In the wedding business, there will only ever be 52 weekends in a year. This can be a frustrating reality when you hope to scale your business up, take on more clients, and increase the bottom line. However, you can diversify your revenue by increasing your number of weekday weddings and events. The rising popularity of alternative days of the week for personal celebrations leaves you limitless potential to offer this in-demand service.
An Untapped Market?
Many wedding pros haven’t given enough consideration to marketing weekday weddings. It is an out-of-the-box concept for an industry so long married to its traditions. Yet, the fact that there are a limited number of weekends per year forces some creative thinking when increasing revenues and expanding your service business become priorities.
As a bonus, weekday wedding clients are often some of the most fun as they are clearly open to new ideas and can be more laid-back, which makes for an enjoyable event for all!
How to Break into Weekday Weddings
It helps to determine who in your market would be most attracted to the concept. Is it couples who want to cash in on off-peak rates or those hosting intimate weddings with numbers that come with a bit of flexibility? It must be a segment of your market that has guests who are willing to take time off midweek and perhaps stay in the wedding destination for a complete multi-day experience.
Gearing Up for Weekday Weddings
Assign someone who can run your weekday wedding “division.” There needs to be an adequate focus on those weddings that will take place on Saturday and Sunday, as well as those that happen on other days of the week. Make sure your staff has the bandwidth necessary to adapt their approach to nontraditional dates (and can remember not to say “Friday” and “Saturday” every time they discuss an event).
In reality, your larger revenue share will probably still be weekend weddings, but if your weekday business takes off, consider separating these services on your websites and social media. If you’re answering that kind of need, it should be easy for prospects to find you and identify the services you specifically offer.
To promote weekday weddings, you might also consider putting together packages with photographers and other colleagues that tout the advantages of marrying during the week.
Top Tips for Offering Weekday Weddings
There are some best practices that you should implement when planning weekday weddings. These include:
· Coach clients to notify their guests early with a save-the-date card so guests can prepare and take the necessary time off.
· Be extra mindful when reviewing any and all contracts and proposals, especially checking on dates. Weekday weddings are less common, so it’s easy to mistakenly put a Saturday date in a contract out of habit.
· Help your clients set reasonable expectations. Weekday weddings won’t be convenient for everyone, so guest counts are often lower.
· Start your accommodations search early; weekday rates for many hotels go up due to conference business.
Promoting weekday weddings is a terrific way to increase and diversify your revenue. Just be sure to divide the responsibilities evenly so everyone in your company knows what role to play beyond just the large-scale events and weekday intimate events they are accustomed to.
Emily Sullivan is the owner of Emily Sullivan Events, a full-service wedding planning company based in New Orleans and serving couples everywhere.
