arrives at the port of entry in the country it is being delivered to.

• In the United States, tariff fees are collected from the importer by US Customs and Bureau Protection (CBP).

• CBP sends 100% of the tariffs they collect to the US Treasury.

  • This is similar to how a business collects sales tax on behalf of the government. 100% of the collected sales tax revenue goes to the US government. You don’t get to keep any of it, you are just the middleman between the customer and the US government.

How does importing a product into the United States work?

The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has three categories for imports from foreign countries. It is more complicated than this, but in a nutshell:

1) FORMAL ENTRY

Applies to import shipments with a value of $2500+

• Formal Entry shipments require comprehensive documentation prepared and submitted by a licensed Customs Broker. You are not allowed to DIY this.

• The shipment inspection process is extensive.

• To guarantee you can pay the tariffs, CBP also requires that you post a Customs Surety Bond for Formal Entry shipments.

• You also pay a merchandise processing fee (MPF) of 0.3464% of the cargo value (currently up to a maximum of $634.62) on top of any tariffs assessed on your shipment.

  • This fee helps cover the costs of the Customs agents inspecting shipments.
    

2) INFORMAL ENTRY

Applies to import shipments with a value of $801-$2500

• You need to use a Customs Broker to submit your documentation, but it is less extensive.

• The shipment inspection process is faster and less intense than Formal Entry.

• You are NOT required to post a Customs Surety Bond.

• The MPF you pay is a fixed fee rather than a percentage of the cargo value.
  

3) DE MINIMIS EXEMPTION

Applies to import shipments with a value of $800 or less

• The de minimis exemption allows Americans to import a “low value” of foreign goods (up to $800) without paying tariffs.

• You do not need to fill out Customs paperwork

• You are not required to hire a Customs Broker

• The de minimis exemption is being eliminated under the new tariff policies

Isn’t the de minimis exemption only being eliminated for imports from China?

This is a common misconception as the “White House Fact Sheet” only mentions the removal of de minimis for China and Hong Kong.

According to the full Executive Order, the de minimis exemption is being eliminated for every country “once adequate systems are in place to fully and expeditiously process and collect duty revenue.”

• It will begin first with China and Hong Kong on May 2nd and then later on for everyone else once the systems are in place.

• See Section 3(h) of the Executive Order

This means that all imports under $800 in value will be subject to the new tariff rates of the respective countries they are coming from.

• There is a caveat to what you’ll pay: if the product is shipped into the US via the international postal network, then instead of the tariff rate you will pay whichever of the following is greater:

  • 1) 30% of the shipment’s value, or

  • 2) $25 flat fee until June 1; $50 flat fee afterward

• Courier companies like DHL, UPS, FedEx, etc are not considered part of the international postal network.

  • You will pay the full tariff rates for any international shipments received via these services.

Why are some of my foreign suppliers adding the new US tariff fees to their invoices if tariffs are my responsibility?

There are 11 terms in international commercial shipping (called Incoterms) that determine who is responsible for what at each stage of the transportation process.

If you are used to spending over $800 with a foreign company and having the shipment arrive directly to your office door without having to lift a finger after placing the order, it means the company you are ordering from is using DDP (Delivery Duty Paid) shipping terms.

DDP means the foreign seller (exporter) assumes all responsibility for the cargo shipment until you receive it, including getting it cleared through US Customs.

• DDP is high risk for an exporter as it transfer all liability to them instead of sharing it with you, the buyer.

• Some companies that export high-end, fragile products will opt for DDP despite the increased risk because it means they get to control exactly how the product gets shipped. With DDP, they get to select the freight forwarder, the carrier, the Customs Broker, etc.

  • Because DDP is higher risk and the shipping partners a company chooses may not be the cheapest on the market, the companies that use it tend to have higher prices than some of their competitors that use other terms. You are paying for the convenience of the luxury experience of not having to handle everything yourself.

  • The late Sylvia Weinstock used to only ship her cakes via Continental Airlines because they were the only airline company that didn’t ruin her cakes in transit.

This is where it can get confusing: if a company has DDP terms, it may seem like they are the one responsible for paying the tariffs.

In reality, DDP allows a foreign company to act as a “Customs concierge” for you. This means they coordinate all aspects of shipment delivery and handle the process of paying the tariff bill. The money that pays for the tariff still comes from you.

You are just sending them the money for the tariff up front so they can pay it on your behalf.

• This is similar to wedding planners who use a pass-through model to pay a client’s vendors.

  • The money seems like it’s coming from the planner, but it’s really the client’s money they’re spending.

If a tariff is not the foreign company’s responsibility, why are some of them offering to split the cost with me?

Certain companies that use DDP terms are generously offering to split the cost of the new tariffs because their calculations show that doing so will be less of a financial hit than losing you as a customer altogether.

They know that if it becomes too expensive to import from them, you will have no choice but to look elsewhere.

These companies do NOT have to offer this and not every company is in a financial position to do so.

Does the Force Majeure clause in my contract protect me from the tariff increases on existing clients?

It depends, but probably not.

Most standard Force Majeure clauses do not protect you against increased costs caused by tariffs.

In addition, courts generally consider tariffs to be a “foreseeable expense” and included “in normal risks of a contract” – even if they cause you economic hardship.

• The Seventh Circuit ruled that Force Majeure “applies to objective events which directly affect the parties' ability to perform the contract in question, not the ability to make a profit.”

This means that for weddings you have already booked, you may not be able to pass the increased costs on to the client.

• If the price is agreed to in a signed contract and that contract doesn’t include very specific language, you are not allowed to increase that price just because your costs went up.

  • You can increase the price for future contracts, just not existing ones.

For a Force Majeure clause to be enforceable it has to include language that covers the specific event.

• If you have a different clause that allows you to adjust the contract price based on market increases, you may be okay.

If you’re a florist and your contract has a clause that allows you to substitute similar flowers if the original flowers increase in price:

• This clause allows for adjustment of the design materials to meet the original agreed upon price. It does not allow for an adjustment of the total contract price.

• This clause alone is likely not enough to protect you from the full impact of tariffs.
  
  

As always, review your contract with a real attorney and add whichever specific language and clauses you need.

• Do NOT rely on ChatGPT for this.

How should I adjust my wedding prices for the new tariffs?

US-based companies have a few options when it comes to adjusting their prices to account for the new tariffs. You can:

1. Eat the cost yourself

   • While this is a very generous position to take, it is unsustainable for the majority of wedding businesses.

2. Pass the fee along to your clients by billing it as a separate “Tariff Surcharge” line item

   • Pro: this method can help you build or maintain trust with your clients if you transparently list the exact tariff fee and don’t mark it up in any way

   • Con: if you consider the countries you source from to be a trade secret, this method will divulge that information to your clients

3. Pass the fee along to your clients by adding it to the COGS (cost of goods sold) in the pricing of your individual products or services.

   • Increased COGS always results in lower profit margins.

   • To keep the same profit margin rate as you had before, you will need to increase your prices even higher than the increased tariff cost.

If you are buying from an American wholesaler who already imported the shipment (such as a florist buying from Mayesh) identifying the exact tariff fee will depend on the method they used to adjust their own prices.

If the importing company rolled the tariff fee into their product pricing instead of listing it as a separate line item on the invoice, it will be easiest to just mark up their wholesale price like you normally do.

How will tariffs impact wedding floral costs?

Tariffs will increase the cost of flowers whether you use imported flowers or buy from a local flower farm.

• If you import directly from a flower supplier outside the US, you will pay the tariff either at customs or through DDP terms.
  

• If you order through a US-based b2b wholesaler who imports the flowers to resell to professional florists (like Mayesh), that company will pay the tariff fee.

  • The wholesaler will pass the tariff fee on to you either through increasing their product prices or by adding a separate line item on the invoice.
    

• If you order through a local flower farm, you still won’t avoid the impact of tariffs on flower prices.

  • There is not a single flower farm in the United States that uses a 100% American-made supply chain. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

    • There is not a single wedding business in the United States that uses a 100% American-made supply chain, either.

  • Flower farmers import many of the products they use to grow their flowers, such as bulbs, seeds, fertilizer, tools, etc.

  • Even if the farmer buys a product made in the United States, the US-based company making it likely had to import certain components in order to create it.

    • For example, potash is used in fertilizer and most of the fertilizer made in the United States uses potash imported from Canada.

As a wedding floral business, it is unlikely you are able to absorb these increased costs.

• You will need to increase your prices or add the tariff costs as a line item on your invoices.

How will makeup artists be affected by tariffs?

Makeup artists will be affected by tariffs in much the same way other wedding professionals are.

• Let’s say you place an order for French skincare products not sold in the United States. You will now pay a 20% tariff (the new rate for the EU) on the value of that shipment.

  • Because the de minimis exemption is being eliminated for every country, not just China and Hong Kong, you will now pay the full 20% tariff rate on orders under $800.I

• If you buy beauty products from US wholesalers or retailers, you will likely see the tariff fee reflected as an increase in the product cost or as a separate line item on your receipt or invoice.

• 70% of products on Amazon are imported from China.

  • The new cumulative tariff rate for China is 104%.

  • If you buy certain supplies through Amazon like organizers, silicone heat mats, etc you will likely see a major price increase on those items.

Because you don’t necessarily use up an entire product on one client, you need to know your unit costs in order to budget effectively.

For example, if you don’t yet keep track of how many applications you can get out of a bottle of foundation (measured either in number of pumps or faces), start tracking it on your very next client.

• This will be an approximate number as not every client will use the exact same amount.

  • Knowing an approximate number is still better than having zero clue how many faces that bottle will last you.

  • You can use this number to determine your average costs.

    • For example, if a bottle of foundation costs you $80 and lasts you 10 faces, your baseline cost of goods sold per client for that product is $8. ($80 / 10)

    • You will obviously not use the same shade on every client. If you use a certain shade less often, it may expire before you use it up.

      • In this case, your costs of goods sold per client for that shade will be higher than it is for the more popular shades in that product.

        • If you only get 5 applications out of that particular shade before it expires and you need to replace it, then your COGS for that shade will be $20 instead of $10. ($80 / 5)

  • You can then use these numbers to estimate your new COGS based on the increased product price.

    • If tariffs cause the price of that same foundation to go up to $110 per bottle from $80, your new COGS for the more popular shade product will be now be $11. ($110 / 10 applications)

    • Your COGS for the shade you only get 5 uses out of before it expires will now be $22 per client. ($110 / 5)

How should wedding vendors that don't order things for each event (like photographers and videographers) be planning ahead? Will tariffs be affecting things like film and cameras?

If you don’t order supplies or products for an individual wedding or event, you still have equipment replacement and other business overhead expenses to plan for.

For example, if you are a photographer and are planning to replace part of your kit (camera body, lenses, etc), you likely have an amount of money you set aside every month (aka a sinking fund) so that you have the full amount saved up by the time you need to make your purchase.

Because these products will now be more expensive, you will need to increase the amount you’re saving each month.

In order to have that extra money to sock away, you will likely need to:

1. Decrease your spending in another area of your budget, or

2. Increase your prices to account for the new cost of doing business, or

3. Do both

Let’s look at a specific example:

Here is where a few popular camera companies manufacture their products and the new tariff rates for the respective countries:

• CANON: China (34%), Japan (24%), Malaysia (24%), Taiwan (32%), Thailand (36%)

• FUJIFILM: China (34%), Japan (24%)

• LEICA: Germany (20%), Portugal (20%)

• NIKON: Japan (24%), Thailand (36%)

• PANASONIC: China (34%), Malaysia (24%)

• SONY: China (34%), Thailand (36%)

Let’s say you are planning to buy a new camera body (Nikon Z8 mirrorless) which is manufactured in Japan. You’ll be ordering from your favorite US-based retailer who directly imports the cameras they sell. We’ll use B&H Photo for this example.

With the impact of the new tariffs, you can reasonably expect to spend between $4344.95 and $4956.22 on a new Nikon Z8 mirrorless camera body, even though B&H currently sells it for $3696.95 and its MSRP rate is $3996.95.

To figure out these numbers, you can reverse engineer how the company you use sets their prices:

• $1450: Wholesale Price

• $3996.95: MSRP

• $3696.95: B&H Photo’s Retail Price ($300 off MSRP)

  • $2246.95: Current markup amount ($3696.95 - $1450)

    • Note: this is not pure profit, it also has to cover their other costs

  • 2.54: Current markup multiplier ($3695.95 / $1450)

    • Exact number is 2.548931034 – I’m writing only the first two decimals in this example, but if you want to re-create these calculations, that’s the exact number to use

  • 254%: Current markup rate (2.54 * 100)

• 24%: New tariff rate for Japan

  • $348: New tariff amount (0.24 * 1450)

• $1798: New minimum total cost to B&H Photo ($1450 + $348)

  • $1898.95: New markup amount if B&H Photo eats the tariff cost and keeps the retail price the same ($3696.95 - $1798)

  • 2..05: New markup multiplier ($3996.95 / $1798)

    • Exact number is 2.055589543

  • 205%: New markup rate (2.05 * 100)

• $4044.95: New retail price if B&H Photo adds the exact tariff amount to their previous retail price ($3696.95 + $348)

• $4582.98: New retail price if B&H Photo uses the original 254% markup rate (2.54 * $1798)

  • Many larger companies will feel pressure (from shareholders, etc) to keep their margins the same, which requires keeping their markup rate the same.

• $4956.22: New retail price if B&H Photo simply multiplies the tariff rate by the original MSRP (0.24 * $3996.95)

  • You can also arrive at this same number the long way by doing the calculations above, but using the original MSRP price of $3996.95 and its original markup multiplier of 2.75 (exact number: 2.756517241) instead of staring with B&H Photo’s retail price.

• $4656.22: New retail price if B&H Photo marks up based on MSRP and offers the same $300 discount they currently do ($4956.22 - $300)

As far as your budget planning goes, let’s say you planned to purchase the new camera body in December 2025 and started saving up the exact cost of B&H Photo’s price ($3696.95) in January.

• You’ve been setting aside just over $308 a month ($3696.95 / 12 = 308.08)

• You’ve already made your deposit for April, so you currently have $1232.32 in your sinking fund ($308.08 * 4)

With the tariffs, the new total amount you now need to save for the camera is $4956.22, which is $1259.27 higher than you had originally planned on spending.

• You’re now being conservative and want to have the max amount you may need based on MSRP).

• You now have $3723.90 left to add to your sinking fund ($4956.22 - $1232.32)

• To meet this new number by your original goal date, you’ll need to now set aside $465.49 per month for the remaining eight months ($3723.90 / 8)

  • This is an additional $157.41 per month from here on out

If you don’t want to raise your prices, you will need to figure out where that additional $3723.90 is going to come from.

• If you do zero-based budgeting, the amount will have to come out of other line items in your budget.

• I do not recommend dipping into your business emergency fund for this, if you can avoid it.

If you do raise your prices, you can either:

1. Tack the entire amount on to your next wedding quote

   • If you charge $10,000 to photograph a wedding, you’ll now need to charge $14,000 ($10000 + $3723.90, then round up)

     • In luxury pricing psychology, you want the numbers after the comma to end in either 000 or 500
       

2. Divide it by the number of weddings you still expect to book by December

   • If you plan on booking 3 new weddings, you’ll charge an additional $1241.30 per wedding ($3723.90 / 3)

     • If using a luxury pricing strategy, round up to $1300

These options only work if you’re collecting the full amount for those weddings by December. If you’ll only have received the retainer amounts by your goal date, you’ll need to rework your calculations with those numbers in mind.

This is just one example. You will want to increase your budget for all areas because your costs will be going up in all areas.

This will require taking a hard look at your pricing as well as your spending habits and adjusting where necessary.

Do you foresee anything impacting Bands and DJs?

Yes, entertainment companies, bands, and DJs will need to plan for the increased cost of equipment purchases in the same way that photographers and videographers do.

• See the example in the previous section on how to do this.

I’m a stationery designer outside the United States. If I ship my invitations to a US client, does the client pay the import fee (tariff)?

Yes, the American-based company or person who you are shipping to is the importer and is responsible for paying the tariff.

• If you are shipping your invitations directly to a US-based client who ordered them through you, the client will pay the tariff once the shipment arrives in the United States.

• If you ship directly to a US-based wedding planner who is handling the stuffing, mailing, etc of the invitations on your mutual client’s behalf, the planner is responsible for handling the payment of the tariff fee and billing the client for it.

• Both of these examples include orders clients might place with you through US-based third-party platforms like Etsy or Squarespace.

  • The e-commerce platform being a US-based company does not remove the tariff since Etsy does not touch the physical product and is not the one shipping/exporting it.

In the past, these types of orders were often split into smaller multiple shipments (envelopes in one, invites in another, menus in a third, etc) in order to avoid tariffs by keeping the value amount under the $800 de minimis exemption.

Now that de minimis is being eliminated, the tariff will need to be paid no matter the order size or value.

This means that the total end cost for an American-based client ordering from you will be more expensive for them than it was in the past – even if you keep your prices the same.

• If the total ends cost winds up being more expensive than ordering from a US-based stationer they also love, you may lose that client to the American competitor.

• This is how tariffs end up hurting companies in other countries, even though you have nothing to do with the tariff and will never see nor handle that money.

The albums I order for my photography clients usually meet the de minimis exemption. How will the elimination of de minimis impact me?

Photography albums are a perfect example of just how complicated figuring out tariffs can be.

If you order your wedding albums from an international company where they are handmade by artisans – such as Graphistudio (Italy), Jorgensen (Australia), or Queensberry (New Zealand) – you may not be charged a tariff at all, even without the de minimis exemption.

But . . . you still might.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

According to Annex II of the Executive Order on tariffs, certain types of photography albums are exempt from the new tariffs.

Whether or not an album is exempt from tariffs will depend on which HTS (Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States) code it falls under.

• If the format of the photo album is a printed book, it may be exempt:

  • HTS code 49011000: Printed books, brochures, leaflets and similar printed matter in single sheets, whether or not folded

  • HTS code 49019900: Printed books, brochures, leaflets and similar printed matter, other than in single sheets

    • Art and pictorial books are included under this HTS code

• If the photo album includes a lithographic process, it may be exempt:

  • HTS code 49119960: Printed matter, nesoi (not either specified or included), printed on paper in whole or in part by a lithographic process

• If the photo album includes plastic sleeves or page covers (like a scrapbook), it is NOT exempt from tariffs.

  • These types of albums fall under HTS code 39269048

If your photo albums do not meet the exemption standards, you will have to pay the full tariff rate on the value of the album shipment, even if it is under $800.

• While the de minimis exemption is slated to be eliminated for every country, not just China and Hong Kong, the date the second phase of elimination goes into effect has not yet been announced.

  • Until the de minimis elimination becomes effective for the rest of the countries, you can still import shipments under $800 tariff-free.

  • If you are behind on designing or ordering albums for your clients, buckle down and get that done asap so that they can arrive Stateside while the de minimis exemption still applies.
    

Are there other tariff exemptions that apply to the wedding industry?

Yes, there are other tariff exemptions that apply to the wedding industry. Some examples:

• Musicians and entertainment companies can import sheet music tariff-free.

• Event production companies can skip tariff fees when they import certain materials needed to fabricate an installation, such as various types of wood flooring or copper screws.

• Stationery designers and artists who specialize in creating mixed media pieces can import epoxide resins tariff-free in order to create custom pigments or specialty items like these custom grasscloth dominoes that Carey Lowe of the Idea Emporium created by hand for a wedding client to use as cocktail hour entertainment:

Video via The Idea Emporium

You can find the HTS codes of the products exempt from tariffs in Annex II of the Executive Order.

That said, the HTS code descriptions in Annex II of the Executive Order are frustrating because they are “provided for informational purposes only” and do not match the full descriptions listed on the US International Trade Commission’s website.

This means that you cannot take the description on Annex II at face value. You will need to search the HTS code on the USITC website in order to read the full scope of the description.

For example, on photo prints:

• HTS code 49060000

  • As described on Annex II: Hand-drawn original plans and drawings; hand-written texts; photo reproductions on sensitized paper and carbon copies of the foregoing

  • As described on the USITC’s website: Plans and drawings for architectural, engineering, industrial, commercial, topographical or similar purposes, being originals drawn by hand; handwritten texts; photographic reproductions on sensitized paper and carbon copies of the foregoing

• “Photo reproductions on sensitized paper” refers to photography prints created on chemically sensitized paper from a film negative or digital file

  • While the Annex II description makes it sound like all photo prints are exempt from the tariffs, the full USITC description is clear that it only applies to a narrow scope of photo prints. Wedding photo prints do not fall within this scope.

How can wedding planners help manage client expectations? Is there a specific percentage or cushion we should add to client budgets to ready them for the increasing costs?

The biggest thing you can do to manage client expectations is to be as transparent as possible about the potential changes and to communicate this to them as early as possible.

• If you don’t already, consider scheduling a monthly check-in video meeting.

  • If you don’t have anything to update them on, act as a sounding board: give them 15 minutes to vent, process, talk about whatever fears or uncertainties they may have about their wedding decisions, etc.

    • The “face to face” nature of this type of communication – and consistent frequency – establishes and reinforces trust more effectively than email or standard phone calls do.

To determine how the tariffs will impact your clients financially, you will want to review each client’s budget individually if the client is already booked.

• You’ll first need to review their existing vendor contracts.

  • Do these contracts have clauses that allow for increasing the original agreed upon price?

    • Remember, most standard Force Majeure clauses do not protect against tariffs and do not allow a vendor to increase the price because of them.

  • If the contract allows the vendor to increase the price, contact that vendor and talk through what their plans are.

    • Can they give you an idea of how much they will increase their price?

    • Do they know whether they will be including the tariff as a separate line item?

    • Talking through this with the vendor not only allows you and the vendor to build trust and camaraderie with each other, it allows you to get as much clarity as possible.

  • If the contract does not allow the vendor to increase the price, but does allow them to adjust the design or materials, contact them to talk through what they’re thinking, what you’re thinking, and how you might work together to keep the overall look and feel of the wedding cohesive even with the changes.

• Once you have this information from each booked vendor:

  • Update their respective line items in the client’s master wedding budget if the vendor’s contract allows for a price increase

  • For budget line items that haven’t been booked or purchased yet:

    • Look at each one and consider where your client might want to scale back in order to free up money for the increased costs the yet-to-be-booked vendors will pass on to them

• To minimize any stress and resentment from your client, put together a plan for how you will present this new information to your client. While the changes will not be entirely welcome, they don’t need to be the end of the world, either.

• I recommend creating a beautiful deck that you present to them on a video call.

  • Include the updated design ideas and budget proposals you’ve collaborated on with their other vendors.

  • Show how it all ties together to create a wedding that may not be what they initially envisioned but is still incredible.

  • This will go a lot further in lessening your client’s stress than sending them a bunch of frenetic, random emails that say, “Old design’s no good, must change!” or “OMG, your photographer is now double!”, etc.

As for future clients you haven’t yet booked:

• Talk to the vendors you work the most with.

  • How are they planning to handle the tariffs?

  • Do they have updated pricing yet?

  • Take the information they give you and use it to adjust the baseline budget quotes you give your clients.

• Make a copy of a previous wedding’s budget and update it with the new pricing for each line item.

  • This will allow you to tell a client: “I ran the numbers and a wedding we produced in 2024 that cost $ABC will now cost $XYZ” if we did everything exactly the same.

    • Of course, you are not going to give them the same wedding because you do custom work, but these real numbers will still allow them to “see” the increase and make it easier for them to swallow the upcoming sticker shock of their own wedding.

Unfortunately, there is no easy, pat answer when it comes to what amount or percentage of cushion you add to your budgets.

• If you or the vendors you work with source a lot from China, the 104% tariff is going to make your new prices much higher than a planner who sources mostly from countries in the European Union where the new tariff rate is 20%.

• Figuring out what you need to add to your budgets will require doing math specific to how you and your vendor partners run your respective businesses.

Do you think these new tariffs will drive more Americans to get married outside the country?

We will likely see an increase of VHNW (Very High Net Worth) and UHNW (Ultra High Net Worth) clients holding destination weddings outside the US.

• While wealthy clients are also more hesitant to spend in times of economic uncertainty, they have the financial resources to take their business elsewhere, in this case outside of the United States.

Clients who are merely affluent won’t necessarily have access to the level of funds they did before the tariffs went into effect. A destination wedding may not result in enough savings for them to spend on it.

• These clients will more acutely feel the impact of their household costs increasing and may have to cut back their spending in both their personal budget and their wedding budget.

Another factor to consider is that people will have less discretionary income to spend on travel in general. If fewer people overall are traveling, travel costs will go up, not down.

• Airlines make money by flying full planes. If they can’t fill the seats, ticket prices will go up in order for them to break even on the cost of the flight.

We will see more of the Americans holding destination weddings outside the country opting to hire more non-US based wedding pros.

• The increased travel costs will make it more difficult for American wedding pros to compete for destination weddings.

• The increased costs of doing business American wedding pros now have to bear will cause their prices to be less palatable to destination wedding clients who have non-US options.

• This does not mean Americans will not book destination weddings anymore. The impact of tariffs will just make it more difficult now.

Why do we have tariffs on PENGUINS?

The penguins know what they did.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding industry business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

Get the Latest Wedding Industry Research

The 2026 Global Wedding Market Report gives you the data-backed insights you need to make smarter decisions, stand out in today’s competitive wedding industry, and grow your wedding business with confidence.

Intentionally designed for busy professionals who want to make informed decisions without the fluff, the 2026 Global Wedding Market Report features:

• Insights from all wedding budgets

• 75 full-color pages

• 713 unbiased wedding insights & statistics

• Instant download, instant access

As an ultra luxury wedding professional serving ultra high net-worth (UHNW) clients, you know that delivering an exceptional experience requires a deep understanding of this nuanced consumer group.

The 2026 Ultra Luxury Wedding Market Report holds the secrets to the evolving desires and behaviors of UHNW couples. This report features:

• Insights from wedding budgets of $500,000+

• 75 full-color pages

• 713 unbiased wedding insights & statistics

• Instant download, instant access

Imagine knowing exactly what your ideal wedding clients are thinking, what they value most in the wedding pros they hire, and where they’re willing to spend their money – all before they even fill out your inquiry form.

If you run a luxury wedding business, the 2026 Luxury Wedding Market Report is your blueprint to increased profits. This report features:

• Insights from wedding budgets of $96,000–$500,000

• 75 full-color pages

• 713 unbiased wedding insights & statistics

• Instant download, instant access

Read More Wedding Industry Advice

The first of the 2025 Wedding Market Reports from Splendid Insights are now available to download! To celebrate the launch of the 15th edition of these reports, they are all 50% off through this Friday, January 17th.

We have been tracking the consumer behavior of real brides and grooms for the past 16 years and scientifically validate all data to ensure accuracy.

For 2024 weddings, we surveyed 53,493 people (in eight languages!) from around the world.

For this 15th edition of the Global Wedding Market Report, we also added some new questions (the reports are now 74 pages instead of 35) and added three new wedding vendor categories: content creators, insurance policy providers, and security services.

This massive undertaking was spearheaded by Rachel Cohen, our Director of Research. I am eternally grateful for all she has done to bring Splendid Insights to the next level.

Special thanks also goes to Sarah Bradshaw, the official photography partner for Splendid Insights, for the gorgeous images.

If you’re not already familiar, Splendid Insights is the wedding market research firm I founded in 2009 as a sister company to Think Splendid.

When I was writing my first book on the business of weddings, I found myself increasingly frustrated by the wedding research available. Much of what was being shared as “fact“ was little more than narrow anecdotal evidence at best or unscrupulous wedding vendors just making things up at worst.

The free market research published by wedding media brands limited their surveys to just their own users and overlooked significant segments of the wedding community. These reports were also financially biased – they would highlight areas that served the brands’ profit centers (such as vendor advertising) and would hide anything that didn’t.

The unbiased wedding market research that was available often came with a hefty price tag – starting at $10,000 per user – doable for a big-box retailer, but out of reach for the majority of wedding businesses. It also tended to be wildly inaccurate.

Back then, luxury weddings were defined as anything over $60,000 and there was very little reliable data available on weddings with 6-, 7-, or 8-figure budgets.

When I asked about this lack of data, I was told that "only 10 weddings a year cost over $1 million, if that." I knew this wasn’t even remotely true as several of my consulting clients worked on more than that each wedding season.

So I decided do something about this lack of valid wedding industry information and Splendid Insights was born.

As I mentioned, before Splendid Insights only two wedding budget categories existed: average and luxury ($60,000+). In 2009, we decided to split budgets into six categories to better analyze how couples make wedding decisions.

The six wedding budget category definitions are:

1. Ultra-Luxury Wedding Budget: $500,000 or more

2. Luxury Wedding Budget: $96,000-$500,000

3. Premium Wedding Budget: $31,000-$95,000

4. Standard Wedding Budget: $11,000-$30,000

5. Economical Wedding Budget: $1,100-$10,000

6. Intimate Wedding Budget: $1000 or less

The category names were chosen based on where spending averages fell in relation to household income (HHI) and net worth.

I coined the term “ultra luxury wedding” to align with the financial term “ultra high net worth individual” (UHNWI).

In naming the wedding budget ranges, we were guided by our core value that every wedding is worthy of respect, no matter how much a couple spends or chooses to celebrate. We intentionally selected wording that is not condescending nor judgmental of anyone’s financial priorities.

Today, these wedding budget definitions are considered the industry standard, are taught in universities, and are used by the hospitality, tourism, beauty, fashion, and retail industries in their wedding-related strategies.

The global wedding industry is now worth a whopping $1.3 trillion USD per year. (China alone accounts for about $500 billion of that.)

All currency in the 2025 Wedding Market Reports is denoted in USD after being adjusted for purchasing power parity using the respective GDP deflators.

Each participant in this real weddings study received their original survey in one of eight languages with custom currency options.

Results were then PPP-adjusted to USD by our research team. This way we’re comparing apples to apples (or cakes to cakes).

One of the reasons I founded Splendid Insights is because unbiased data can help you make smarter decisions when it comes to running your wedding business.

The luxury and ultra-luxury wedding budget clients are no exception to this:

• Everyone likes to think wealthy clients don’t look for wedding pros on Google and only hire through their wedding planner.
  
  The research shows this is not true. In fact, 78% of couples with ultra luxury budgets hired at least of their wedding vendors through a Google search and 1 in 3 couples with luxury wedding budgets started looking for their photographer before they were even engaged.
  
  Yes, they hire through their wedding planner’s recommendations, but that is not the only source high-end brides and grooms use to find the vendors they hire for their wedding.
  
  

• When I ask wedding pros why they want to break into the luxury wedding market, one reason I hear all the time is that “wealthy clients don’t negotiate” and the wedding pros are tired of clients wanting a deal.
  
  This is another myth that the wedding market research refutes: 59% of couples said a wedding pro’s willingness to negotiate mattered when deciding who to hire and the same amount (59%) of Ultra Luxury Wedding couples agreed.
  
  In fact, Ultra Luxury couples negotiate more often than couples who are spending less: 57% of brides and grooms with ultra luxury wedding budgets negotiated with their wedding planner compared to 42% globally.

  
  While this fact may be surprising, it makes more sense once you stop to think about it: many high net worth (HNW) people are used to others trying to take advantage of their wealth or status — even those they once considered close friends.
  
  They see the cartoon dollar signs that people get in their eyes (🤑🤑🤑) when they’re around and have often learned the hard way to keep their guard up when it comes to money.
  
  Yes, they are willing to pay for quality, but they are not willing to be taken for a fool.
  
  Don’t let your ego get in the way here. Negotiation is someone saying, “I want this to work, let’s figure it out.” That’s a maybe, not outright rejection. You can work with a maybe.⁣

You can currently download the following 2025 Wedding Market Reports for 50% off through this Friday, January 17th:

2025 Global Wedding Market Report

2025 Ultra Luxury Wedding Market Report (budgets of $500k+)

2025 Luxury Wedding Market Report (budgets of $96k-$500k)

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding industry business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

Get the Latest Wedding Industry Research

The 2026 Global Wedding Market Report gives you the data-backed insights you need to make smarter decisions, stand out in today’s competitive wedding industry, and grow your wedding business with confidence.

Intentionally designed for busy professionals who want to make informed decisions without the fluff, the 2026 Global Wedding Market Report features:

• Insights from all wedding budgets

• 75 full-color pages

• 713 unbiased wedding insights & statistics

• Instant download, instant access

As an ultra luxury wedding professional serving ultra high net-worth (UHNW) clients, you know that delivering an exceptional experience requires a deep understanding of this nuanced consumer group.

The 2026 Ultra Luxury Wedding Market Report holds the secrets to the evolving desires and behaviors of UHNW couples. This report features:

• Insights from wedding budgets of $500,000+

• 75 full-color pages

• 713 unbiased wedding insights & statistics

• Instant download, instant access

Imagine knowing exactly what your ideal wedding clients are thinking, what they value most in the wedding pros they hire, and where they’re willing to spend their money – all before they even fill out your inquiry form.

If you run a luxury wedding business, the 2026 Luxury Wedding Market Report is your blueprint to increased profits. This report features:

• Insights from wedding budgets of $96,000–$500,000

• 75 full-color pages

• 713 unbiased wedding insights & statistics

• Instant download, instant access

Read More Wedding Industry Advice

In 2008, I wrote a series here on Think Splendid called "Lessons in Burnout" with insights gleaned from an experience in my previous career of not just burning out, but burning to an unrecognizable crisp. It is still – 16 years later – one of the most popular topics I've ever covered.

Burnout is a slippery slope and one we often don't see coming until it's too late.

Working in a high-touch, highly personalized industry like weddings  — where purchase decisions are driven more by emotion than in any other field — makes a person more susceptible to burnout.

Add a pandemic-induced wedding boom followed by a sluggish season of inquiries to the mix and burnout becomes even more likely.

Working to make the world a better place through change or celebration is admirable, but a savior complex is not. You can’t do everything and you aren’t meant to (that cheesy line, "We're meant to be human beings, not human doings" is true).

Neglecting your own family in order to help other families isn't something to brag about and it usually means you’re halfway down the slippery slope to burnout, if not engulfed in flames already.

I certainly don't have everything figured out, but here are some things I've learned as someone who has personally been through burnout before and who has worked hard to avoid it ever since.

None of these insights are groundbreaking, but there may be one or two you're currently avoiding that can help make your current life better:

1. Take care of your brain

Your brain is in your body. Take care of your body.

2. Eat breakfast

Drink water. Take vitamins.

3. Eat well

I tend to follow Michael Pollan’s three rules: eat real food (aka pronounceable ingredients your great grandmother would recognize), mostly plants, not too much.

At the same time, there is no "organic Oreo" that tastes as good as the real thing in all its processed glory. For some people, "all or nothing" works well. For others, being stringent and then having a cheat day works. For me, a loose 80/20 rule of moderation is what works best.

4. Exercise

I’ve long preferred the Ballet Beautiful workouts while traveling because they can be accessed from any device and easily done in a hotel room.

In 2020 though, when gyms (and my local Flywheel studio) shut down, I became addicted to everything the Peloton app has to offer: spin, pilates, barre, yoga, etc. I also love their meditations, so much so that I canceled my other meditation app.

This past year I began supplementing some of the app’s classes with the free pilates classes that Move With Nicole offers on YouTube.

I still track these through the “Just Work Out” feature on the Peloton app so I can get the blue dot. What can I say? I’m a millennial who grew up in the era of measuring goals through earning gold stars and personal pan pizzas.

5. Live beyond the end of your driveway

Living “beyond the end of your driveway” doesn’t mean traveling to far-flung locales. It means getting involved in something bigger than yourself.

Give to and volunteer with charities that are tackling issues you’re passionate about, not necessarily the ones that will bring you the best PR.

Generosity is a muscle and the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Don’t be afraid of starting small: if you aren’t generous with $10, you won’t be generous with $10,000.

If giving is new to you, consider donating $1 from every sale you make this year.

6. Plan your days, but hold those plans loosely

Productivity is great, turning productivity into an idol is not.

There’s a quote by Alain de Botton that I love because it is true, true, true: “There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”

Set goals and make plans, but don’t delude yourself into thinking a fancy day planner or high-tech app will control all the curveballs life throws your way.

Hopefully the pandemic finally put to rest the toxic idea that we can control any of that at all. All we can do is get up every morning and choose whether current events are going to make us bitter or better.

7. Start liking Mondays

Mondays represent a clean slate and fresh start. We all have days we dislike our jobs, but for many people what we do is a dream job.

If you dread going to work each week, consider what needs to happen in order to transition to something else and start working toward that.

8. If you're considering hiring a life coach, spend the money on a licensed therapist instead

Don't just google any therapist and pick whoever comes up first — get recommendations for a reputable professional who is committed to your wholeness, not to having you in therapy forever.

One silver lining of the pandemic is that a lot of therapists have continued offering sessions over Zoom.

A side note: we all have issues — some we don't even know exist — and there is no shame in a commitment to living as a whole person. If this is a concept you're still wrapping your head around, start out with Brené Brown's books, The Gifts of Imperfection or Daring Greatly, which are both based on scientific research and not sketchy pop psychology.

9. Keep a gratitude journal

Paper or phone app, or even Instagram, it doesn’t matter. If you’re glad for something, write it down or snap a photo, no matter how small or dumb it seems.

I literally have “glitter” as an entry in mine because glitter is fun and cheerful and abundant at the holidays, so yes, I am thankful for it.

10. Listen as if you’re wrong

This doesn’t mean compromising your values. It means leaning into the mystery of life and operating from a core belief that you may not have everything 100% figured out and that everyone you meet knows something you don't.

11. Use social media to expand your point of view, not to keep up with the Joneses

My friend Marcy Blum refers to the latter as "compare and despair,” and the good news is that it is avoidable without giving up social media altogether.

Threads has exploded, especially after recently launching in the EU. Their algorithm is still a bit all over the place in my opinion, but I have already been introduced to a bunch of people in other industries I had never met before and who have opinions that are thought-provoking.

Threads works like early days Twitter — conversational, water cooler style. A good rule of thumb: keep any self-promotional or marketing posts to 1 in 10 at a minimum, 1 in 20 is even better.

You can learn a ton about different cultures (and subcultures) – including customs, values, etc – just from spending some time on TikTok.

Your brain processes social media as an in-person interaction, so if it's constantly draining you, change who you follow. If you find yourself dealing with envy or comparison, take a break and use that time to dig into the root of that issue in yourself.

12. Take a real vacation

This one is easier said than done, especially right now at the beginning of the year when prime wedding dates are still up for grabs and Valentine’s Day proposals haven’t happened yet. That said, you can make it a priority right now by planning for it, including creating a budget line item for your next true vacation.

Destination weddings and business FAM trips or conferences are not vacations, even if they’re in exotic locations and even if they’re fun (your job is supposed to be fun). You still have to be "on" for them and you aren’t able to fully disconnect.

A self-described workaholic friend of mine a couple decades older than I am once told me that he and his wife never once regretted taking a vacation but there were several over the years that they regretted not taking.

Give yourself a break and unplug.

The original version of this post was published in 2008.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

When it comes to the business of luxury weddings, there’s a lot of conflicting information out there.

Some of it is valuable and backed by true expertise, some of it is based on narrow anecdotal experience or faulty assumptions, and some of it is just made up completely by people who have little-to-no experience with luxury at all.

Today, we’re debunking seven common myths about working with luxury wedding clients and separating fact from fiction so that you can run your wedding business more effectively.

How much does a luxury wedding cost?

Before we dive into the myths of working with luxury wedding clients, here are some definitions:

• Luxury Wedding Budgets: $96,000 - $500,000, not including the honeymoon

• Ultra Luxury Wedding Budgets: $500,000 or more, not including the honeymoon

• HNWIs (High Net Worth Individuals): net worth of $1M-$5M in liquid assets

• VHNWIs (Very High Net Worth Individuals): net worth of $5-$30M in liquid assets

• UHNWIs (Ultra High Net Worth Individuals): net worth of $30M+ in liquid assets
  

The wedding budget definitions are from Splendid Insights, the wedding market research firm I founded in 2009 as a sister company to Think Splendid.

We have been tracking the consumer behavior of real brides and grooms for the past 14 years and scientifically validate all data to ensure accuracy. For 2023 weddings, we surveyed 52,738 people over eight months in six languages.

(You may have read in Xochitl Gonzalez’s article in The Atlantic that approximately 13,000 weddings in the U.S. cost $1 million or more in 2022. This statistic is from our research – we are not guessing.)

The net worth classifications are from the SEC (the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) and have widely been adopted as a guideline by financial professionals worldwide.

Under these classifications, "liquid assets" excludes the primary residence as well as personal assets such as art, yachts, and planes. Wealth managers in the U.S. are required by law to report when changes in a client’s net worth moves them into a different category.

Not every bride or groom from a VHNW or UHNW family has a luxury or ultra-luxury wedding (some elope and only spend less than $100 on the marriage certificate or choose to have a scaled down affair), but the majority do.

For the purposes of this post today, when I say “luxury clients” I’m referring to clients having either a luxury or ultra-luxury wedding, unless specifically noted otherwise.

Myth #1: Luxury clients don't negotiate

Luxury and ultra-luxury wedding clients actually negotiate more often than couples spending less on their nuptials.

In fact, 56% of luxury wedding clients married in 2023 expect their vendors to negotiate, and that number is the same for the ultra-luxury brides and grooms.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if a client wants to negotiate money or contract terms, it means they can't afford you, don’t respect you or your process, or that they're being "cheap."

Sometimes these things are true, but most often they are not:

• In many cultures, negotiating is a sign of intelligence and respect. Check your internal bias in this area.

  Refusing to negotiate is seen as disrespecting the client’s intelligence or business acumen and essentially calls them stupid. I think we can all agree that calling a potential client stupid is not the best way to win their business.
  

• If a person's job requires negotiation, they tend to see doing so as a part of conducting smart business. Refusing to negotiate with these types of clients sends them a signal that you are not a smart business person and decreases their trust in you and your brand.

  A few examples of careers that require frequent negotiating: attorneys, sales executives, CEOs, representative managers and agents (TV/music/literary/fine art/etc), real estate professionals, project managers.
  

• You have to remember that this is not about you personally. Very wealthy people often have people trying to take advantage of them, sometimes even by those they considered to be their closest friends. If a close friend or colleague betrayed them out of greed, why would they automatically trust a wedding professional they’ve never met?
  Many wealthy clients have their attorney review all contracts before signing. Sometimes the negotiating terms come from the attorney, who the client already trusts and pays to protect their best interests.
  

If negotiating intimidates you, reframe it as an invitation to collaborate. At its core, that’s all it truly is.

Negotiation is someone saying, “I want this to work, let’s figure it out.”

That’s a maybe, not outright rejection. You can work with a maybe.⁣

Sales and negotiating are skills, which means you can improve them and level up.

And, like anything in life, the more you do something, the better at it you get and the less afraid of it you become. ⁣

Free your mindset, free your life.

Get Splendid

If you have the luxury of leaning into the comfort zone of your fear because you have the privilege of your mortgage being paid regardless of your personal income — whether through a spouse with a great job or parents or investments or some other source — try doing what I call the “Breadwinner Exercise.”

The Breadwinner Exercise:

• If you alone were 100% responsible for every dime needed to support your household — with no outside help (no income from a spouse or partner, no alimony, no child support, no incoming insurance benefits, no investment dividends, etc) — would your current approach to sales and negotiating help or hinder you in bringing in enough money to cover it all?⁣

• If it would hinder it, what specifically needs to change?⁣

Myth #2: Luxury clients always hire a professional wedding planning company

67% of luxury wedding couples and 77% of ultra-luxury wedding couples hire a professional wedding planner.

I want to touch on this because not hiring a professional wedding planning company does not necessarily mean these couples are planning their own weddings.

Some luxury and ultra-luxury wedding clients just use the venue’s catering sales manager (there are multi-million dollar weddings at private country clubs every weekend that are fully planned — not just coordinated — by the club’s catering director).

Sometimes they may hire a friend who is an interior designer or a friend who plans marketing activations for a beauty brand.

For UHNWIs, the wedding is sometimes planned by the client’s estate manager, executive assistant, or the in-house event planner at their family office (many of which handle much more than just financial affairs).

I personally know several event planners for UHNW family offices who previously had their own wedding and event planning firms and were recruited to work exclusively for their respective employer family. Closing their doors and going to work for one family is a way to keep doing what they love while not having the headache of running their own business.

These planners are GOOD at their jobs and the only reason they may not be planning their employer’s entire wedding themselves is because they already have a full plate with the normal events they’re responsible for.

Yes, this means you may be referred, vetted, or hired by a trusted member of the family’s staff, and not a professional wedding planner.

Your networking and marketing strategies should not be solely limited to wedding planners or other professionals in the wedding industry, especially if you focus on the ultra-luxury wedding market. Doing so will cause you to miss out on a lucrative niche segment of the luxury and ultra-luxury wedding markets.

Get Splendid

• Marketing: What do you currently do to network with luxury client referral sources outside of the wedding industry? What is one thing you can do this coming quarter to improve this?

• Sales: Does your sales process allow for collaboration for professionals assigned to plan an event who do not own professional wedding planning companies?

Myth #3: Luxury clients don't use Google to find their wedding vendors

73% of luxury wedding couples and 71% of ultra-luxury wedding couples in 2023 hired at least one of their wedding vendors from just an Internet search.

Anecdotal marketing advice says, "My leads from Google can never afford me, so this isn't how luxury couples find their wedding vendors."⁣

The fact of the matter is that the majority of luxury and ultra-luxury engaged couples DO actually hire from Google — and this has held true year over year since 2009.

The top five vendor categories hired by luxury and ultra-luxury wedding clients via Google search last year were:

1. Wedding Invitations and Stationery Designer (Luxury & Ultra-Luxury)

2. Wedding Planner (Luxury)
   Wedding Venue (Ultra-Luxury)

3. Wedding Photographer or Videographer (Luxury)
   Wedding Planner (Ultra-Luxury)

4. Floral/Event Designer (Luxury)
   Wedding Photographer or Videographer (Ultra-Luxury)

5. Wedding Venue (Luxury)
   Floral/Event Designer (Ultra-Luxury)
   
   

You know who else uses Google to find luxury wedding pros? The in-house planners at UHNW family offices as well as ultra luxury planners looking to bring in talented wedding pros that their competitors aren’t also using.

Some planners pride themselves on “discovering” wedding pros and being the one who puts them “on the map” even if that vendor has been in the industry for a while.

If you're only getting low-fit leads from Google searches, it means something is off in your Method and/or Message and usually comes down to one or a combo of these:

• Your website isn’t communicating your brand differentiation, relevancy, expertise, or the level of luxury in the way you think it is,⁣ so it is not appealing to your target client

• Your SEO isn't focused on the right search terms for your target market segments within the luxury space⁣ which means your site isn’t getting found on Google at all

• Your website design and user experience was based only on what looked pretty, not on behavioral psychology about information overload, decision fatigue, how people actually interact with websites, etc. Design is never just about how something looks, it is also about how it functions.

When you're creating your wedding marketing strategies, avoid making assumptions that are based on the confirmation bias of an individual or the selection bias of a small group of vendors.

Also remember that successful wedding marketing rarely comes down to just one thing. It’s not a matter of only having a smart SEO strategy or only networking with luxury wedding planners and venues or only having solid relationships with magazine editors (or hiring a PR firm that does). It’s typically a combination of several approaches (aka your marketing mix).

SEO also helps with brand awareness which can be a key ingredient in being able to charge higher rates as well as a requirement for other business goals you may have such as a book deal, TV show, your own product line in Nordstrom or Target, etc.

The people telling you that luxury wedding pros don’t get booked through Google are incorrect. Full stop.

Get Splendid

• Marketing: Where might you be allowing confirmation bias or selection bias to drive your marketing decisions?

• Marketing: 15 minutes a day adds up to more than two 40-hour work weeks per year. If SEO is something you’d rather DIY than outsource, consider allotting 15 minutes each day to the boring stuff that pays off like compound interest (renaming galleries, renaming photo titles (and re-uploading), de-indexing blog tags (tip: Squarespace has a one-click toggle button that does this), writing blog posts, submitting changes to Google Search Console, etc).

(A Splendid Note: while I may share some basic SEO tips and advice with consulting clients if I can see that area is hindering their other goals, SEO is not a service I sell. I do not have a financial stake in telling you it works for the luxury and ultra-luxury levels.)

Myth #4: Luxury clients want to delegate everything and not be involved in the wedding planning process

While it is true that HNWIs and UHNWIs are more used to hiring experts to help them, fully delegating everything is more of a generational trait than a financial trait.

The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1980 and with it they rolled out a new standard on how schools were to approach teaching and learning: group work.

While Generation X, Boomers, and the others before them grew up in a school system that focused on individual study, Millennials, Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha grew up with a a focus on learning in groups.

This approach made its way to other countries and is even used in higher education (Harvard and other universities call these groups “pods”).

The sayings, “there is no ‘I’ in team” and “two heads are better than one" were drilled into their heads. Assignments and group projects had to be completed together and if someone didn’t pull their weight, it often impacted not just their grade, but the grades of everyone else in the group.

These younger generations learned early on that they were not only expected to solicit feedback and the opinions of others, but that filtering through all the feedback for the best ideas is how you create the best outcome.

Because of this, the brain’s neural pathways on decision-making for millennials and Gen Z are very different than the ones for Gen Xers and Boomers.

An extremely simplified explanation: neural pathways – how your brain connects all the different info it brings in – are strengthened through repetition. This means the decision-making methods someone learned and was immersed in growing up is how their brain is “wired” to make decisions.

If you are in your mid-forties or older, you very likely approach decisions differently than your younger clients do. This does not mean you are right and they are wrong, or vice versa. It simply means you were taught differently so your brain developed a different approach.

It is not unusual for Millennials or Gen Zers to want to review your proposal with their family and friends or to run each and every one of your ideas past their group chat. It does not matter that you have more expertise and creativity stored in your pinky nail than the group will ever have on the subject in a lifetime.

This does not necessarily mean they don’t trust you. The need for multiple points of feedback in order to ensure the best decision is hard-wired into their brains.

When it comes to wealthy Millennial and Gen Z clients who may be more used to paying others for help, they will be involved in the portions they want and delegate the rest not only to you but to their own trusted staff members. This means you may be dealing with more of an entourage than you expected or are used to.

If the client has their own event planner on staff, you may be working with them (this is often the case with billionaire wedding clients). You may also be working with their estate manager or their executive assistant (who generally make mid six-figures or higher and are entrusted with everything including bank account numbers).

The client may be looped in and attend the meetings they want (a cake tasting) but will delegate the work to someone they already trust and who they have trusted for years. And if their staff member doesn't like you, you're toast.

One luxury planner I know had to deal with 10 of their client’s staff members approving every invitation proof and requiring changes – and none of those 10 people were the bride or groom. This was an aspect of their multi-million dollar wedding that the couple was happy to delegate to their own employees who were tasked to work alongside the planner.

That same couple was personally at every single catering tasting and very granular in their involvement, including instructing the celebrity chef to “halve the soy reduction” in a certain dish.

If your marketing reinforces that you take everything off the client’s plate, you are not going to connect with the majority of today’s luxury brides and grooms who grew up valuing collaboration and the joy of coming up with new ideas.

These types of clients may not be the right fit for you and that's legitimate — but this also means you might be better off targeting older clients with money who may be marrying (or remarrying) later in life.

Get Splendid:

• Marketing: Does your messaging match what you want for your business and who you want to work with? If not, what needs to be adjusted?

• Sales: How does your current sales process help or hinder the decision-making abilities of your potential clients

  • Splendid Sales Tip: When you send a proposal to a potential client, saying something like, “I’ll give you a couple days to review it and bounce it off your family and friends” not only shows you understand them, it can also lessen any subconscious anxiety they may have about making the decision on their own (“Oh, I don’t need their input, I’ll look it over and decide.”)

• Operations: How can you adjust your workflow or process to allow for clients who need more time or input on their planning decisions?

• Operations: How can you adjust your workflow or process to accommodate HNW or UHNW clients who assign their own staff members to work with you?

Myth #5: Luxury clients trust their wedding vendors without question

Hold on, can you hear that?

It’s the sound of everyone who has worked in the luxury wedding industry for longer than 20 minutes dying of laughter at the idea their clients have never questioned their expertise.

Yet, I’ve seen so much luxury wedding business advice lately that has absolutely no basis in reality.

Too many wedding pros are operating with the unspoken expectation that every client should come fully graduated from therapy, with no hangups and all issues resolved, flawless communication skills, healthy and functional family dynamics, fully able to trust without question.

These are impossible standards for anyone to meet, especially at the age wedding clients tend to get married. Show me a 30 year old who couldn't benefit from at least an hour of therapy and I will show you someone who is lying to themselves.

Wedding clients are still human and they bring their cumulative baggage to the table, just like everyone else.

While luxury clients may be more used to hiring experts to help them, that does not mean they will automatically trust you.

Gen Z, in particular, does not trust easily.

This is especially true for American Gen Zers who grew up in the era of mass shootings (over 630 in the US so far in 2023) and going through active shooter drills at school.

These drills may be for protection, but they also literally trained an entire generation to be aware of suspicious behavior from others — including their peers — at all times.

You don't go through 12 school years of the repetition of those drills without your brain developing neural pathways focused on skepticism and self-protection.

Just like millennials feel bone-deep that tomorrow is not promised to anyone because of September 11th happening in their formative years, Gen Zers feel bone-deep that harm can come at the hands of anyone. As a result they are much slower to trust.

Saying, "Just trust me, I'm the expert" doesn't work too well with today’s brides and grooms and getting offended when they don't trust you or your ideas or recommendations right away means you will spend a lot of time not booked.

Get Splendid

• Marketing: Review your website and social media. How does what you currently share inspire trust?

• Marketing: Are there ways you can improve how you show (not tell) potential clients that you are trustworthy as an expert?

Myth #6: Luxury clients expect their wedding vendors to also live a luxury lifestyle

Luxury wedding clients expect you to be an expert in your specific field, to anticipate their needs and meet their exacting standards, to be educated on brands, etiquette, hospitality, and luxury service details, and to understand the nuances that may come with working together.

They are not fooled by a person’s attempts to blend in as “one of them.”

Your UHNW clients know that you likely do not have $30 million in liquid assets, that you don't own a private jet, that you're not off on your solely-owned private yacht during the slow season.

In addition, please do not buy into the related myth that you have to “look luxury to sell luxury.”

It is true that you DO need to look well put together and well groomed for whatever your personal style is.

If your budget means you have to choose between a designer dress or tailoring a nice but less expensive dress, spend your money on the tailor.

When hiring, wealthy clients will notice a chipped manicure or an outfit that doesn’t fit, but they typically are not swayed by the Prada or Loewe label on your bag.

This is not to say that you can’t (or shouldn’t) spend on luxury goods if you enjoy them, just that it is not a requirement in marketing to or working with luxury brides and grooms.

You don’t have go into debt trying to “keep up with the Joneses” in a misguided belief that a luxury client only hires people who share their lifestyle.

Get Splendid

• Marketing: Does what you wear for work reflect your personal style and brand you as someone who pays attention to detail?

• Operations: Would what you spend on “looking luxury” be better spent on another area of your business?

  • In the US, you cannot write off a dress or suit you wear to work a wedding or the outfits you buy for an industry conference. They do NOT count as uniforms for tax deduction purposes. The IRS’s rule of thumb is that if you could wear it outside of work, you can’t deduct it on your taxes (it does not matter to them if you never do wear it outside of work — you still can’t write it off). These laws got more strict under the “Trump Tax Plan” that Congress passed in 2017.

  • You generally can write off the company branded polos or t-shirts you order for your delivery or production teams as a marketing expense.

Myth #7: Luxury clients won’t hire you if you follow up on a proposal because it makes you look desperate or not exclusive enough to be a luxury brand

The idea that you shouldn’t follow up with potential clients has caused incredible harm to luxury wedding professionals. It has negatively impacted sales (and subsequently future referrals), self-worth, and professional relationships between industry peers.

Following up on a proposal doesn't make you look desperate or thirsty, it makes you look like a professional doing their job.

HNWIs, VHNWIs, and UHNWIs optimize for time more than any other type of client and they will spend on it. These clients tend to be busy with the types of jobs that provide them the level of wealth to have a multi-million dollar wedding in the first place.

Most importantly: they are hiring you to make their lives easier or better in some way.

Not following up with a potential client shows them that you don't value their time and that you are not the person who is going to take on the workload and make their lives easier.

The idea that if a client really wants you they will reach out after you send the proposal is a nice idea in theory but not always how real life plays out.

Emails get buried (and only 79% of emails get delivered at all), people reply to you "in their head" and forget they didn't actually type it out, or work and life in general gets in the way.

A potential client’s wedding is not the only responsibility in their life and you and your company are NOT their highest priority – especially when they are still interviewing other wedding pros before hiring.

Their life DOES NOT revolve around you, nor should it. Weddings are your full time job, not theirs.

Think of it this way: if a planner charges a fee of 20% of the wedding budget and a potential client’s budget is $1 million, is that planner really NOT supposed to send a measly follow up email for $200,000? Bffr.

As an industry, we have seriously lost the plot in some areas.

If you’re 100% booked out with your dream clients and are still turning down perfect-for-you inquiries left and right, then sure, maybe you can skip following up (you also need to raise your prices, but that’s a conversation for another day). That is not the situation for 99.9% of industry professionals.

Yes, rejection is scary and doesn’t feel great, but that’s part of entrepreneurship.

Stop self-sabotaging and calling it self-care. Get over yourself and go get your money.

Get Splendid

• Sales: When it comes to following up, what falls through the cracks most often? How can you improve this?

• Sales: While on the initial sales call/meeting, consider setting a 15-20 minute follow-up call with your potential client for a couple days after you send the proposal so that you can “walk through the proposal” with them and answer any questions they or their family may have from reviewing it. You’re not only being proactively helpful and not leaving them to their own assumptions, you’ll cut down on potential clients ghosting as well.

  • Offer a couple times they can choose from. “I’m going to send you a custom proposal on Tuesday for you to review and bounce off your family and friends. I’d love to connect again on Thursday or Friday to walk you through the proposal and answer any questions you or your family may have. Does 1 or 3 pm on either of those days work for you?”

  • Do not send a Calendly link for this — giving them homework does not make their lives easier. Try to book the followup while still on the initial phone/Zoom consultation.

  • Yes, this is more work than simply sending an auto-response or a pricing PDF. Welcome to the business of luxury. High end = high touch.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding industry consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve HNW and UHNW brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

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More Luxury Wedding Business Advice

This question is from a luxury wedding photographer:

I have been wanting to ask you a question that may be appropriate for many:

There is a push right now by some high-end wedding planners and other photographers to use film.

I understand why some may like this. I started with film and used 35 mm and medium format for over 20 years – I learned on film. But now, I choose to stick with digital – I am a better photographer with this medium and have much more control over what I can do with it.

My question is should we allow others (planners, clients) to request or require that film be used?

My feeling has always been it should be the artist's choice, but I would love to hear what you think.

Answer from Liene:

The Short Answer

Nope.

You Are Not For Everyone

You are correct that choosing the medium of photography should be the artist’s choice. This also means that not everyone is going to choose you as their artist.

Not being for everyone comes with running a business – and always comes with being an artist – and you have to be okay with that. If you specialize in everything, you specialize in nothing.

If you choose to shoot digital, and someone truly loves film, you are probably not the photographer for them.

If it’s a dealbreaker for them that you won’t change your process, then it’s a dealbreaker. You have the right to outline how you will and won’t work.

Never Allow Anyone To Tell You How To Do Your Job

One cardinal rule I have for running a business is that you should never allow anyone to demand you run your business a certain way. The client does not get to dictate your process nor tell you how to do your job.

You need to do what you need to do in order to deliver the product you're known for.

For example, if you need two extra photographers and an assistant based on the scope of the wedding (including guest count, venue specifics, publishing requirements, etc), you need them. Additional staff should never be presented as an “optional” add on. A client doesn't get to save money in that area because they think you can handle it all yourself or be in three places at once. You know what type of help you need in order to perform and deliver images that are consistent with the quality of your brand.

In that same vein, if you know you have more control over the final product with digital than film, and that it allows you to be more creative, you have every right to let the potential client know that requiring film is a dealbreaker for you. You can adjust your sales pitch to explain why you work the way you do and if they are then still firm on film, you can refer them to a film photographer you love.

It’s also important to remember that after the wedding, no one cares that at the beginning you said the end result wouldn't be as good if you shot on film. They only care about how the final product turned out. So even though you warned them and went against your gut to say yes, your reputation is still on the line and your word of mouth will not be saved by your contract’s fine print.

This isn’t to say you never compromise, but you need to decide where and what you are going to be comfortable compromising on.

There are times it is reasonable to negotiate the terms of an NDA to be favorable to both you and the client.

There are times it is reasonable for a planner to request that you and your team wear more formal attire for a black-tie wedding and have your hair done rather than your standard all-black outfit with the cute-but-too-casual apron and messy topknot. (At the luxury level, a refusal to compromise on dress code/meet the style context of each event is a common reason otherwise talented photographers don’t get referred — your brand is every touchpoint, not just the product.)

If you don’t want to dress in a certain way, then it’s your right to refer the client to someone else. Turning down a wedding because you don't want to wear a suit seems like a weird hill to die on in my opinion since it doesn’t really impact your process, but to each their own.

The only people who get to tell you how to do your job or run your business is a government regulatory body like the Department of Justice, the FDA, the IRS, a state's cosmetology board, etc.

When the Planner Is (Essentially) Your Client

Some photographers primarily get their referrals from wedding planners, and while this can make for an easier marketing process in some respects, it is not without its own stressors.

A couple hiring you directly is thinking about their own needs and desires for photography and maybe those of their parents or other family members.

A wedding planner hiring you on behalf of the couple is thinking of the client’s needs, their own marketing needs as a business owner, the needs of the other wedding pros who will be working the wedding, and sometimes the needs of publicists and editors. (Publicity for most celebrity and high-profile weddings is negotiated and decided at the beginning of the planning and hiring process, NOT at the end after the photos have been taken.)

There are two main camps of thought among wedding planners when it comes to what’s most important with photography:

1. that the photo style be exactly what the clients want and thus will change client to client

2. that the photography aesthetic match the planner’s signature aesthetic since the assumption is that their aesthetic is why they were hired by the client

(There is also a third camp that prioritizes the client’s taste and hires a photographer for them, while hiring their own photographer for detail and other key shots. This is another conversation altogether and typically includes work for hire contracts where you sign over copyright to the planner.)

None of these views are right or wrong, but knowing an individual planner’s approach to this issue is key to identifying where you want to focus your marketing and networking energy.

If a planner truly loves film and operates on an ethos that it best illustrates their aesthetic, it is going to be difficult to get them to change their mind. They, and subsequently their clients, may not be the best match for you.

On the other hand, some planners only think they prefer film because there has been a movement over the past 15 years by film photographers to convince them that film is somehow morally superior to digital photography.

This, of course, is ridiculous. Film and digital are both amoral tools – each with their own respective limitations – used to accomplish an artistic outcome. These tools do not have a conscience, they do not have a soul.

While there are technical differences between each that result in different aesthetic outcomes, I will say that If someone can’t tell by looking at your work whether it was shot on film or digital, they are likely not as educated on the topic as they may believe themselves to be. I don’t suggest you tell them this as, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” is not exactly the way to win over a potential client.

Also, and this is a bit controversial: if a planner is so easily swayed by marketing and can't tell what photography work is actually good and isn't or what it was or wasn’t shot with, but insists on one thing anyway, then maybe that's not a planner who has the same creative values you do. Maybe it's not someone you want to work with, even if they are popular.

You don’t have to sacrifice being creatively satisfied in order to make money in the wedding industry – even in a recession economy. It’s not necessarily easy, but it is doable.

Marketing Your Wedding Photography

If you are being asked to shoot with film often, it may be an indicator that your work isn’t resonating or being marketed in the way you think it is or that you aren’t reaching the types of clients who share your artistic point of view.

Most people want art that moves them and couldn’t care less about the tools used to create the final product.

If your photographs aren’t moving people emotionally and your inquiries are focusing on tools over outcomes, it may be a sign that you need to:

1. Improve the quality of your photography itself.

   Sometimes when people tell me they want to charge what they’re worth, I look at their work and think, “Time to lower your rates.”

   While we all know of subpar photographers who are (confoundingly!) booked all the time with luxury weddings, if you’re consistently not getting booked, it may be time for some honest self-reflection on your skills and capabilities as well as the true quality of your work.

   
   Get Splendid:

   • Go through your past 15 events, get brutally honest with yourself and level up where you need to.

   • Consider asking (or hiring) someone you trust to give you honest feedback and not tell you only what you want to hear.
     
     

2. Change the photos you’re showing in your marketing.

   As a rule of thumb: detail shots get you published, people shots get you hired.

   Both types of photos matter in marketing your wedding business because they work in tandem.

   Details matter when a couple is planning their wedding: they’re looking for reception decor or stationery design ideas – so a tablescape or invitation flat lay is going to answer the questions they’re asking at the time of that particular search, especially if you’ve named the photos in an SEO-friendly way.

   For example, a couple finds you through Over the Moon while searching for tented wedding ideas and your photos of an outdoor reception come up. They click on your photography credit link and see the photos on your site that show a tearful father-daughter dance or bridesmaids having the time of their lives on the dance floor.

   These photos show them that you know how to capture emotion. That you don’t miss the moments that matter. The candids of guests having a great time get them excited to see all of their family and friends in the same place and remind them of what the day is really about.

   If you are mainly showing invitation suite flat lays, you are only showcasing one small part of the event, and aren’t showing that you can (and do) also capture how the day feels.

   You want people to FEEL something when they look at your photos. The detail shots matter, but knowing where and when to showcase them is a key part of an effective wedding marketing strategy.
   

   Get Splendid:

   Go through your marketing for the past three years and look at the types of photos you’ve posted to your website, Instagram, and submitted for publication:

   • Do you have a good mix of details and people?

   • Are they each posted on the appropriate platforms? (Pinterest should be mainly detail shots, your homepage should be emotion.)

   • Do they communicate your point of view as an artist or are you only showing images that look the same as everyone else’s because you think those are the secret to why they’re booking and you’re not?

   • Do the photos clearly evoke the feelings captured or did you choose them because the vibe behind the scenes in that moment was memorable? Those particular photos will matter to your clients and should be in their albums, but if someone “had to be there” to know the feeling in the room, then that “people” photo does not work well for marketing purposes. Just because a photo is good does not mean it will convert couples to inquiries or clients.
     
     

3. Evaluate how and where you’re marketing.

   In 2021, about 75,000 of the 2.5 million weddings in the United States had Luxury wedding budgets of $96k-$500k or Ultra Luxury wedding budgets of $500,000+. That’s about 1,442 weddings per Saturday spending six-figures. In 2022, those numbers were even higher.

   And that’s just in the United States alone. In China, the total wedding market is worth $400 billion (not a typo) annually and 60% of couples there have destination weddings outside the country – with the top three places being Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Pacific Northwest US.

   In other words, when it comes to the luxury wedding market, there are plenty of client fish in the sea.

   If your priority is marketing yourself as an artist moreso than just as a great wedding photographer, you may want to consider whether you are hanging out in the same sea as your ideal clients or the planners who serve those ideal clients.

   If a wedding conference tends to attract luxury planners who can’t tell the difference between film or digital photography but place a higher value on film, you may want to focus on attending things like Art Basel, auctions, gallery shows, or other events where affluent people who appreciate art gather.

   If you’re going to spend money and time networking, choose things that tend to attract people who are more likely to “get” your point of view beyond your methods.

   One-third of luxury wedding pros aren’t on Instagram or the conference circuit anyway, so while those things can definitely be valuable, they are not the magic wand to success in the luxury wedding market.

   Fish where your ideal fish are.
   
   

I will also say that marketing solely on medium is often a race to the bottom because it commoditizes your business by focusing on the tools rather than focusing on the art. It’s a short-term solution that depends on technical ignorance on the part of the client or planner and it damages your brand in the long-run.

The more you market your art rather than your tools, the more you will attract people who appreciate your art and who aren’t interested in micromanaging your process.

Pricing Film Photography vs Digital Photography

You didn't ask this, but I will say it anyway since it is a related question I get asked frequently:

Your wedding photography pricing should not cost less just because you choose to shoot digital over film.

It is not your problem that a film photographer has higher overhead in that area than you do.

This line of thinking is similar to the early 2000's when brick and mortar stationery shops complained that it wasn't fair that the new online-only invitation designers who didn’t have the overhead of a commercial space were charging the same prices they were.

Too bad, so sad. Welcome to competing in a free market.

Do not discount the value of your art because of someone else's lack of profit margin. Their business is literally not your business.

The Bottom Line

The wedding pros’ prayer is, “May my clients with taste wake up with money and my clients with money wake up with taste.”

Your ultimate goal is to get your work in front of people who can both afford you and who love your art.

If a wedding planner or engaged couple truly loves film photography and/or refuses to value your perspective as an artist, it’s best to wish them well with a referral to someone else you admire.

If it’s a matter of not understanding the difference but loving you and your work, they may be open to a conversation about your process and why you approach things the way you do.

Pick your battles. You may find it more fruitful (and a lot less frustrating) to adjust areas of your business so that you run into these types of inquiries less and less.

Questions from Wedding Pros

Have a question on a sticky client issue, running a wedding company, or an aspect of business you feel you should know by now yet don’t?

Liene is happy to weigh in with her trademark compassionate yet no-nonsense advice.

To submit a question to our Wedding Pro Q+A column, send us an email. We’ll keep you anonymous.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

As a professional business consultant, I talk about pricing often. You may have noticed over the past 17 years that I’ve always been very specific and intentional about how I talk about it and what I recommend.

This is because, in the US, there are laws that impact not only how you price, but also how you can talk about pricing with other companies.

Other countries have these types of laws too, and they vary place to place. This post is going to focus on US businesses specifically, but for those of you based elsewhere, make sure to look into your own national and local laws to note what you need to be adhering to as you run your business and set your pricing.

The wedding industry may be largely unregulated with licensing only required for very few vendor categories (cosmetologists, food and beverage handlers, etc), but owning a business in general is regulated in many different ways.

Most pricing regulations fall under "antitrust" laws designed to ensure the market stays competitive for consumers, not necessarily for businesses.

"Price fixing" is a term most people are at least peripherally aware of and it is part of the anti-collusion laws set out in the Sherman Act of 1890. Since then, other antitrust laws have been enacted as well.

There are three main organizations in the US that you do not want to "f— around and find out" with as a business owner: the IRS, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Justice.

Antitrust laws fall under the Department of Justice.

What is collusion?

Collusion is when a group of vendors create conditions that artificially inflate prices, make it harder for buyers to shop around, block competition in some way, or generally make the market unfair for consumers.

There are three main types of collusion:

1) Price Fixing

Price fixing (aka price rigging) is when a group of vendors agrees to charge a similar rate, use the same pricing model, adhere to the same minimums or pricing schedule, not negotiate or discount (or to only offer the same discount amount), etc.

The prices don’t have to be exactly the same nor does everyone have to participate for it to be considered price fixing.

2) Bid Rigging

Bid rigging is when a group of competitors decide in advance who is going to get a particular client.

This typically happens through vendors agreeing not to bid on a particular project or vendors creating proposals they know a potential client will never say yes to so that they choose the pre-determined vendor.

It can also include bid rotation which is when a group of vendors agree to take turns submitting the winning proposal, as well as subcontracting schemes which is an agreement to not bid in return for being hired by the winning vendor as the third-party supplier or subcontracted company for that contract.

3) Market Division/Allocation Schemes

Market division is when vendors agree to allocate certain geographical areas or certain types of projects to specific people.

For example, a group of planners agreeing that they will each refer any South Asian wedding inquiries they receive to one specific planner or any destination weddings in Ireland to another and not try to sell their own services is considered a market division scheme.

Certain red flags the DOJ looks for to determine collusion are (these are all quoted directly from the DOJ regulations):

• “Any statement indicating that vendors have discussed prices among themselves or have reached an understanding about prices.”
  
  

• “Any reference to industry-wide or association price schedules.”
  
  

• “Any statement indicating advance (non-public) knowledge of competitors’ pricing.”
  
  

• “Statements to the effect that a particular customer or contract “belongs” to a certain vendor.”

They also look at what they consider to be “conditions favorable to collusion” which include how well vendors know each other through association memberships, mastermind memberships, accountability groups, conferences, FAM trips, social groups, working together, etc.

Most business owners in the wedding industry got into the work as a creative outlet and don’t realize that collusion is illegal. And not just a “slap on the wrist with a speeding ticket” level of illegal – violations of the Sherman Act are a felony and the fine for corporations (LLCs, S-Corps, C-Corps, etc) is up to $100 million and for individuals (sole-proprietors) up to $1 million or 10 years in prison, or both. On top of these fines, penalties can also include paying restitution and recovery of up to three times the amount to previous clients who paid prices set this way.

Proving that you participated in collusion does not have to include formal written agreements. Evidence can include testimony as well as things like texts, group chats, facebook posts, private forum boards, podcast interviews, phone records, contracts, bank statements, etc.

What’s more, under the Sherman Act, once collusion has been proven, arguments about market share, or competitors undercutting you, your opinions that the pricing was reasonable, ignorance of the law itself, etc, don't count as justification.

What does collusion look like in the wedding industry?

Here are examples of a few things that count as collusion within the wedding industry:

• A group of wedding planners agreeing to charge a certain percentage or all switch to a percentage model.
  
  

• Suggesting or recommending that wedding pros follow certain minimum (or maximum) fee amounts for various budget levels.
  
  

• Recommending that wedding pros never negotiate and always keep their prices firm.
  
  

• Recommending that wedding pros only offer discounts up to a certain amount.
  
  

• Policing a group of people for adherence to the "suggested" pricing. For example, revoking someone's membership in a mastermind group for being "uncoachable" because they wouldn't change their pricing to be similar to everyone else's.
  
  

• A workshop or course that only presents one pricing model or recommends it as the one everyone in a vendor category use.
  
  

• A planner increasing a wedding pro's price before sending the proposal to the client because they believe the wedding pro deserves to be paid more and should be at the same price point as the other wedding pros they're referring.
  
  

• Telling a vendor they have to charge a certain price before you'll even refer them to the client.
  
  

• A planner or wedding venue only hiring one particular vendor for every wedding without soliciting proposals from others or only rotating through the same group of vendors every time without giving others the chance to compete.

  (When the American Association of Bridal Consultants set the guideline – in 1955 – that wedding planners should always offer a minimum of three vendor referrals per category, it wasn't an arbitrary rule of thumb – it was to protect planners from collusion accusations.)
  
  

• An industry association, conference, or mastermind group publishing, posting, or distributing anything that shares what everyone’s charging or even how they’re specifically charging.

  Even if it’s “anonymous” — if someone can connect the info to a specific person or company, or reasonably guess, or even Nancy Drew it with a little more legwork, you can’t put it out there.

  Sharing this info in this way is not considered benchmarking or market research.

  There are laws about how market research and surveys on pricing have to be collected and how the results have to be presented — and there are minimum percentage weights that have to be met in the data analysis for it to be legally publishable at all. (Rachel makes sure Splendid Insights stays compliant on this and I am so grateful for her because it is a lot of work.)
  
  

• The DOJ also considers a group of same-category business owners discussing their current and future business plans, processes, and pricing to be anti-competitive and flags it as evidence of collusion.

  Companies can talk about what they've done in these areas in the past, but not about what's coming up.

  So for example, under Antitrust laws, an accountability group of florists isn't allowed to discuss how they plan to charge in the future, their contract terms, etc because the DOJ considers that to be creating market conditions that aren't fair to the consumer.

  That said, if it's something that makes the market more efficient and lowers costs – such as an installation technique that uses fewer supplies and takes less time thereby lowering labor costs – that is information that the DOJ does allow to be shared because those lower supply and labor costs are beneficial to the consumer because it reduces the price they pay.

  Listen, I don't like that you can’t share with accountability partners who do the same type of work you do, either – I'm passing along this info because this type of sharing happens every day.
  
  

• Under the Antitrust laws, you also can't agree with other companies to only pay employees or subcontractors a certain amount (aka wage-fixing) and you can't agree to not hire employees from other specific companies (aka no-poaching).

Remember, these laws are not about what feels fair to your bottom line as a business owner – they are about what's fair to the consumer.

Setting Your Prices

When it comes to setting your prices:

• Know your numbers:

  • your financial goals

  • your spending habits

  • your tax rates

  • your debts

  • your assets

  • your COGs

  • your state’s labor laws and how they relate to compensation (ex: in some states you have to contribute the same amount to your employees’ retirement funds that you contribute to your own; in some states subcontractors can only use their own equipment – like cameras, lenses, lighting – which means hiring a second shooter as a temp employee may make more sense but includes additional financial considerations)

  • taxes for remote workers (you pay and file based on where they live, not where your company is located)

  • etcetera

  As you can see, industry recommended minimums are not only anti-competitive to the consumer, they could very well end up being anti-competitive to you, too, if they don’t serve your specific numbers.
  

• Consider multiple pricing models and write a pros and cons list for each based on your business, market, and financial goals.

  Certain pricing models work better for luxury, certain work better for mass market volume so decide how you want to structure your business based on your ideal lifestyle as well.

  (Both luxury and mass market can be incredibly profitable in weddings – anyone who says otherwise has a narrow scope of experience.)
  
  

• Remember that in the wedding industry most people pulled their pricing out of the sky or just copied other competitors who did the same and aren’t actually making any money. Even if you’re not colluding and you’re just matching based on a competitor’s pricing page on their website, the chances that you’re copying faulty information is very high.
  
  

• Under antitrust laws, you are allowed to be the most expensive as long as what you’re charging doesn’t fall under “predatory pricing” (several planners were sued for charging change fees in 2020 — the attorneys for the couples argued that the fees were predatory because the pandemic was outside everyone’s control).

  If you want to charge a $20 million design fee for a luxury wedding and you get it — that’s considered competitive because there were other opportunities for the client to hire someone equally talented who cost less. The client opted for the more expensive option even though they also received lower priced proposals.

  You’re also allowed to be the cheapest option if you want to – no matter how much it may annoy your peers.

  There are strategic pros and cons to each approach and you should weigh them against your specific goals and numbers, not choose based on what everyone else is doing.

Bottom line: Your pricing has to be independently decided.

You don’t get to say, “I was just following what my mastermind group told me was a fair rate” or "The photographer’s online course said this was the best way to price because it worked for her” or “The wedding planner on stage at the conference told us all to charge 20% and not to get out of bed for anything less.”

The DOJ considers these to be attempts to erase price-based competition — even if each wedding pro genuinely believed they were “raising the bar” of the industry by sharing that advice.

Community With Competition

The general idea of "community over competition" is one I support – you should be able to make friends in the industry that you can trust. You should be able to refer them when you’re booked or call them if you need them to cover a wedding because you caught Covid, had a family emergency, broke your arm and can't photograph, etc.

Where this concept gets murky is the idea that the people who aren't sharing everything are old-school, scared of being replaced, or have a scarcity mindset.

No.

They are simply running their businesses legally. The people sharing everything with their category competitors are not.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist solving the complex challenges that wedding business leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations encounter in the $1.3 trillion global wedding industry.

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This question is from a designer who also offers boutique specialty rentals:

First off, let me say how much I love all of your content. Thank you for everything you produced during 2020. I found it invaluable, and still follow your words regularly. I have another interesting topic I would love your take on:

I am in a high-end, luxury market with very, very wealthy clients. Lately, they are all cutting their day-of wedding details like stationery or rentals. Several have told me this is due to rising costs (thanks inflation and gas prices!) and the tanking stock market.

During the pandemic, I was flexible with clients and tried to get creative to share the financial burden of postponements and cancellations. But this year, I was planning on being the busiest I had ever been (which I am). So I limited the number of clients I took. I have planned my year financially based on their signed contract amounts, and I have turned away business because of that.

Now my clients are all cutting back. What is the best way to communicate to them that they are under contract and therefore are obligated to a certain spend?

I don’t want the negative feelings toward me or bad public reviews. But I have also planned my year based on these contracts. Every cut counts, and while $2,500 may be easy to make up somewhere else, a cumulative $100,000 is not.

I tried to communicate this to a client today, and her response was:

“I find it surprising and distressing that you are unwilling to make a straight adjustment to the order based on the number of attendees, and adjusting the total amount due accordingly. I recognize that adjustments to the quantities creates some stress for your business – but that is the business you are in. Other vendors have not responded the same way.

I would really like to remove the specialty glassware completely as our overall event costs have risen considerably beyond our budgeted amount.”

Answer from Liene:

The Short Answer

Likes are for Facebook, not contracts.

Economic Realities

A recession hasn't officially been called yet, but at this point it's almost a matter of semantics.

Regardless of labels, it's definitely starting to feel more like 2008 – topped with a layer of ongoing complications created by the pandemic.

These economic issues are also not limited to the United States. They are impacting everyone across the globe:

• Inflation rates are up worldwide. In May 2022, inflation hit 8.6% in the US, 9.1% in the UK, and 11.7% in Brazil.
  
  

• Fuel prices are up worldwide. In May 2022, the average cost of gasoline/petrol per gallon was $4.43 in the US, $5.79 in Brazil, and $8.29 in the UK.
  
  Because of the separate crisis in Lebanon, the average price of gasoline is $75.55 per gallon.
  
  

• Wedding costs are minimum 40% more worldwide because of product shortages, increased labor costs, and supply chain issues.
  
  

• And that 40% doesn't factor in the higher rent prices for studio/office/warehouse space, repayments on any new debt taken on to survive 2020, nor the raise wedding pros should have given themselves just to break even with inflation:
  
  If you were charging $15,000 for your services in 2021, you need to now be charging $16,500 just to earn the same amount due to inflation alone.
  

  
  If you were at $15,000 in 2020 and never raised it, you need to now be at $17,000 to earn the same amount.
  
  A Splendid Tip: the exact numbers – as of April 2022 – are $16,486.46 and $16,717.23 respectively, but if you are using a luxury pricing strategy you want the price to end in either a 000 or 500 after the comma, so round up.

I don't know if you raised your prices high enough over the past two years to cover the increased costs and inflation. If you're like the majority of wedding pros, you did not.

This means that even though it may seem like you’re earning more from being so booked and busy, you were likely losing money this year – even before your clients started cutting their wedding budgets.

Luxury Client Myths

In addition to the financial issue on your end, your question highlights two myths that have a chokehold on the wedding industry:

1. The myth that the very wealthy approach their spending the same way no matter the state of the economy. People in every tax bracket attach emotion to money.
   
   

2. The myth that ultra luxury clients don’t negotiate. Or that great artists don’t either. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci famously negotiated and I have yet to see a wedding that is more artistically visionary than the Sistine Chapel.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but they are exactly that: exceptions. A key to both authentic optimism and success is operating with the mindset that you are exceptional, but you are not the exception.

Likes Are For Facebook, Not Contracts

Everything I’m about to say is written with the assumption that your contract is solid and was created by a legitimate attorney. If it isn’t, definitely hire a highly knowledgeable attorney to write a new contract you can use with future clients. Contracts are important no matter the client, but perhaps more so when your clients have the type of wealth that can keep you tied up in court forever.

In order to have the bandwidth needed to produce high-quality work for your clients, you stopped accepting new business for 2022 once you signed enough contracts to meet your financial goals for this year. A healthy work ethic always includes boundaries and you did the right thing by recognizing and honoring your limits.

You took your clients at their legal word that they would pay what they agreed to. You are not naive or lazy or failing to plan for your business by turning away potential clients based on contracts you had in hand. Protecting your company, your employees, your family, and yourself by upholding your contracts does not make you mean, heartless, nor a diva. It makes you a responsible business owner.

Still, recessions are difficult for everyone, regardless of income level and I will admit I was feeling for your client until I got to this line in her email:

“I recognize that adjustments to the quantities creates some stress for your business – but that is the business you are in. Other vendors have not responded the same way.”

Please do not fall for this manipulative argument.

I don’t doubt that her “overall event costs have risen considerably beyond our budgeted amount.”

Of course they have. As I noted earlier, weddings are at least 40% more expensive this year. The problem is she is discovering this after she signed contracts.

This is not the same situation as 2020. She is not cutting her guest list because of legally-mandated gathering size limitations or event bans. She is cutting it because the global supply chain is still tied in knots, the economy is not doing so hot, and she lost money in the stock market.

She is also not being entirely truthful. If her other wedding vendors were all lowering their contracted amounts like she wants you to believe, then she wouldn’t be over budget.

At least one category ended up costing way more than she planned (very likely flowers or food) and she is trying to pay you less than she contractually agreed to in order to make up for it. Wall Street certainly isn’t going to give her any lost money back, so she is hoping that you will bend because you are a nice small business owner.

There is a difference between being nice and being kind: niceness is skin-deep sugar, kindness is bone-deep substance.

Your client is not skipping mortgage payments to pay for this wedding. The income you draw from your business does pay your mortgage. It would be nice of you to lower your contracted minimum spend for her, but it would not be kind to anyone who depends on you to financially provide for them – including yourself.

Do not set yourself on fire to keep others warm. Especially for wealthy clients who already have plenty of Hermès blankets.

Negotiating for Value

Money may be an amoral, inanimate object but we still tend to attach emotion to it. Because of this, even Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals who are unlikely to ever find themselves in a truly precarious financial position can get in their feelings about money during times of economic uncertainty.

Contracts can be re-negotiated after they’re signed – that’s what addendums are for. The thing about addendums is that they have to be agreed to by both parties. Your client can’t change the contract terms without your approval and vice versa.

You may not be in a financial position to lower the contracted minimum spend amount, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still offer to negotiate other ways to deliver value.

Is there a way to upgrade or offer her alternative options that doesn’t cost you additional revenue or profit but allows her to meet her spend minimums at the new guest count?

This was very common in 2008: people cut their guest counts but hotels and wedding venues still held them to their contracted food and beverage minimums. To meet the spend, they upgraded to only top-shelf liquor for the bar. They served steak, lobster, and caviar instead of a more limited menu. They had fewer wedding guests, but those guests were treated to a better experience.

Another thing to consider is how she might prioritize which details matter most to her. This will be different client to client.

As an example: There was a UHNWI mother of the bride who hosted a ton of events and always hired people to help her. She was every event pro’s dream repeat client.

Except that she just did not care about chairs. She wouldn’t even spring for the basic padded folding chairs – they had to be those uncomfortable resin ones that turn beige in 2.5 seconds because they show every speck of dirt.

She wouldn’t bat an eye at dropping six-figures on flowers for a birthday party, though. She had no problem ordering top of the line custom linens for a luncheon. She happily spent $15 a pop on 100 novelty lollipops for a baby shower. Her stationery was always letterpressed or engraved. Yet every single party had those hideous chairs, no matter how much her planner and event designer pleaded.

In her head, spending more on chairs meant she was bad with money and she was not about to be bad with money.

Right now your bride feels like the glassware is an irresponsible splurge, but you may have something else in your inventory that she would place a higher priority on. Can you offer to swap the items so that she feels more comfortable spending the minimum?

If you can negotiate the specific products without compromising your finances, that may be a win-win option.

If you don’t have alternatives available, then you don’t have them, and it’s still okay to still require your client to fulfill the contract as written.

Replying Tactfully and Professionally

When you reply to this bride (or other clients), do not apologize for not being able to lower your contracted minimum spend.

You have done nothing wrong and courts sometimes consider an apology to be an admission of guilt. There is a reason every good attorney has some variation of “never apologize, never explain” as a mantra.

This does not mean you have to be cold. You can be warm, friendly, and professional while not accepting blame nor taking her guilt-trip bait of “other vendors have not responded the same way.”

Another wedding pro’s business decision is literally not your business. You are not involved in running their company and you do not need to share responsibility for nor emulate their choices.

They may have more of a financial cushion that allows them to make an exception for her. Or they may be letting a codependent need to have everyone like them drive their financial decisions. Again, likes are for Facebook.

If it’s more of an identity issue for her, dressed up in a financial issue – and she doesn’t see value in substituting – she is likely always going to feel like you took advantage of her. Those feelings are not facts.

Sticking to a contract she agreed to is not taking advantage of her.

Costing her additional money in ways she has no idea about like secretly marking up a vendor’s retail price would be taking advantage of her.

This is not that.

If you can offer other ways to negotiate value, that is a kind gesture. If you can’t, then you can simply say that you are unable to adjust the contracted rates.

You have bills to pay and mouths to feed and the promise she made when she signed her contract is how you do that. This may be her wedding, but it is your livelihood.

Questions from Wedding Pros

Have a question on a sticky client issue, running a wedding company, or an aspect of business you feel you should know by now yet don’t?

Liene is happy to weigh in with her trademark compassionate yet no-nonsense advice.

To submit a question to our Wedding Pro Q+A column, send us an email. We’ll keep you anonymous.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding industry business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

This question is from a luxury wedding planner:

Something was brought up by a few people in the last couple weeks and I wanted to get your insight.

Are the "Top" and “Best of” lists from magazines and websites vetted and earned or are they marketed/PR'd onto?

One of the "Top" lists came out recently that named a wedding planner to the list who has limited experience (less than five years in business, two of those while closed during Covid) and almost no social proof of planning work.

It seems like this editor was looking to mark "diversify" off the list and added this person based on a half dozen editorials and styled shoots rather than doing a little digging to see that the greatest portion of their "portfolio" was photoshoots and gathered "inspiration" images from top wedding photographers and designers. It was shocking.

For the most part, everyone believed prior to this that the lists were valid and something to maybe strive for and to be proud of. This made all of us think the exact opposite.

Getting in front of the editors that are behind these lists via a PR team seems more than fair – but when you're perhaps not an experienced professional and you're making a list; that's a different story.

Not only am I Black, but I was named to one of those lists last year and now I am wondering.

All the people discussing this are of different races; all know that I am quite comfortable with them asking me the race questions. The discussion started with the lack of experience and then someone was courageous enough to ask me, “Hey, do you think…”

Answer from Liene:

I have been asked some version of your question by a couple dozen different wedding pros. A lot of people in the industry are curious about how these “best of” lists work and their actual merit.

I’m going to be real from the jump: my answers are not necessarily going to be what everyone wants to hear. Not the wedding pros who have been featured on these lists, not the people who have yet to be included on them, and not the editors who put them together.

It’s a more complicated issue than it may seem on the surface, with a lot of nuanced factors and interconnected parts.

That said, it’s an important topic and I’m glad you reached out with your question because we do not shy away from the challenging stuff here.

There are a few things to unpack in your question’s scenario:

1. Whether or not being named to these lists matters and if it’s something a wedding business should “strive for”
   

2. The perception of a wedding professional’s expertise and who deserves to be on these lists
   

3. How the "top wedding professional" and "best of" lists are sourced and the extent to which they are vetted
   

4. The recent efforts by media brands to publish wedding content that is more diverse and inclusive than in the past

I also want to be clear that we are talking about “best of” lists where you do not pay the publication to be included nor do you have to advertise with them to be considered.

These are not the wedding pro directories you pay to be listed in or memberships in paid wedding vendor groups that include an element of promotion to a wider network (Instagram takeovers, dedicated newsletter features, etc).

While these directories and groups may have their own application and vetting process, they are a form of paid advertising – which is an entirely different aspect of marketing than what we are talking about today.

The Real Purpose of a “Best of” List

Let’s start by talking about why lists like these exist at all.

“Best of” lists are first and foremost a marketing tactic for the brand that publishes them.

They can be a huge traffic source and since many of the media brands (Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, Brides, Martha Stewart Weddings, etc) owned by larger parent companies (Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, etc) generate part of their ad revenue from page views rather than paid wedding vendor directories, these “best wedding professionals” lists are a strategic way to drive more people to their online content.

This content helps their SEO (being featured does not help your own SEO), and is also a way for them to get in front of a wider audience by creating a chance for multiple wedding pros to drive traffic and word of mouth by sharing the links with their respective followers.

Brides did this especially well this year by creating Instagram-ready custom graphics for each of the 209 wedding professionals on their lists which included photos of the respective vendor’s work, the list’s name, plus the Brides logo.

In addition to driving traffic to their site, this generated a huge amount of brand awareness for Brides as their logo received millions of impressions on Instagram alone from the graphics being shared. It was an incredibly smart campaign on their part.

These magazines and websites are also not the ones who originated this concept – pretty much all awards and “top” lists started this way. The Oscars were first created as a way to increase membership in The Academy. So were the Emmys. An organization positioning themselves as an authority on who or what is “best” is a form of marketing that has been around forever.

This isn’t to say these accolades can’t be valid or that there isn’t some sort of win-win element. It’s just to point out that their primary purpose is to promote the publication’s brand and generate revenue for their own company. Helping the audience in some form is second. Promoting you is third.

Remembering this fact can also be helpful in keeping the temptation to drink your own kool-aid in check. You may be on these lists, but they are really not about you at all.

Does being named to a “best of” list matter for a wedding professional?

The Short Answer

Yes and no.

The Real Money Potential

Being published on a “best of” list has the potential to bring in very real money for a wedding business.

Wedding market research shows that, on average, wedding planners earn 56% more revenue annually as a result of getting published, including on these lists. Wedding photographers earn 73% more.

For easy math, we’re going to use round numbers:

If you’re a planner earning $100,000 in gross revenue a year, you’re now bringing in $156,000.

If you’re a photographer, you’re now bringing in $173,000.

Here’s some longer-term math: Let’s say you run your business super lean, can cover the additional taxes from your base $100k revenue, and don’t need to spend any of that extra money. It’s all profit.

If you stick that extra $56,000 under the sofa in your office each year, after 10 years you’ll have $560,000.

If you invest that extra $56,000 in a boring index fund like an ETF each year at a 6% return rate, after 10 years you’ll have $782,411.99.

A wedding photographer would have $1,019,929.91.

It’s hard to argue that an extra half-a-million dollars or more doesn’t matter to a wedding professional, especially after 2020 when so many had to make tough financial decisions just to stay in business.

Other Benefits of Being on a “Best Wedding Professionals” List

Aside from a potential bride or groom finding you through being published on a list of best wedding pros, there are other ways these lists can be used to generate revenue for a wedding business:

• If you want to sell your company at some point, being on these lists can increase your brand value and give you leverage in negotiating more favorable terms and a higher sale price.
  
  Many business owners have an exit strategy that includes stacking up awards and spots on “best of” lists for this reason.
  
  They are playing the long game and their goals for being included on these lists have more to do with securing a long-term financial legacy for their family and building generational wealth than anything else.
  
  

• Being on these lists serves as a stamp of approval on your expertise and can help you land things like spokesperson deals, book deals, and TV gigs.

• Being recognized on a “best of” list can also help you build a more widely known brand name that can be leveraged for mass market retail opportunities like licensing deals or your own line of products at big box retailers like Target, Michael’s, or Home Depot.

• These lists act as third-party credibility – a key part of social proof – which means that a potential client who didn’t find you through that list but sees it in your Instagram bio or on your press page will subconsciously assume you are more trustworthy.
  
  The more famous and established the brand that created the list – such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country – the more this phenomenon holds true. It is “guilt by association” – in a good way.

Being published on a “top wedding pros” list doesn’t result in instant money falling into your lap, obviously. But it can open the door to lucrative opportunities that may have previously been much further down the road. You will still need to be strategic about how you take advantage of this type of press and put in the work to make that 56%+ revenue bump materialize.

How Being Included On a “Best Of” List Doesn’t Matter

Being on a “best of” list can make a wedding professional more money, but it does not make a wedding professional more important.

Where I often see many wedding pros get tripped up is that they wrap up their personal self-worth or identity as a creative artist in these “best of” lists. They start to obsess over them and tend to view being included on them as entrée to wedding celebrity status.

Here’s the truth about wedding industry “fame” : it largely doesn’t exist and you’re most likely not the exception to that rule.

• Having more than 1 million TikTok followers or 100k Instagram followers does not make you a celebrity.

• Having a blue checkmark on Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter does not make you a celebrity.

• Appearing on a few episodes of reality TV does not make you a celebrity.

• Having famous clients or friends does not make you a celebrity.

• Being on the “speaking circuit” does not make you a celebrity.

• Being able to charge $40k+ for your services does not make you a celebrity.

• Being named a “best wedding professional” by Vogue or on Forbes “30 Under 30” does not make you a celebrity.

Here's how to know whether or not you are a true celebrity:

If you were to get divorced, would TMZ report on it?

Not married.

Divorced.

No? Then you are not a celebrity.

By this measure, you can count the number of wedding industry celebrities on less than one hand – and their names are rarely ever on these “best wedding pros” lists.

This doesn’t mean you and the work you do are not valuable, it just means you are not a celeb. You don’t need to be famous to do meaningful work and you certainly don’t need to be famous in order for your own life to have meaning.

You as a person are enough. With or without these lists.

Getting Honest With Yourself

That said, knowing all these things doesn’t necessarily make you feel better when the wedding industry often treats these lists like a VIP cool kids club.

It is human nature to feel good when we’re included or receiving recognition and to feel bad when we’re excluded or overlooked. These feelings are valid but it’s important to remember that the internal dialogue they prompt is not always true.

You can use these questions from my friend Dr. Vidal Annan, a clinical psychologist for entrepreneurs, to evaluate the automatic thoughts your feelings bring up:

• Is this thought helping me right now?

• Is this thought moving me toward my goal?

• Is there profit in this thought?

Answering these questions honestly can help you hit pause on any pity party or kool-aid sipping your ego may be indulging in and get back to focusing on your true priorities.

If you find yourself getting too wrapped up in wedding industry politics, I also recommend spending some time with the kids in your life (your kids, your nieces or nephews, your grandchildren, your bff’s kids).

I say this because kids just DO NOT CARE about any type of career success you've achieved. They are not impressed by what adults are impressed by.

I personally find this refreshing – being actively present with them always gets me out of my own head and grounds me in what actually matters in relation to the big picture.

Being featured on these lists can be a strategic marketing and business tool and they can bring in real money. Striving to be included so you can continue to build a business that supports your definition of a remarkable life is valid.

Just be careful that you don’t turn a “best of” list into an idol and definitely don’t let it dictate your personal self-worth.

Which wedding professionals deserve to be on a “best of” list?

The Short Answer

Many who have been and many who haven’t.

A Note on Social Proof

Social proof is important but often misunderstood and misapplied.

For those unfamiliar with it, the term “social proof” was coined in the 1980’s by one of my college social psychology professors, Dr. Robert Cialdini. It is one of the six principles of influence (now seven) and refers to a person taking their cues from others to align with or adapt to what the group has deemed acceptable. How social proof is leveraged was a key focus of my thesis research.

At its core, social proof can basically be summed up as, “if something’s popular, it must be trustworthy.”

Social proof (aka the “informational social influence theory”) is why anything becomes a trend – others see that something has been anointed as worth having/being/doing/believing and decide they too need it in order to show that they also have the “right kind” of taste/judgment/behavior/ideas.

Social proof is why every single beauty, fashion, or wellness product that has gone viral on TikTok has sold out. Social proof is also why unscrupulous leaders can easily stoke a mob mentality by spreading disinfo campaigns and conspiracy theories. It can be leveraged in both positive and negative ways.

For a wedding business, social proof can include things like:

• Client reviews, case studies, photos of real weddings (all proof that people trusted you enough to give you money)

• Number of newsletter subscribers, press interviews, speaking engagements (all proof that people thought your perspective and expertise was worth paying attention to)

• Blue checkmarks, awards, spots on the “best wedding professionals” lists (all proof that someone in an authority/gatekeeper position deemed you worthy of their stamp of approval)

It is normal to find a business with almost no publicly visible social proof suspicious – humans are pack animals and we associate safety with numbers. That does not mean our suspicions and assumptions are always correct. What we don’t see can sometimes be more important than what we do.

1/3rd of Luxury Wedding Pros Aren’t on Instagram or the Conference Circuit

Some of the very best luxury wedding professionals don’t use Instagram and don’t share their events publicly. They’ve never been invited to speak at wedding conferences and they don’t attend them.

This is not just a few people – a solid third of the luxury wedding industry is made up of creative professionals who fly under the radar and are legitimately just as good as, or better than, your industry faves.

Since these wedding pros can’t publish their work due to NDAs, these lists are a type of press that can be beneficial for their business and revenue goals. More importantly, they’re a type of press that doesn’t scare away a client base that values (and pays for) discretion and privacy.

You may have never heard of them, but if we’re going to talk about who is best and these people are not included, then that list is not truly a “best of” list.

When What You See Is (Much) Less Than What You Get

This may not apply to the specific wedding planner you are referencing in your question but I have found that a lot of people tend to assume that if someone is new to the industry, they are new to the job itself. Or they assume that if the person is new to them, they are new to the work.

This is not always the case. It is true that a lot of people in the wedding industry started with no events experience after switching careers from an entirely unrelated field as an attorney, social worker, investment banker, etc. It is also true that many people came to the industry after doing related work in another setting as corporate event planners, news and political photojournalists, architects, etc.

In 2008, many young event planners were laid off from their in-house jobs at giant corporations – where they were earning six-figure salaries and planning 200+ events per year – and decided to open up shop for themselves. At the time, almost everyone in the wedding industry labeled these newcomers as inexperienced, entitled millennials because they had the audacity to charge their worth and land press for their new companies.

A person who planned close to 1,000 events in the 3-5 years they were in-house at a corporation has the skills required to plan a complex wedding. They already know all about permit processes, load-ins, union labor laws, supply chain factors, complicated budgets, multi-page schedules, managing egos, etc. They can do all this in their sleep. They may have been new to entrepreneurship, but they weren’t new to the work.

We are seeing this happen again, as a ton of people realized during the pandemic that the life they had been leading up until we were all collectively forced to hit pause was not exactly the one they wanted. A significant factor in the Great Recession is people embracing the fact that life is short and deciding to take their talent and pursue something more personally and creatively fulfilling.

There are usually a few people like this on these “best of” lists. They have the experience but don’t necessarily have the legal rights to show work performed for another company in their own portfolio. The expertise is there, the visible social proof is not.

Young Prodigies Will Be the New Norm

Or consider the case of a 23 year old videographer who started attending a Young Filmmakers camp every Summer when they were 10 . . . which was in 2009.

Digital cameras and editing technology were already incredibly advanced. They had legit Hollywood directors, cinematographers, and video editors as their program instructors, and were able to intern with some of them after they went off to college. While in college, they started shooting weddings on the weekends to pay their tuition, just like so many others now established in the wedding photo and video space did.

I've seen their wedding films and they are GOOD (and you all know I'm difficult to impress). They already have more talent and technical skill than many of the veteran wedding videographers twice their age.

They may not have a ton of years in the wedding industry yet, but if we're talking about "best" from a pure talent and product standpoint, then they deserve to be on these lists, even at 23.

I mention this example in particular because “young prodigies” are not going to be the exception to the rule anymore.

Most professional athletes go pro very young – right out of high school or college – and almost all of them got on track to do so by being immersed in specialized sports programs as kids. It is what they trained for and focused on for years before adulthood.

Immersive tech and art programs for kids, such as that Young Filmmakers camp, are a huge part of Generation Z's upbringing – and they are far more specialized and advanced than any of the extracurriculars millennials were enrolled in.

Over the next decade, we are going to see a wave of highly skilled creatives who aren't yet old enough to drink enter the wedding industry. We will see this especially in the fields where the creative product depends heavily on tech products: photography, videography, DJ entertainment, etc.

And these new wedding pros will be good at the work because, just like a young pro athlete, they've been training for this for years. They will be legitimate competition for you – both for clients and spots on the "best of" lists.

Patience may be a virtue, but when it comes to paying your dues or paying your bills, paying your bills wins out. If being recognized for their talent and skill means a chance at a significant bump in revenue, young wedding pros are going to choose to break the unspoken industry rules and skip ahead of an archaic and completely made up timeline of how and when someone’s “turn” should occur. And they have every right to.

When What You See Is Smoke and Mirrors

The wedding industry is full of true experts who are creative and who help raise the bar for everyone. Unfortunately, it is also full of charlatans.

And make no mistake: every field within the wedding industry has charlatans in it:

• “Spray and pray” photographers who don’t know how to use their cameras, manage to luck out with a couple money shots, but can’t deliver high quality consistency for a full wedding day.

• Planners who agonize over two different shades of pink but never bother to put things like a groom’s deathly allergy to a common cooking spice on the BEO.

• Makeup artists who don’t know basic cosmetic chemistry and can’t adjust for how products will interact with each other or a bridesmaid’s skin type.

• Business coaches who have no idea how to actually run a business, can’t read a P&L, and give the same terrible advice to everyone.

• Wedding pros on the speaking circuit teaching you how to be successful when their own companies have never made real money.

What the charlatans are exceptional at is smoke and mirrors. They are hoping they can fake it until they make it and some of them have been faking it for years and even decades.

Almost every “best of” list that I have ever seen has had at least one charlatan on it, often more, and a lot of times they have been here a minute and are not the newbies.

I don’t believe this means that the wedding pros who deserve the accolades should feel any less proud of their work, especially if the list only has one or two undeserving people on it.

Smoke and mirrors can be tricky and often dupe more people in the industry than just editors.

How are the “best of” lists sourced and to what extent are they vetted?

The Short Answer

It depends on the editor.

How Do Editors Find Wedding Pros for a “Best Of” List?

The “best of” lists are sourced only to the extent a publication’s editors pay attention. That attention span varies editor to editor.

• Some editors make it a point to stay in the loop and pride themselves on extensive research and “discovering” unsung talent.

• Some consider recommendations from wedding pros and PR reps who are in their database from submitting real weddings and pitching stories in the past. And yes, sometimes the pitch angle is why they should be included on the next round of “top” lists.

• Others choose from an Instagram hashtag search and the people they’ve met “in real life” through wedding conferences and other industry events such as NY Bridal Fashion Week, an association’s networking mixers, FAM trips, etc.

The best editors use all of the above methods (and more) to find potential candidates for their lists.

This also means that a magazine’s lists may have once been compiled from a wider consideration of wedding pros, but when that editor moved on to a new job years later, they were replaced with someone who mainly stuck to their friends.

The Nature of a List

By it’s very nature, a list is finite. It cannot include everyone who deserves to be on it.

Because the publication needs to put out new content, a “best of” list also can’t be made up of all the same people each year. Did people who were best last year suddenly become less best this year? Highly unlikely.

Another factor is that while there may be some overlap, a publication’s “top wedding planners” list should not be identical to a competitor’s. They have different marketing and business considerations.

There are also going to be a few wedding pros who – because of how their influence has had a measurable impact on the broader wedding industry and not just their own company – need to be included in order for a list to have any shred of credibility. A “best wedding photographers” list that doesn’t have José Villa on it is not going to be taken seriously.

Audience Considerations

In addition, many editors try to choose wedding companies that are relevant to specific demographics and psychographics of their target audience, such as household income level, career type, travel preferences, and lifestyle interests.

From a practical business standpoint, a luxury magazine’s list should be a mix of wedding pros who work primarily with Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals (defined as having a minimum of $30 million in liquid assets) and wedding pros who are expensive-yet-attainable for brides and grooms who fall in the Very High Net Worth ($5M) or High Net Worth ($1M) wealth categories.

For example, it is unlikely that Town & Country magazine – whose audience has an average net worth of $2.3 million – is going to include a wedding planner who mostly works with $85,000 budgets. It doesn’t matter that the planner is incredibly talented or that an $85k wedding is aspirational and completely out of reach for a lot of people. It is considered a small wedding budget by their readers and would be out of sync for the magazine’s luxury brand image.

Remember that these lists are primarily about driving revenue for the media brand, which means their content needs to be relevant to their specific readers. It is not meant to be relevant to everyone.

False Humility Can Harm You Just as Much as Ego Can

When it comes to the charlatans I mentioned previously, a lot of people don’t know what they don’t know – including editors who may not work in the wedding industry full time.

To stand out to an editor who is researching which wedding pros to consider, you will have to show what sets you apart from the fakers and the takers.

Part of this means literally calling yourself an expert.

There are a ton of wedding professionals who are experts but refuse to identify as such. If that’s you: please get over yourself and start unapologetically owning what you bring to the table.

Yes, you have to use the word “expert.”

Not “industry veteran.”

Not “seasoned wedding pro.”

Not “creative artist” and definitely not “creative partner.”

EXPERT.

This isn’t about calling yourself something you’re not (and if you’re truly unsure, here’s some criteria on what makes an expert). It’s about getting out of your own way.

I know that using the word expert to refer to yourself can be uncomfortable. I also know that staying in your comfort zone of false humility holds you back.

Consider this: Warren Buffett and his long-time business partner, Charlie Munger, famously devote 80% of their day to reading. Are we going to say they aren't experts in finance or investing because they set aside so much time to continue learning?

Of course not.

True experts know that if they’ve “arrived,” they’ve settled. They know there is always more to learn, more areas in which to improve.

Here’s one reason why this particular word is so important: over 90% of journalists, editors, and producers use the term “expert” when they are researching sources for features and stories. If the only people willing to call themselves experts are the charlatans, they are the ones who will get noticed.

You can’t be noticed if you can’t be found and it is more difficult to be found if you won’t use the word that your talent, skill, and specialized knowledge has earned. True humility doesn’t hide its gifts.

Doing the Homework

Putting a solid list together requires extra legwork on an editor’s part, but it cannot monopolize their time. It is still just one of the hundreds or thousands of articles the publication needs to put out each year.

When it comes to vetting, some editors do extensive homework and some don’t.

The ones who source more widely tend to spend more time figuring out a wedding pro’s chops beyond their iG grid and the context of their marketing.

For the most part, they know how to evaluate what they’re looking at and can usually tell the difference between a table that was well-styled for Instagram and an event that was well-produced in real life.

Some ask for references, but most don’t.

I have also heard some editors straight up say that the lists they put together don’t actually matter and that wedding pros shouldn’t care about them at all. While they are correct that they don’t matter from a personal validation standpoint, these remarks show zero understanding of the real financial impact being published on a best of list can have on a wedding business.

ALL of the editors are busy and several also cover content verticals other than weddings.

Sometimes even those who are normally good about digging in find themselves racing to meet a deadline. When this happens, they might make their decisions based on a quick Instagram scroll or go by the social proof of follower counts or add the person they met sitting by the pool at a conference simply because they were top of mind at the time the article needed to be filed.

Procrastination is not a great excuse, but it does happen in real life and editors are real people and sometimes they phone it in. Just like every other human on the planet has done at least once in their career.

The Lucky Breaks

As noted before, there are always charlatans who charm their way in and almost every list ends up including wedding professionals who completely misrepresent themselves. These people intentionally mislead others with their smoke and mirrors.

There are sometimes other wedding pros who are added to these lists simply because the editor was in a hurry and liked the look of their Instagram aesthetic.

Their feeds are typically what you described: styled shoots they’ve created to help potential clients visualize what they could do for them and curated inspiration from (and credited to) other sources. They don’t go out of their way to advertise that they are new, but they don’t lie about it either.

If an editor includes an inexperienced wedding pro on a “best of” list, is that person supposed to channel their inner Mother Teresa and turn it down because they haven’t yet earned it?

Would you?

I don’t know, maybe you would. Or maybe, like most people, you would be self-aware enough to recognize that being labeled “best” prematurely was a lucky break and use it as motivation to step up your game.

An editor not doing sufficient homework is not the wedding pro’s fault, especially if being included was an unsolicited surprise. Sometimes completely undeserved opportunities fall in our laps and we pinch ourselves, say thank you, and make the most of them.

In my opinion, there are usually other people on the lists to be more upset about.

I would personally take a “best of” list that includes a less experienced newbie who has real potential over one that features a wedding industry veteran who is a charlatan any day.

Recent Efforts by Media Brands to Diversify Their Wedding Content

The Short Answer

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

A Few Ways Systemic Racism Is Perpetuated in the Wedding Industry

Doing the work of diversity and inclusion in the wedding industry isn't about being politically correct. It's about not limiting who gets a chance at some of the opportunities that are proven to generate more income for wedding professionals.

Systemic racism in the wedding industry looks like many editors promising in 2010 to do better, not changing anything, and then acting in 2020 like wedding media having a diversity problem was brand new information.

That decade of inaction by those editors resulted in Black wedding professionals missing out on that extra $560,000+ in revenue that getting published could have brought them.

This issue isn’t limited to the editors, though.

If an editor whose only tie to the wedding industry is the 20% of their workload that handles their publication's wedding content vertical and whose corporate budgets only allow them to attend the events they're invited to cover or speak at, then the wedding pros at those events are going to be the ones they meet "in real life."

Organizations that didn't diversify their speaker line ups for their networking events or conferences and who didn't create an inclusive experience for BIPOC members and attendees (or who straight up complained about them) further perpetuated this issue by preventing these wedding pros from meeting the editors in attendance. This may have been mostly unintentional on their part, but unintentional actions can still do damage.

If an organization is going to provide vendors the opportunity to meet an editor, then they need to do the internal work of making sure that the opportunity is actually something that wedding pros of any race or orientation will feel welcome and included at.

There’s a wage gap in the wedding industry that runs along racial lines – and it has nothing to do with the buying power of multicultural wedding clients (which is huge). BIPOC wedding pros have every right to be upset about the ways they were held back from earning more by people in “gatekeeper” positions at these publications and organizations.

How Change Gets Implemented

June 2020 was a wakeup call for the wedding industry (after many alarms that were slept through in the past). Even though the conversations about the lack of diversity and inequity had been happening, this time they prompted some actual movement in who gets to be included.

Some companies promised to change after genuine remorse that their unexamined bias had contributed to wedding industry inequity. Others didn't actually care and only made promises because they were scared of getting canceled.

When it comes to wedding media, some magazines implemented specific quotas in order to ensure the changes in who gets featured actually happened.

No one likes the word quota, but in business terms it is just a type of KPI (key performance indicator) used to measure progress towards a goal. Every company sets KPIs to determine success, so it makes sense to apply it to this as well.

The methods used to meet a diversity KPI are going to vary editor to editor. Some will put in the work to create real equity and some will apathetically prioritize optics.

Whether or not the BIPOC wedding pros an editor chooses to feature are true experts, inexperienced newbies, or straight up charlatans depends on their approach.

I can't say whether or not the planner you mentioned was included only because they are Black and the editor was looking to mark "diversify" off their checklist.

I can't say whether or not you were included on a "best of" list last year simply because you are Black.

I don't know for sure.

I do know that setting diversity KPIs is not the real problem itself. Selecting BIPOC wedding pros only on the optics of skin color and not also on talent is still a form of racism as well as a giant exercise in missing the point.

The Broader Wedding Industry’s Role

There are editors who are genuinely working to create “best of” lists made up of a diverse group of true experts. And because everything is interconnected, sometimes the actions of others hinder how credible the list ends up being.

Let's say a company holds a full-day educational wedding workshop where they diversified their speaker lineup for optics and not because they actually care about being inclusive.

They made their decisions on the non-white speakers by only looking at skin color and nothing else. They've included Black wedding pros who are legit experts and they've included some who are charlatans. They tell any editors they've invited that they will be able to meet all the top industry people.

This has been happening at multiple events since June 2020 when everyone publicly committed to change.

In my opinion, it is unfair to expect an editor on the payroll of a media conglomerate like Hearst or Condé Nast to know more about the wedding industry than the professionals who are actually in the wedding industry full-time.

Sometimes an editor ends up including charlatans on their “best of” lists because someone they considered a reputable source positioned that wedding pro as a true expert based on optics alone.

The Bottom Line is Your Bottom Line

Perfection is Never Going To Exist

Because a list is finite in nature, because the fakes can be hard to spot, because editors are human, because some people will never take the personal responsibility of examining their unconscious bias, these lists will never be 100% perfect.

There are always a handful of people who make the list who don’t deserve the honor and also a majority who do. And there are ALWAYS people who are legitimately deserving who were never considered at all.

Yes, a “best of” list has less credibility when it includes people who don’t deserve it.

Yes, it is less credible when charlatans are listed alongside legitimate experts.

Yes, it is less credible when someone who doesn’t yet have experience is included.

Yes, it is less credible when wedding pros who DO deserve it were never even considered.

And it never feels good to find out that something isn’t as perfectly credible as we thought it was.

I don’t think this means people should write off the entire list as a joke (although there are some years where a couple fit that description) but rather understand that perfection is never going to exist.

The best we can realistically hope for is a list created by an editor who did their best to get it right and didn’t apathetically phone it in.

Most importantly, a “best of” list being less credible does not make YOU less credible.

You’re still amazing at the work. You still have more creativity in your pinky finger than most people will have in a lifetime. You still have a 56-73% potential increase in pay.

Set your ego on the shelf, leverage the social proof being included on the list granted you, and go make your money.

Questions from Wedding Pros

Have a question on running a wedding company?

From sticky client issues to navigating the challenges that come with success, Liene weighs in with her trademark compassionate yet no-nonsense advice.

To submit a question for our Wedding Pro Q+A column, send us an email. We’ll keep you anonymous.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendidis the global leader in wedding business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

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Read More on Working in Luxury Weddings

I spent a whirlwind 48 hours in Kuwait last month, giving the keynote at the BBH Masterclass and visiting my friend Bibi Hayat’s jaw-droppingly gorgeous café that she opened during the pandemic.

In the course of my conversations with others over that too-short weekend, the topic of speaking professionally and all that goes with it (expectations, pricing strategies, taxes, presentation prep) came up a few times.

For those of you who also do public speaking or want to get into it, I’m dusting off this old post from the Splendid Archives on the different speaking fee pricing models and formulas you can use.

Speakers fees in the wedding industry are often shrouded in mystery and, quite frankly, are usually numbers just pulled out of the sky.

In addition, most wedding conference hosts or wedding workshop owners don't have experience doing corporate event planning, so they don't necessarily know how to appropriately budget for their conferences or for their speakers. This can cause sticker shock, hurt feelings, and resentment for both speakers and conference producers alike. It doesn't have to be this way.

If you’re interested in charging what you’re worth for your speaking engagements, here’s what to know so you can price your speaking fees with confidence:

How does a speaker price their speaking rates?

Some common pricing models that public speakers in the wedding industry use include:

LOSS LEADER

Using a loss leader pricing model means the person will speak for free or for a non-competitive rate (AKA so low others can't compete with it) in order to gain potential sales in another area of their overall business.

Examples of this would be a graphic designer wanting to get in front of potential new clients, a photographer promoting a new online course, or a wedding planner who has a book coming out.

This can be a very effective way to build your speaking resumé, get your name out to the industry when you're in the launch years of your business, or to strategically align with other companies you want to work with.

Just remember that in the U.S. you still pay taxes on any speaking engagements you do for free if you were compensated in some other non-cash form, such as a comped hotel room, flight, or conference pass. The IRS considers the total fair market value (which is typically full retail price) of those things to be your compensation and taxes it as income – even though you never received actual cash.

For example, if you say yes to speaking at a conference for free and in exchange they comp you the $3000 conference pass, $2000 hotel stay, and $500 flight, the IRS considers that to be $5500 in business income even though you did not receive $5500 in cash. You now owe taxes on that $5500. You are literally paying to speak at that event.

Whether or not this makes sense for your business will depend on the financial projections you run on the future sales income you'll generate from speaking at the conference. You can also figure out how to increase your deductions to offset it. Either way, free is never really free.⁣⁣

When it comes to the speaking engagements and opportunities you say yes to, trust your gut, but ALWAYS do the math.⁣

FLAT FEE

This is a flat number that the person is willing to speak at an event for. Usually these are increased each year, so a person's speaking fee for 2023 would be more than it is right now for 2022, which is more than what they were charging in previous years.

Some people also have one flat fee for speaking engagements within their country and a different flat fee if the event is international.

PER PERSON FEE

This type of speaking fee is calculated by setting a price per attendee. This means that the rate for speaking at a conference with 400 attendees would be more than an intimate retreat with 40 attendees.

In a sense, this pricing model is similar to the concept behind royalties for book authors or residuals for TV writers and actors: the more people who consume the creative product, the more the creators of that product get paid.

HOURLY RATE

An hourly rate (AKA billable hours) takes into account all the hours involved in preparing and delivering a speech: the time on stage, as well as any research, writing the presentation itself, practice and rehearsals, travel time to and from the event, etc.

If preparing for a presentation requires a lot of time away from the work of your core business, an hourly rate can help you make up whatever money you're not making when you're unable to use that time for site visits or creating event design concepts.

DAY RATE

For this pricing model, the speaker calculates how much a day of their time is worth, and charges accordingly.

For example, if a conference wants a speaker to be present for the full three days of the event, mixing and mingling with attendees, the speaking fee would be the day rate multiplied by three.

Some speakers also include travel time away from the office in this rate, so a 3-day conference might be quoted a fee based on four or five days, depending on how long it takes the speaker to travel there, door-to-door.

"EFF IT, I’LL DO IT” RATE

This pricing method is super controversial, but it does get used, so we'll talk about it: if a person really does not want to accept a particular speaking invitation, there is sometimes a price at which they're willing to say, "Eff it, I'll do it."

Here's an example not from a speaker, but of a wedding planner I know:

After the planner fired a nightmare client, the mother of the bride called her and said, “We’ll pay whatever it takes to get you back – there’s no number too high, name your price.”

The planner replied, “OK, for all the trouble and drama you put me and my staff through, we’ll take you back as a client for a wedding planning fee of $1 million.” 

$1 million was this planner’s “eff it, I’ll do it” number for a crazy client she did not want. 

A note on this method: if you’re quoting an “eff it” price for every speaking engagement, it may be a sign that you really just hate public speaking and should possibly explore another career path that brings you more joy and pays you a sustainable amount more consistently.

The pricing model you choose should be based on what best serves your core business model. It is different for everyone, because everyone has different strategic goals.

The Speaking Fee Formula I Often Use

For speaking engagements, I often charge a per person fee – with a minimum – as well as protections for scope creep.

CALCULATING YOUR SPEAKING RATE PER PERSON

The per person speaking fee is calculated using a value pricing model, meaning the price is determined based on how much value I bring to the table, or in this case, the stage.

Here's how that math fleshes out:

1. I calculate the total minimum financial value of my content for one attendee.

   To figure out the value of my presentation’s content, I start with this question: “If one attendee implements everything I share on stage, how much money will it bring to their business in a given time frame?”

   I choose to err on the side of being conservative in this estimate, and my time frame is generally one year – a reasonable amount of time for an attendee to go back home, implement what they’ve learned, and start to see some results.

   This gives me the per person value of my content.
   
   

2. I then multiply the per person financial value by the total number of expected attendees.

   This gives me the total value of my content to the entire audience as a group.
   
   

3. I then divide the total financial value by 25.

   Why 25? Because the number of people who go home from a conference and actually implement what they’ve learned is shockingly low. Research has shown this to be true across almost every industry, not just weddings.

   This number is my total base speaking fee for the event.
   
   

4. I then divide the total base speaking fee by the number of expected attendees.

   This is my per person fee.

   
   Pro tip: the faster way to determine the per person fee is to divide the per person value (calculated in step one) by 25.
   

EXAMPLE SPEAKING FEE

Here’s a pretend example of a per person speaking rate. For the sake of simplicity, I’m using round numbers:

Let’s say the event is a conference for wedding planners and the average planner in attendance charges $5,000 for full service planning. The conference has 100 attendees and the hosts want me to speak for one hour or less.

1. I’ve determined that if each planner in the room takes all the information I shared in this particular presentation and implements it once they’re back home, they will book X amount of weddings over the next year.

   For this example, let’s be ultra conservative and say it’s just one additional $5,000 wedding on top of what they normally book.
   
   

2. $5,000 in new revenue booked because of my talk x 100 attendees = $500,000

   This means that the total value of my content to the entire audience is worth $500,000.

   If every single person at the wedding planners conference sells one additional wedding at $5,000 each because of what they learned from me, they'll have collectively brought in an additional half a million dollars in revenue.
   
   

3. I then divide that total audience value of $500,000 by 25.
   
   $500,000 in new revenue value divided by 25 = $20,000 total base speaking fee
   
   This is the total base speaking fee I’ll be paid for speaking at this conference.
   
   

4. To get the final per person fee, I divide the $20,000 total speaking fee by the number of conference attendees.
   
   $20,000 total speaking fee divided by 100 attendees = $200 per person
   
   This means my base fee for that wedding conference is $20,000, which works out to $200 per person.

   
   The faster way to determine the per person fee is to divide the per person value calculated in step one by 25.

   $5000 divided by 25 = $200

A SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT SALES TIP

If you want to lessen potential sticker shock when quoting your speaking engagement rate, include the per person price in your fee quote.

It’s much easier for a conference producer to wrap their head around $200 out of every $3,000 individual conference registration fee than it is if they only see a large speaking fee with three or four zeroes at the end of it.

The per person price also allows them to think more clearly about their conference budget and see that you may be way more affordable than they initially thought.

SPEAKING FEE MINIMUMS AND SCOPE CREEP

As far as the speaking fee minimum and protections for scope creep go, here is how I often handle those: 

• The initial fee agreed to and listed on the contract is the minimum rate, so if fewer people register than expected, the conference isn't entitled to a partial refund from me.

  Preparing a compelling, relevant, and valuable presentation is my responsibility as a speaker.

  Conference registration sales and marketing is their responsibility as the event owners.
  
  

• As far as speaking engagement scope creep is concerned, if the conference decides to open its doors to more people after our speakers agreement is signed, I would be owed an additional per person fee (at the contracted rate) for each attendee once the attendance/registration count reaches 15% above the original estimate.
  
  So for the example we've been using, if a wedding conference for planners with 100 expected attendees ends up selling 115 tickets, I would be owed an additional $3,000, for a grand total speaking fee of $23,000. ($200 contracted per person fee x 115)
  
  Remember, the theory behind the per person fee model is that the more people who benefit from or consume the content, the more the creator gets paid.
  
  This also affords me time to do the extra homework now required by the increase in attendees and protects against any potential bait and switch, such as a conference intentionally quoting a lower attendee number in order to pay me less.
  
  

• I chose to set the scope creep at 15% above the original expected attendee amount because I felt that was fair to both myself as well as any conference producers. Pricing out services like speaking fees always includes a bit of a subjective element, and this number didn’t make me feel smarmy.
  
  Using our running example above of 100 attendees, if the conference sells three extra tickets, I'm not going to bill them for $600. And if they sell 114 tickets, they still get me for the price of 100. No one likes to be nickeled and dimed.
  
  

How I Calculate the Financial Value of My Content

When calculating the financial value of my content for wedding conferences, I ask a few questions:

WHO IS THE EXPECTED AUDIENCE FOR THIS SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT?

I always want to know who the conference is for and what level the attendees are at in their careers. I also consider which specific industry segments will be included in the audience.

In the speaking fee example above, I used wedding planners charging at the low end of industry standard pricing for flat-rate, full-service planning.

This is obviously not going to be the audience for every wedding conference or educational workshop I speak at.

Different audiences get different presentations because they have differing needs and differing business models and the tangible financial value they derive from my content will not be the same.

This means my per person fee will be different for each speaking engagement.

For example, an audience of wedding dress boutique and bridal store owners who target the mass market with more attainable price points for their wedding dresses (say $1500 or below) would change the calculations when it comes to what the information I provide would conservatively add to their annual revenue.

Please don't click out of this post thinking I charge $20,000 or more for every wedding conference speaking engagement. The math doesn’t work that way.

WHAT ARE THE RESULTS FROM MY PREVIOUS WORK AND EXPERTISE ON THIS TOPIC?

I also determine the value of my content based on the feedback I receive from attendees of my previous speaking engagements and the stories they share about how their respective businesses improved because of the information I taught on stage.

Here’s where all of this gets even nerdier: Every single piece of feedback I receive – verbal or written – gets entered in a spreadsheet on Google Drive, meaning I literally have years and years worth of data and measurable outcomes to evaluate.

When a wedding industry attendee from one of the Engage Summits I spoke at told me that using the strategies I shared on stage landed them a $12 million multi-year contract with a new corporate client, I entered that into the spreadsheet.

While not everyone will book $12 million in new business after hearing me speak, that data point shows that there is measurable and tangible financial value in what I have to say.

It helps to have all this info in one place so that I can easily reference it when I’m considering the specific value of my content to a particular audience. It also helps on days I feel down to read through and be reminded that what I do does help people in very real ways.

WHAT IS THE TOPIC FOR THE SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT?

I am known for giving presentations with a lot of actionable content that can be implemented almost immediately. I know how the strategies I share can change a person's business, which makes doing the math on the specific content value of a presentation easier.

My talks are typically not the ones with the story of my life tied to larger universal lessons that make people cry. While I am occasionally asked to share my personal story – and it does tend to leave attendees inspired and motivated – it contains far less immediately actionable content.

There is definitely financial value in the more inspirational-style speeches, since big ideas are born out of inspiration, but it is much more difficult to measure how that will affect specific financial change in an attendee's business.

A Splendid tip: If you tend to mainly give inspirational talks and find calculating attendee ROI difficult to do in a fair way, a flat fee may be a better pricing model for you than a per person model.

What else should be considered in a speaking fee?

While I don't charge an hourly or daily rate for speaking, I do feel that my price should be fair with regard to the amount of time I put into a presentation.

A lot of people view public speaking as less than an hour of work because they judge it by the amount of time you spend on stage. In reality, it’s so much more.

Think about it this way: is the total amount of time you work on a wedding only 8-12 hours on the day of? Of course not.

The same is true for speaking.

Good keynote speakers spend an average of 90 minutes of prep for every 1 minute of their presentation. That means a 20 minute speech takes a minimum of 30 hours to create.

This is part of the reason good speakers charge higher speaker fees – it’s not because of ego.

Here's a little about the behind-the-scenes and energy required for every speaking engagement I take on:

HOW I PREPARE FOR SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

I don’t give canned speeches and all of my talks are sales-pitch free. Every presentation is written for the particular conference or workshop I’m presenting at, with the specific audience in mind.

When I say specific audience, I mean specific.

I go through the entire attendee list ahead of time (yes, even for conferences with 500+ people) and look up every single person’s website and all of their social media. I read through any and all reviews they may have on WeddingWire, The Knot, Google, or Yelp. I make notes in a spreadsheet. I study those notes.

By the time I step on stage, I know exactly who is in that room, what they do, their aesthetic, their point of view, as well as how they feel about Matcha lattes, their thoughts on Meghan and Harry, and whether they prefer pilates, Peloton, or F45.

I prepare for a speaking engagement like it’s my job, because it is my job.

HOW I SPEND MY ENERGY AT BUSINESS CONFERENCES

At the conference or workshop itself, I generally stay up late, hanging in the hotel lobby, letting attendees pick my brain as well as giving bossy, unsolicited business advice based on the hours of Insta-stalking noted above.

Part of the value wedding conference hosts see in me is this off-stage time I’ll put in with their attendees at their event.

As an introvert, I know I can only healthily do this if I leave room for alone time in my schedule the day after an event ends so I can recharge. My fee needs to be a number that allows me to do this.

If you’re an extrovert who draws energy from being around people, you may be able to jet off to an important meeting the next day, fully charged from the event.

If I priced myself low in order to compete on volume, I would burn out trying to meet my financial goals. I’ve burned out before. It is hell. The recovery process is long and hard. I’m never going back to that.

This means that if I calculate a speaking fee and it comes in below a certain number, I turn it down and refer someone else who may want the opportunity. Both my well-being and my business model depend on this guideline.

You know best how you are wired and what you personally need in order to run at full capacity, so make sure your business is designed in a way that allows you to thrive not just financially, but emotionally, mentally, and physically as well.

It is not greedy to charge money for speaking engagements, just like it is not greedy to charge money for photographing a wedding or for designing invitations.

Public speaking is a job and, if you choose to add it to your business offerings, it should be treated like a job. Choose a pricing model that works for you and charge your worth.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, award-winning luxury business strategist and behavioral psychologist.

* * *

Founded in 2005 and trusted by clients in 97 countries, Think Splendid is the global leader in wedding business consulting.

We provide strategic guidance to industry leaders, luxury brands, hotels, and tourism destinations that serve high net worth and ultra-high net worth brides, grooms, and wedding guests.

Read More Tips for Public Speakers

As a professional speaker and wedding business consultant, I am obviously a big believer in the importance of taking the posture of a lifelong learner, embracing education, and seeking out insights from people who have expertise in areas you'd like to improve. Fortunately, there are tons of industry workshops and conferences that you can choose from nowadays (this was not the case even just 10 years ago).

While I've previously shared 5 things I personally look for in a business consultant, here are some questions to ask and things to consider when evaluating whether or not a particular conference is worth the investment for you:
 

1. How much will this wedding conference actually cost me?

This one seems like a no brainer, but the first thing I recommend you do is set a conference budget for the year. If you feel the word "budget" is too restrictive, reframe how you think about it: a budget is just a plan for how you spend your money. So set up a plan for how you'll spend on in-person education. A conference budget should include:

• Conference registration

• Travel (including ground transportation to and from the airport, which, depending where you're flying into, can sometimes cost just as much as a plane ticket)

• Accommodations

• Meals, snacks, and everything food and beverage related, including whether or not you want to treat some new friends to a round of cocktails

• New clothing for special conference events like awards ceremonies or galas, if necessary

• Gratuities, miscellaneous fees, etc

• Books, gifts, souvenirs, a visit to the hotel spa, excursions, etc

I like to use You Need A Budget to create quick “back of the napkin” budgets for figuring out how much things like conferences will really cost, but there are tons of other options out there, including good old-fashioned pen and paper. The most important part is that you figure out ahead of time whether or not a conference with a $3000 registration fee is going to end up costing you closer to $6000 when all is said and done.

Obviously, this outline is just the cost of attending the conference. You can also figure out how much money you'd not be making by spending a few days away from your desk and factor that in, if you'd like. 
 

2. What do I hope to get out of the wedding conference?

Write down two or three goals you hope attending the conference or wedding workshop will help you accomplish. Be as specific as possible. Here are a few examples to get your brain going:

• What areas of your business do you want to improve?

• What areas do you feel bogged down by or in the weeds about?

• What are you doing well that you know could do better?

• Do you want to shift your mental model of how you approach certain issues?

• Have you reached a certain level of success and been met with new challenges that your current group of industry peers haven't faced yet?

• Do you want to move into serving a different target market or demographic?

• Do you want to meet specific people who will refer you business?

• Do you want to meet people outside your local network that you can refer business to and collaborate with?

• Do you want to get published more often or in higher-caliber outlets?

• Are you demotivated or in a creative rut?

• Do you feel alone or like the rest of the industry seems to "get it" but your local industry doesn't?

• Are you struggling with your business taking over the rest of your life and leaving no time for the people and things that matter most to you?

Again, be as specific as possible. "Book more weddings" is too general a goal. Do you want more weddings at the same price point? A higher price point? How many more weddings do you need in order to hit your financial goals yet not burn out?

Once you've outlined your goals, move on to the next question.
 

3. How likely is it that the insights from this list of speakers and the agenda for this conference will help me achieve my goals?

Lots of wedding conferences and workshops have great speakers. That does not mean a particular lineup is going to be valuable to you.

It's important to remember the adage, "What got you here won't get you there." Just like a child has different needs as it grows from baby to kindergartner to tween to college student, your business has different needs as it grows. 

It is okay if you have grown out of what a particular speaker or conference has to offer, even if you found them incredibly valuable at earlier points in your career.

Take the goals you wrote down above and weigh them against what the wedding conference you're considering is offering.

• Do the speakers a conference is bringing in tend to prepare in advance or do they cram their slides together the night before? Are they known to always click through slideshows of their own work instead of presenting useful info?
  
  Also, if a speaker said yes to speaking for free, they still need to treat the presentation as though they were getting paid and respect the investment the attendees made to be there by not phoning it in.
  
  Anyone who does public speaking has given a presentation or two where they were "off" – but if you are spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a conference, you have every right to expect the conference producers to hold their speakers to a professional standard.
  

• Have the speakers replicated their success?
  
  To paraphrase an old saying – once is luck, three is a pattern. For example, if someone is speaking on wedding pricing, have they successfully landed clients using that pricing model at least three times? If the speaker is a business consultant, have they helped a minimum of three other companies successfully do what they are telling you to do?
  

• Do the speakers have experience not only where you've been, but where you're hoping to go?
  

• Do the speakers tend to be generous with the information they share or do they hold back out of fear you'll one day compete with them or give a sales pitch that if you want to learn more, you have to take their course, join their mastermind, or hire them as a wedding business coach or consultant?
  

• Are the topics being covered relevant to what you are hoping to accomplish? Do the speakers tend to offer the hottest advice from 2011 (or worse, 2001) but nothing connected to current market realities? Do they share examples from companies like yours overcoming a particular set of challenges or do they only share examples from Starbucks and Apple? (Yeah, yeah, we get it, the world's first trillion dollar company is doing a few things right.)
  

In my opinion, it is okay if not every session at a wedding conference is a meat-and-potatoes session. A significant factor in business success comes from mindset shift: thinking bigger, thinking more strategically, discarding old fears and perceived limitations, or approaching issues from a different angle. These are things that aren't solved with a tidy formula and that you aren’t necessarily going to learn in a how-to session. Plus, if you're demotivated or in a rut, sometimes you need a "your dreams are possible" inspirational talk to get back to the best creative version of yourself.

Having how-to sessions on wedding marketing, business finance, and skill-set improvement are important, but they're not exactly super beneficial if you're in a place where you dread going to work in the mornings. Getting fired up again can be worth spending money on and sometimes you'll want a conference with an agenda that fuels you and your creative business both practically and emotionally.
 

4. Are the speakers and attendees people I want to network with and spend time around?

I believe that every person we meet has a story to tell and is someone we can learn from. That does not mean I want to spend several thousand dollars and several days away from home to be around just anyone. We all have limited time and resources and I want to be intentional about who I am actively listening to and surrounding myself with.

I also believe that the value of a conference is just as much about the attendees in the audience as it is the people on the stage. While you may learn a lot and hit your educational goals from the wedding conference sessions, you will learn so much more in the conversations you have with other attendees while sitting by the pool or hanging out after dinner in the lobby bar.

If you want to consistently earn six-figures in your business, one way to get there faster is to network with people who know how to consistently get to 7-figures (or 8). It requires a different mindset and you will learn a ton just from chatting during breaks or downtime.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with being in the beginning stages of business, attending a conference where you are much further ahead of the rest of the attendees may not be the best use of your time.

Sometimes I hear, "Why would I pay to make new industry friends?" The answer is simple: sometimes it's what you need.

I have a friend who attended a conference specifically because she wanted to get to know a wedding planner she had long admired for her ability to balance motherhood and running a successful business. As a mom with young kids of her own, she didn't care if this planner ever ended up referring her a wedding or not, she just wanted to buy her a glass of wine and hear about how she made everything work.

While she could have just called her, it would have been unlikely she would have gotten a time slot on the wedding planner's busy calendar. The conference was a place that afforded them both the time and opportunity to network, and there was value to both of them in paying to be in the same room.
 

5. What else is giving me pause about attending?

Once you've set your wedding conference budget, outlined your goals, and identified that this event can help you reach them, you may still feel pause about signing up to attend. If that's the case, here are a few things to examine to determine whether that pause is a gut feeling you should trust or simply an unfounded fear you should ignore:

• One way to determine whether a wedding conference is relevant or mainly marketing hype and Instagram-fueled FOMO, is to take a look at the repeat attendees. Have their businesses changed for the better since they started going or do they seem to be in the same spot they always were?
  

• Are you a conference junkie, addicted to wedding business education but never implementing anything to move the needle once you're back home? The pause you feel may be the fact that deep down you know you need to spend some time putting the answers you've already found into place before you spend more money on another educational event.
  

• Are you avoiding a conference because a newer competitor attended in the past and you don’t want to admit that they may have discovered something good before you did?
  
  If so, please figure out how to get over this, as you are only hurting yourself. While your ego is busy nursing that grudge, your competitors are busy learning, growing, expanding their network, and positioning themselves as the go-to in your market.
  

• Are you hesitating because the conference opportunity seems perfect but is out of your comfort zone (maybe you're an extrovert considering an intimate retreat with lots of quiet time for reflection or perhaps you're an introvert and intimidated by the number of attendees and events of a larger conference)?
  
  If this is the case, consider how you can stretch yourself and leave some room for the miracle. You should be comfortable at a wedding business conference – to a point. If you're an introvert, plan for some alone time to recharge (a morning walk by yourself, etc). If you're an extrovert, set a plan to connect with a friend or family member via FaceTime each day so that you can get some extra "people time" in, even if they are not physically present with you.

As I mentioned above, I am pro conferences and workshops – and not just because speaking at them is how I make a living. I have met people at conferences who have ended up becoming some of my best friends, who show up for me during tough times and who I show up for.

Entrepreneurship can be a lonely road, one often misunderstood by people who have never been on it themselves. Surrounding yourself with wedding industry colleagues who "get it," who push you to be better, and who cheer for your success matters, and conferences can be a great way to make that happen, all while creating a better business for yourself and your family.

Win-win.
 

Originally published August 2018

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 97 countries.

My first job was in high school as a receptionist and shampoo girl at a hair salon. I learned many important skills while working there but the most valuable was learning how to listen to people on a deep level.

It's a universal law that hair salons are a mysterious safe zone where people open up about their most vulnerable feelings while reading gossip magazines. As the professional, you're suddenly entrusted with a piece of their heart, whether you asked to be or not.

It's like this in the weddings, too.

If you expect everyone to be rational, logical, and approach decisions with level-headed analysis, the wedding industry is not for you. Every engaged couple and every wedding brings with it a lifetime of family dynamics and subtext that you must learn to navigate almost immediately.

Some of it you'll recognize right away: the emotional loss of identity when two financially independent people are looking at merging bank accounts, a mom who can't seem to cut the apron strings even though her son hasn't lived at home in fifteen years, divorced parents who will be in the same room for the first time in decades, crazy Aunt Mary who doesn't fall off the wagon but jumps every chance she gets.

Then there's the stuff that's less obvious: the sibling rivalry only heightened as adults because of differing life choices, the unspoken social expectations passed down through generations, the years of dinner table conversations and the perspectives they shaped, the hours of therapy the bride or groom has sat through as an adult because of family circumstances.

Sometimes I'll assist an industry colleague on a wedding event in order to observe the behavioral dynamics behind the scenes. At one wedding in Chicago several ago, the mother of the bride made a tear-filled comment to me about how frumpy her arms looked in her sleeveless dress. On the surface this seems like a common insecurity every woman has had at some point in her life.

What mattered, though, was that the mom wasn't looking at me while she was talking. She was looking across the room at her ex-husband's much younger (read: bride's age) new wife, whose arms could have given Michelle Obama's a run for their money.

There, in the middle of photographs and makeup and hair styling and laughing over champagne, was a woman who was simultaneously excited for her daughter's wedding and grieving afresh her own shattered dreams. She wasn't interested in hearing that her arms looked fine and she looked beautiful, she wanted to know that she was still lovable and worthy of being pursued.

These are tricky waters to navigate and require the ability to listen and pay attention on a level most jobs do not. They require making people feel seen and heard.

They require building a team that practices empathy and isn't solely concerned with their own art, fame, Instagram updates, or checkmarks on a timeline. They require a thick-skin, grit, and a willingness to forgive and forget when people's emotions prevail against their better judgment.

They require consistently paying attention to a world beyond ourselves.

 

Originally published January 2011

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 97 countries.

I’m hiring a senior management consultant for the tourism division of Think Splendid!

This is a full-time, remote position with competitive salary and benefits. Up to 30% domestic U.S. and international travel will be required.

I am specifically looking for someone with 5+ years experience in strategy consulting. They do NOT need to have prior wedding industry experience.

The official LinkedIn job listing is below as well as details on how to apply. Please pass this along to anyone who might be a great fit!

SENIOR CONSULTANT, TOURISM DIVISION AT THINK SPLENDID, INC

Think Splendid is a boutique management consulting firm specializing in the luxury wedding, hospitality, and tourism industries. Founded in 2005, they have worked with clients in 94 countries.

The tourism division provides strategic direction to destinations on using wedding, honeymoon, and anniversary travel as a key lever in creating lifelong, repeat leisure visitors.

ABOUT THE ROLE:

Job Title: Senior Consultant

This role requires an interdisciplinary approach to consulting.

• Every client project looks different, but you can expect to offer in-depth analysis on and develop strategies related to capacity building, economic innovation (with an emphasis on locally owned SMEs), place branding, destination marketing, B2C and B2B growth, and diversifying the tourism product.

• You'll analyze and advise on supply chain and import processes for destination inventory.

• You'll present detailed recommendations to government officials, executives, and entrepreneurs in the hospitality and tourism sectors.

• You'll restructure operations and oversee implementation of and training on new processes while staying in compliance with regulatory procedures.

• You'll write proposals within the parameters of the respective RFPs and specific government requirements.

• You'll work closely with external creative agencies, photo/video production teams, and PR firms on branding and marketing initiatives, ensuring everything stays on budget, on time, and hits every strategic milestone.

ABOUT YOU:

• You have 5+ years of strategy consulting experience managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders. Experience with the luxury travel and/or hospitality sectors preferred.

• You excel at strategy development and analysis. You have a proven track record in forecasting trends and have the ability to outline short-, mid-, and long-term opportunities where they don't yet exist and set relevant KPIs. You have a knack for identifying “under the radar” talent and an eye for quality.

• You have strong observational, analytical, and reasoning skills. You identify operational and behavioral challenges quickly and accurately in a solutions-focused manner.

• You have excellent verbal and written communication skills, are comfortable with public speaking, and are good at making complex ideas easy to understand and actionable.

• You have experience navigating government contracts, environmental analysis reports, real estate development plans, and the red tape that sometimes comes with managing multiple stakeholders across private, government, and NGO sectors.

• You are adept at leading people who hold positions of leadership and authority. You are not easily intimidated. You are open-minded, collaborative, and skilled at motivating people to do their best work.

• You have the ability to maintain discretion, poise, and professionalism with government officials, dignitaries, and other high-profile individuals. You do not get starstruck.

• You have a respect for and a “when in Rome” attitude toward differing cultural norms. You are able to adjust your work and communication styles based on cultural customs and expectations.

• You are proficient in the Microsoft, Apple, and Google suites of workplace software. Familiarity with Salesforce a plus.

WORK ENVIRONMENT:

• This is a full-time, remote position with up to 30% travel. As such, where and when you work is less of a concern than your ability to perform at a high level and meet deadlines.

• You'll report directly to the CEO, Liene Stevens. In addition, you will be working closely with our research team, clients and their representatives, as well as other third-party organizations.

• You will be expected to attend Zoom meetings and conference calls at the times assigned.

• You will occasionally be expected to be available outside of standard U.S. work hours in order to participate in conference calls with international clients in their respective time zones.

• A reliable internet connection is required.

• This position requires you to sign an NDA.

TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS:

• Domestic U.S. and international travel required, up to 30%.

• Valid passport required. Global Entry clearance preferred.

• Proof of Covid vaccination required. Compliance with all current health protocols for domestic and international travel required.

• Proof of Yellow Fever vaccination may be required for entry to certain countries, including in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa.

BENEFITS:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance plus FSA

• Matching 401k

• Unlimited PTO

• 12 weeks paid maternity/paternity/adoption leave

• Monthly fitness/mental health stipend

• Monthly home office technology stipend

TO APPLY:

Please apply via LinkedIn or send resume and salary requirements in PDF format to Rachel Cohen at rachel@thinksplendid.com.

Any other form of contact will not be answered. No video resumes, please.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 97 countries.

Luck's kryptonite?

Busyness.

People who find their identity through a jam-packed schedule are rarely lucky.

To be fair, busyness is often a symptom of something deeper:

• a desire to be seen as "important"

• an inability to say no out of a need to have everyone like us

• fear of opportunities going to someone else even if they're a good-but-not-great fit for us

• fear that if we slow down we might have to face the fact that maybe the life we've built for ourselves isn't exactly the one we wanted
  

Lucky people have more boundaries, not fewer. They say no more often so that they have room to say yes to things that truly excite them. They are comfortable embracing a philosophy of JOMO (joy of missing out) rather than FOMO (fear of missing out). They are willing to risk not being liked by saying no. They are okay with being misunderstood for a while. They understand that your priorities do not need to be their priorities and vice versa.

Most lucky people don't plan for luck (or even believe it exists), but they do make space for it. They don't fly in to a conference for one session and then fly right back out. They stick around and talk to people. They know that "what's in it for me?" isn't always the right question to ask. They recognize that opportunities often look like work and show up through people or places they don't expect.

I call all of this "leaving room for the miracle."

Lucky people leave room for the miracle.

Originally published January 2012

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 97 countries.

When it comes to TikTok, too many people think of it as just another social media app. In reality, the cultural shift from Instagram to TikTok is a lot like the cultural shift from MySpace to Facebook.

And yes, Instagram is MySpace in this analogy.

People said the same things back in the day about Myspace vs Facebook that they’re saying now about Instagram vs TikTok:

• “MySpace has a billion dollar valuation, it’s not going anywhere.”

• “Facebook is just for college kids.”

• “I already get clients from MySpace, I don’t need another social media site.”
  

Don't believe me? There are luxury wedding pros on TikTok that you've never heard of with over a million followers who are booked through 2024 – and their clients didn't look at Instagram at all.

The reality is that TikTok is not just for teens anymore, and hasn’t been for the past two years. Luxury wedding pros are getting booked through it. Executive consultants are getting C-Suite clients through it. Every single fashion, beauty, or wellness brand that has had a product go viral on it has sold out. Every. Single. One.

In addition, TikTok has both an international and hyper-local reach that outperforms Instagram’s and is one of the reasons lifestyle businesses have found so much success there. In one of the weirder moments of 2021, a video I spent two minutes making while the coffee brewed was played on the evening news in France.

The trick is that TikTok is not like Instagram – by design. Your tried and true, money-making Instagram tactics will not work on TikTok (and the algorithm will penalize you for using them). TikTok is not interested in being anyone’s afterthought or second choice.

On Wednesday, January 12th, I’ll be teaching an online class about Tiktok for the National Society of Black Wedding and Event Professionals to kick off their educational series for 2022. The class is open to non-members as well.

We’ll dive deeper than this overview and we’ll also get into how it ties into your larger business strategy and goals.

Here is the official blurb:

Money Moves: Using TikTok to Drive Profits

TikTok got more traffic than Google in 2021. Every single fashion, beauty, and wellness brand that has had a product go viral on TikTok has sold out. There are wedding pros you've never heard of with over a million followers who are booked out through 2024 – and their clients didn't look at Instagram at all.

Join luxury business consultant Liene Stevens of Think Splendid to learn why TikTok is not just another app to add to your to-do list, why it's outpacing Instagram, and how to strategically use it to market your business.

We'll cover:
*What Gen Z and younger millennials value in the companies they hire.
*Integrating TikTok into a strategic marketing focus for 2022 so you can make real money.
*Why using Instagram tactics on TikTok doesn't work and what to do instead.

DETAILS:

Wednesday, January 12, 2022
6 pm Eastern
Online class link will be sent upon registration

COST:

NSBWEP Members: Free
Non-Members: $25

Space is limited, so register soon!

You can follow me on TikTok here.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 97 countries.

We recently released the 2022 Wedding Market Reports from Splendid Insights and I shared a few insights from the US Wedding Market Report. Today, I want to talk a bit about the ultra luxury wedding market, which is made up of couples who spend $500,000 or more on their wedding, not including the honeymoon.

As I previously mentioned, in response to the pandemic, we saw people spending either much less on their wedding or much more. As a result, the ultra luxury market saw a distinct change in how people were making decisions during their wedding planning process.

Here are some key stats from the Ultra Luxury Wedding Market Report:

• Nearly a quarter (24%) of couples in the Ultra Luxury Budget category spent more than a million dollars on their wedding in 2021.
  

• Ultra luxury clients still shop around and don’t always just take their planner’s word for it: 39% contacted six or more wedding professionals in each vendor category before choosing who to hire.
  

• 80% said that the amount of diversity in a vendor’s portfolio mattered when choosing who to hire.
  

• 71% used Pinterest in planning their wedding and 68% used Instagram. Nearly 1 in 5 (18%) used TikTok.
  

• 52% required that all of the vendors they hired be vaccinated.

You can download the 2022 Wedding Market Reports here here, including from all six wedding budget categories.

Image by Nancy Ray Photography, the official photography partner of Splendid Insights.

The 2022 Wedding Market Reports from Splendid Insights are now available! Trusted by top brands worldwide, the affordable wedding market reports from Splendid Insights help remove the guesswork about what today's engaged couples really want, empowering you to create wedding marketing strategies that get you booked.

I started Splendid Insights in 2009 because I was frustrated by the type of bridal consumer research being published. I knew the wedding industry was multifaceted and influential and yet entire sections of it went ignored.

I specifically designed it to be accessible to the creative businesses that are the backbone of the wedding industry: a floral shop owned by a mother and daughter team, a husband and wife photography studio, an invitation designer who got her start on Etsy, a wedding planning company run by a single mom, and so on.

We’re holding a special sale on all of our reports through December 10th! We’ve only held one other sale EVER in 12 years.

Because various countries have lifted (and are still lifting) event bans at different times, this year’s reports focus on the U.S. rather than multiple countries. The Global Reports will be available later in 2022.

There are seven reports to choose from, including the US General Wedding Market Report (with over 27,000 participants) as well as six wedding budget reports in based on wedding spend.

Here are a couple insights from this year's Wedding Market Reports:

• At Splendid Insights, we present real wedding budgets in six segments:
  *Intimate ($1000 or less)
  *Economical ($1,100 - $10,000) (with a huge spike because of microweddings)
  *Standard ($11,000 - $30,000)
  *Premium ($31,000 - $95,000)
  *Luxury ($96,000 - $500,000)
  *Ultra Luxury ($500,000 or greater)
  
  During this wedding boom, we're seeing people either spend A LOT less or a LOT more than they had originally planned. Weddings in the $75k-$120k range have not yet recovered spending-wise. If that's typically your sweet spot, you're likely feeling a little jealous over how busy everyone else is. Please know that it's not you and you're not alone.
  

• 73% of brides and grooms planning their weddings say they consider the diversity in a wedding professional's portfolio when hiring.
  

• 36% found at least one of their wedding pros on TikTok.
  

• 53% contacted more than 10 wedding pros per category before hiring.

You can download the 2022 Wedding Market Reports here here. No code is needed for the sale.

Image by Nancy Ray Photography, the official photography partner of Splendid Insights.

This question is from a luxury wedding planner in the United States:

Thank you so much for sharing this post, Liene. I've definitely looked to you throughout this pandemic to be a reality check and voice of wisdom through uncharted territory.

I think you are spot on and have been starting to have this conversation with other industry professionals. Just this past weekend, I had a wedding of 200 (I'm a planner) of completely vaccinated guests. The day after the wedding, one vaccinated guest tested positive. It's not over and I'm really worried about planning for end of 2021 and into Spring/Summer 2022, especially for our international weddings.

My question to you: Do you think it is realistic to be planning for a destination (Europe) wedding for about 150 guests next June? What advice can you give about being authentically optimistic but also guiding our clients to protect themselves before signing major contracts?

Answer from Liene:

I have written and deleted, rewritten and re-deleted this post and my answer several times. I had an answer scheduled to post and then unscheduled it because I wanted to give it more thought. Here is what I’ve landed on:

My short answer is this:

I think it should be okay to have your client’s wedding in Europe in June 2022 if all of the guests and wedding professionals are vaccinated, but you should still have a backup plan.

Here is my longer answer:

We are currently in a post-pandemic wedding boom in the U.S. as rescheduled weddings are finally happening.

But the reality, like you mentioned, is that we are not post-pandemic. We are very much still in it.

Whether or not your clients are comfortable having a destination wedding overseas is going to come down to their own level of risk tolerance, both emotionally and financially.

And there is definitely both emotional and financial risk. The regulations for U.S. travelers to Europe have changed twice in the past eight weeks and we’re likely to see them change multiple times again by next Summer.

Case in point: last week, the European Union announced that they were closing their borders again to unvaccinated travelers from the U.S.

Every country has the right and responsibility to protect their citizens (even if the past year and a half has shown us that some don’t seem to take that responsibility seriously).

Each country has their own laws driven by their own respective constitution and they do not have to follow the U.S. constitution because, uh . . . they are not the U.S.

I bring this up only because some Americans tend to believe that when they travel they are still protected by U.S. laws when in reality they are under the laws of the country they are in.

While many couples opting for a destination wedding are typically well-traveled and “internationally savvy,” sometimes their guests are not. And as I mentioned in a previous post, educating guests on the travel issues and constantly updated Covid protocols related to destination weddings often unfairly lands on the plate of the planner.

As I said: each country has a duty to protect its citizens to the best of its abilities, and border closures and quarantine requirements are part of that.

While we may consider certain measures a bit extreme or question their effectiveness, the fact of the matter is if they're in place at the time of the event, they're in place and your clients aren't getting in. We have to take reality as it is rather than as we wished it would be.

If they decide to move forward with a destination wedding rather than choosing to do it at home, here are some things to keep in mind and ways to prepare for the “what ifs” —

1. Have contingency plans. Have a “go or no go” date by which you'll make a final decision.
   
   

2. Build potential quarantine costs into the budget, not only for your clients on their end, but for you and any staff traveling with you. This includes the hotel costs, food, etc for 10+ extra days. This can be written into a contract addendum as scope increase, and billed accordingly. If it isn't required, you won't bill for it.
   
   

3. Most wedding insurance and travel insurance WILL NOT COVER anything Covid-related, so read the fine print, no matter what the sales person told your client.
   
   

4. If you haven't already, update your contracts to include “Acts of Man” not just “Acts of God.”
   
   Talk to an attorney about this, obviously, but remember that just because something is in your contract does not make it legal and does not mean it will hold up in court.
   
   

5. As for signing contracts, steer your clients towards wedding vendors and suppliers who are vaccinated.
   
   I know this is controversial, but event professionals are in for a rude awakening if they think that they will be able to work in certain venues/cities/countries without being vaccinated.
   
   I said before that some private businesses would require vendors to show proof of vaccine status the same way they’ve required proof of liability insurance coverage and we’re already seeing that happening.
   
   Also, as the wedding planner, you do not want to be scrambling to find a vaccinated florist with enough product available and the skillset to design a luxury floral installation day-of because the unvaccinated florist that was already booked thought they were the exception to the rule and then found themselves denied entry at customs or by the venue. (This is a real life example, unfortunately.)
   
   

6. When it comes to the wedding pros they are signing contracts with, make sure those vendors have the following outlined in their agreements: the safety protocols they’re following, what happens to their deposits and other financial payments if the wedding ends up not happening, and what happens if they test positive and can’t show.
   
   

7. I mentioned this in a previous post, but have back-up design and layout schematics that account for social distancing in case those policies get implemented again.
   
   

8. Your demeanor will go a long way in setting the tone for how everyone else reacts — staying calm under pressure is a big reason wedding planners get hired.
   
   For peace of mind for your wedding clients, set up a schedule of how and when you are going to keep them updated on various changes that come up and ask them who they want included. Maybe that looks like an email every Monday to the two grooms and their moms aren’t on those updates but one of their sisters or best man is.
   
   The key with this is to over-communicate in a way that does not breed panic and reassures them that you are paying attention and staying on top of things for them. It also sets the precedent that you are not going to respond to a frantic text at 1 am eight months before the wedding because they saw a news headline while scrolling Twitter in bed. It can likely wait until morning . . . or the following Monday.
   
   People want to feel seen and heard, and this method allows you to do that without feeding into the chaos of what can be a very chaotic news cycle.

All of this is a lot to navigate, and it will unfortunately continue to be that way for a while. A virus does not care about our businesses, our plans, our politics — it is up to us to adjust to the facts of it so that we can hopefully be done with this as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the two things that are going to prolong this the most are:

a) inequity of vaccine access (while there is ubiquitous access in the U.S., that is not the case for all countries and some countries currently won’t receive the vaccine until mid-2022), and

b) vaccine hesitancy from people who do have access.

To deal with the things outside of your control, I would recommend building some type of self-care into your routine, especially if you’ve let it lapse post-quarantine.

I know that can seem like a ridiculous suggestion given how busy everyone is with rescheduled events that aren’t necessarily making them money at this point and kids being home again because of more school closures, but it will be key to you not burning out.

You all know how much meditation changed my life, but for you, realistic self-care might look like doing a 10 minute core class on the Peloton app every day or setting aside time each week to try a new recipe — whatever gets you out of your head in a healthy way so that you can have the capacity to handle all of the uncertainty that comes with the job (and life) right now.

*While I’ve talked to my attorney, they are not your attorney and none of this should be considered legal advice. Always run anything by your own lawyer who knows your local laws and specific business.

Questions from Wedding Pros

Have a question on a sticky client issue, running a wedding company, or an aspect of business you feel you should know by now yet don’t?

Liene is happy to weigh in with her trademark compassionate yet no-nonsense advice.

To submit a question to our Wedding Pro Q+A column, send us an email. We’ll keep you anonymous.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 97 countries

I’m answering questions from creative professionals around the world on the impact of Coronavirus (and now its variants) on their wedding businesses.

This two-part question is from a luxury wedding planner in the United States:

Part 1

What do you think about events this Fall? Are we headed toward another shut down in the US?

I read your post from earlier this week and was feeling for that planner in England. I’m also wondering about ultimate responsibility from planners right now. Are we the ones that are fully responsible for telling each and every guest the ever-changing rules and regulations of Covid? Are we the only ones responsible for this? Where is the line? Should other vendors be responsible as well?

It’s in our contract now that we aren’t responsible but I’m going to make up a separate document that clients sign moving forward of what we are responsible for and what we are not responsible for. We are only here to guide the client. The clients should be fully responsible, in my opinion.

Part 2

The second part of my question is about client expectations. Expectations are through the roof right now, almost to the point of being unreasonable.

Plus, I feel like they are in complete denial that they are getting married. Our client for this weekend added 60 guests on Sunday. They are spending over $700,000 on their wedding and she still hasn’t sent us the final seating chart and the wedding is tomorrow. It’s like they don’t care or they’re truly on another planet or they’ve waited this long and they just can’t deal with it . . . I’m not sure, but it’s bizarre.

Earlier this week we also had a client question what “full service” is because she doesn’t feel we’ve done enough. We’ve been working with them for three years now and this is their fourth reschedule of their wedding day. My email back to her was not so nice. I’m really at my point of no return with some of these people.

We are one of the only industries that deal in live unrehearsed events and production where we only get one shot. We are making snap-second decisions that effect hundreds of people. Now we are short staffed, short on flowers and food and materials in the middle of a pandemic and still the show must go on. We have had to rework entire weddings on site with little staff and clients have no grasp of reality. Clients think it’s business as usual because we make them believe the magic. But where is the line? I know we are known for pulling rabbits out of our hats, but it’s almost too much. Or is it?

I didn’t charge any change fees last year and I’m regretting it a little. Our jobs are harder than ever right now and everyone has lost their damn minds.

Answer from Liene:

Part 1

WHAT TO PREPARE FOR IN THE US

No, I don’t believe that we are headed for another shut down in the United States. That isn’t to say that it 100% won’t happen if the spread of Delta continues to worsen, but I believe that big companies (more so than the federal and local governments) will do everything in their power to avoid another shut down.

While a potential second shut down should always be in your contingency plans, even if it is unlikely, wedding professionals in the United States need to be prepared for vaccine mandates and mask requirements.

We’re already seeing this shift this week, with influential companies like Netflix, Walmart, Google, Facebook, Shake Shack, and — as of yesterday — Disney requiring their employees to be fully vaccinated. In the case of Shake Shack, all customers will be required to show proof of vaccination as well.

All of these companies are publicly traded on the stock market and aren’t willing to risk another economy-crashing hit if it’s in their power to avoid it. They have a legal fiduciary duty to their stockholders and have decided that vaccine mandates are a way to protect that. Also, these companies can and do hire the best specialist attorneys in the world and run all sorts of financial projections and legal analysis . . . there is no way they would be requiring vaccines if they thought there was a real chance of them losing a potential Supreme Court case.

In addition, the recent outbreak cluster in Provincetown, Massachusetts shows that vaccines work (zero deaths), but also shows why masks matter even more with the Delta variant, which can cause a viral load of 1000x the original strain, making it much more contagious. This explanation from a virologist gets into the “why” of it all, but basically, Delta camps out in your nose for a bit and the vaccine prevents it from migrating down to your lungs and doing real damage. So even if you are vaccinated, you can still spread Delta while it is living in your nasal passage, and you may not even realize you have it. This is why masks are being required again at major retailers.

HOW THIS IMPACTS WEDDINGS AND EVENTS

Armed with this knowledge, we can potentially see hospitality parent corporations requiring all of their employees for their various hotel brands to get vaccinated (Marriott has said they won’t mandate it, but that was before Disney’s announcement and, frankly, Disney sets the standard), we can see independent venues requiring it, we can see more restaurants requiring it (Shake Shack may be fast-food, but its founder Danny Meyer is a heavy hitter in that industry with four of the other restaurants he founded being awarded Michelin Stars), and we can definitely see all of these places requiring masks again (many already are), even if the local county and city governments do not.

In the same way that many venues require wedding pros to show proof of insurance liability certificates, we can also expect a lot of these companies to extend the proof of vaccination requirement to third-party vendor partners — such as wedding and event professionals — doing any type of work on their properties. This means that even if a wedding pro is hired by a couple, if they are not vaccinated, they won’t be allowed on site to do the wedding.

And if — like Shake Shack and the rest of Danny Meyer’s restaurants — they extend the vaccine requirement to customers, that will throw a logistical challenge in the mix for wedding professionals.

A couple questions to consider as you continue to plan for future events:

• If vaccines are mandated for customers and guests, who enforces it?

• Will you need to hire security for guests who might try to show up anyway?

• Will you be expected to distinguish between authentic and fraudulent vaccine cards? (The EU has a digital verification system in place, the US does not).

  
  

The case of Shake Shack has raised a key question that applies elsewhere as well: are they expecting 17 year old cashiers to enforce this in the (literal) face of screaming customers? They have yet to clarify how this customer mandate is going to be carried out, but assigning that task to normal employees without giving them a major pay raise or bonus is a huge ask, in my opinion.

From a design perspective, another situation to consider is whether or not some level of social distancing with event furniture and dance floors is likely to be mandated again, given the way Delta spreads even among the vaccinated (we are already seeing infections from recent events where they returned to a pre-pandemic layout of 400 seats in a ballroom all set super close to each other with unmasked guests). Having backup schematics prepared and ready to go in case of new mandates is a good idea.

I don’t have a clear yes or no answer for any of this, but I will say that these are potential situations and questions that need to be considered, especially if you are a wedding planner, wedding venue owner, or event designer.

I also want to acknowledge that all of this is messy and hard. Nothing about this is easy.

THE ISSUE OF RESPONSIBILITY

As for where the line is on what planners are responsible for, I would talk to an attorney regarding your specific liability. I know that is not the answer people want to hear because attorneys are expensive, but simply adding something to your wedding contract or an addendum does not necessarily make it legal.

As I mentioned to the wedding planner in England, I am an advocate for creating a paper trail showing that you were not negligent with communication and that you are not professionally incompetent. This isn’t legal advice, but in my experience a paper trail never hurts. Even if the conversations are via phone, follow up each call with an email that recaps the key points discussed so that you have it in writing.

Enforcing all of these mandates and navigating these murky waters of legal liability is where it all gets logistically and emotionally complicated. And while I do agree that responsibility should be shared, in reality we know that the bulk of it will unfairly fall to wedding planners and event venues.

I apply this specific piece of advice from author Regina Brett to a lot of things, but I believe that it is particularly apt these days: “Over prepare and then go with the flow.”

Part 2

I want to thank you for sharing the second part of this because you are not alone with wedding clients acting in this manner and I believe it’s important for other wedding professionals to hear that they are not alone in it, either.

I see a couple of things at play here:

The first one is that this is not in your head — there has been a collective sense among pandemic couples of, “Eff it, at this point I just want to get married” and so the logistical details that do matter for the overall production are not being taken as seriously.

While a small handful of these couples are naturally laid back, the majority are responding this way due to overwhelm. Not overwhelm driven by their wedding vendors (I know you are good at your job), but just overwhelm as a response to the trauma of the past year and a half.

Unfortunately, this means that even the few wedding tasks they personally need to attend to are too much of a mental load to deal with and so they get pushed to the back burner.

LACK OF EDUCATION VS ENTITLEMENT

The second issue is that for each of your wedding clients, you need to figure out if it is a lack of education on the topic that is driving these increased expectations or if it is entitlement (or both).

Sure, a bride or groom may hear about the flower shortage in passing or see a brief mention of it on a sign at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, but then they scroll through Instagram where all the wedding content has florals dripping from the ceilings and it’s like, “Um . . . flower shortage where?”

There is an argument to be made that wedding pros get paid to shield their clients from the stressful parts of the process and I tend to support that argument . . . to a point.

It is unfair to expect a client to understand what goes on behind-the-scenes and how it impacts them and why they suddenly need to increase their budget to cover the same amount of product when the only behind-the-scenes that gets shown is a rental warehouse walkthrough or a moodboard mockup with linen swatches.

It is possible to share what the industry is dealing with in a way that doesn’t disparage anyone or come across as you complaining about your job.

When you are marketing your expertise, I do believe you can show what goes into making that magic happen without overburdening your clients (or IG followers) with the stressful feelings or emotions of it.

And if you go this route, this information definitely shouldn’t be hidden solely in Instagram stories or video content. You can make the videos, but provide actual text for search engines and captions for the people who are skimming Instagram at night with the volume off so they don’t wake their partner.

I would also add that with the shortages right now, the lack of education isn’t just with clients. The various sectors of the wedding industry don’t necessarily know what the rest of the industry is dealing with.

There are plenty of florists who don’t realize that caterers are dealing with similar shortages, just with food.

There are wedding photographers and videographers who don’t realize that wedding venues and event rental companies are dealing with inventory and delivery issues because of continued disruption in the cargo and transportation industries.

We’re all in our little bubbles trying to make up for lost time and revenue from last year and the only places any of this really gets discussed is in private Facebook groups. None of it is public in a way that is furthering wedding client (and peer) education.

The fact of the matter is these shortages and disruptions do drive costs up and it is not a matter of wedding pros being greedy and trying to charge more. That said, a client is not going to be comfortable forking over even more money if they have no clue that getting certain flowers is pretty much the equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat right now.

These facts cannot be something they’ve heard only from you. Trust is built when they’ve heard it from multiple sources, and as an industry we need to do a better job of talking about this on the public platforms we have. Solving this industry-wide issue will require a real “community over competition” mindset from everyone.

If the expectations are simply because of entitlement, then . . . whew. Good luck. This pandemic has brought out an ugly side of a lot of people and I am sorry you are having to deal with it.

As for the bride who passive-aggressively accused you of not doing enough after three years and four reschedules due to government shutdowns outside of your control . . . I will admit that I laughed out loud at the sheer AUDACITY of her behavior. I know it isn’t funny, but some people have seriously lost the plot here and sometimes all you can do is laugh.

PRACTICAL WAYS TO NAVIGATE THIS

In theory, firing the extremely entitled people as clients is an option but because of the pandemic it is not a financial choice a lot of wedding vendors have the luxury of making right now.

If you’re in that boat or just want to stick it out, I would recommend the paper trail method, getting them down the aisle with your best cheerleader smile, and then implementing new policies or procedures for future clients.

If the policies are legal in nature, again I would run them by an attorney. But for others, it may be an issue of more clearly defining and communicating boundaries.

For example, making it clear that they can email or text at any time but that you will only respond during certain hours (using WhatsApp Business is an easy way to manage this — you can set it up with a separate number on your same phone so that clients don’t have access to your personal number).

On another practical note for not letting the audacious entitlement get to you, I would recommend meditation. I’m fully aware that I sound like a vegan when it comes to how I talk about meditation but I do believe that it can be hugely beneficial for managing the extra stress the job requires right now. I meditate daily and recently finished my 650th meditation through the Peloton app. Before that I used Calm and Headspace and liked them too (and if you’re just starting, I recommend Calm’s intro series).

Meditation has changed my life more than anything else ever. I still feel the full range of my feelings but it allows me to step back and view things like I’m watching a movie. It helps me get over things faster. It’s made me happier. It’s empowered me to make better decisions. It gave me the courage to walk away from a toxic work collaboration (that was less collaboration and more being taken advantage of) and my business (and I) flourished afterward. Its benefits have been scientifically proven and it’s something I wish I started back when I first heard of it. So . . . that’s my soapbox on that.

It’s been a long 18 months, and we’re still in the thick of it, even though weddings and events are thankfully back. It’s stressful for so many reasons, and I want to thank you again for being willing to be transparent about what you’re facing. You are definitely not the only planner dealing with all of this right now and your willingness to share is going to help a lot of other wedding professionals feel less alone.

A Splendid Note from Liene:

I’ve been fortunate to have worked with wedding pros from 94 countries over my career and when I say we’re all in this together, I mean we are all in this together.

I am not a blogger, I am a business strategy consultant. This blog is not sponsored nor ad supported and is not how I make my income. I have not taken a dime to help clients (and non-clients) with Covid specific issues and I receive no financial benefit from this.

If you have a Coronavirus-related wedding business question, feel free to reach out. I’ll answer it here on the blog so that we can all navigate these new developments together as best we can. Please send any questions you have to hello@thinksplendid.com and remember there is no such thing as a dumb question.

I’ll be keeping the names anonymous so you don’t have to worry about being attached to a question in a Google search or in case you don’t want a colleague or competitor to know what’s on your mind.

Written by
LIENE STEVENS

Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 97 countries.