5 Tips To Organize A Wedding Event

A wedding is an exciting and celebratory event that is always a great deal of fun for everyone involved. Even the smallest of weddings, though, needs to be well organized in order to flow smoothly without incident. If you are looking for a career that is rewarding, exciting and fun, consider becoming a certified wedding planner. Keep the following five tips in mind for successful event planning and you'll be well on your way to a wonderful career.
- Be Organized
One of the best event management tips for beginners is to be organized. This doesn't simply mean being neat in appearance and showing up on time for meetings. You also need to be able to retrieve any necessary forms without too much shuffling of papers and how to find the contact information for your preferred caterer, band and florist. Indeed, before you can organize a wedding event, you need to become organized as well.
- Your Portfolio is Important
When meeting with potential clients, you can tell them all about how you can organize their wedding for them so they can thoroughly enjoy themselves without stress or worry. You can even encourage them to check out your social media accounts and your website. For the greatest impact, though, you need a portfolio that you can hand them. Make sure you also bring along blank contracts to each meeting to facilitate closing the deal.
- Be Realistic About a Budget
Being realistic about the wedding budget is really more for your clients than for you as a wedding event planner. Many couples have strong preferences regarding what they want for their wedding. However, their expectations for the budget they need for those preferences is often skewed toward the lower end of what might be realistic. One of your jobs as the organizer of the event is to bring the couple back to reality -- budget wise -- while still ensuring that their event is memorable.
- Know the Proper Etiquette
This doesn't mean knowing which fork to use with the first course as much as it is talking about the etiquette for the particular wedding that you are planning. While even the most laid back couple might choose to embrace tradition and have a very formal wedding, these days a wedding is just as likely to be a very casual affair as well. Supporting the kind of event your client wants might mean stepping outside your comfort zone sometimes in order to make the couple happy.
- Honor Their Culture
Being able to organize a wedding around the couple's specific culture and traditions means staying open minded. Bring your creativity and your enthusiasm to the the table as you hammer out a schedule of events. Doing so will make it easier to devise a method that honors what is important to the couple while still staying within their budget for both time and money. The tips for successful event management noted above can be used for a variety of different occasions -- not just weddings. Do you have any tried-and-true organization tips for events such as weddings that you would add to the above list?