Wedding Pro CEO | Building Profitable Wedding Businesses

269. If I Were to Start a Wedding Business in 2025, Here's What I'd Do.

• Brandee Gaar • Season 6

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Starting a wedding business in today’s market requires a fresh perspective and bold strategies! 

In this episode, I share the ultimate blueprint to launch your dream business—from positioning yourself as an expert, to building strategic relationships, and pricing for profit. 

Whether you’re just starting or need a reboot, these actionable steps will help you attract your dream clients and scale a business you love.

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast. If you find these strategies helpful, make sure to share this episode with your fellow wedding pros. And remember, in the world of weddings, it's all about building genuine relationships and showcasing your best work. Until next time, keep shining, CEOs!

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Brandee Gaar:

Are you thinking of starting a wedding business in 2025? Well, let me tell you this. Our industry has changed, and if you're playing by the old rules, you're already behind. In this episode, I'm breaking down exactly how I'd build a wedding business from scratch in today's market. Step by step, no fluff, no theory, just the real actionable strategy you need to start strong, attract dream clients, and build a business that's not just surviving, but thriving. Hey there, CEO, you're listening to the Wedding Pro CEO podcast, the podcast to help you grow and scale your profitable wedding business. I'm your host, Brandee Gaar, and over the last 17 years, I've grown one of the largest planning firms in Orlando, Florida, and grossed more than 6 million in revenue. But if I was starting at zero and I had to do it All over again, there's a few things I would do to ensure I could scale quickly. This is the blueprint you've been waiting for. okay. So first things first is you don't need clients to start. And what I mean by that is that the question I get asked all the time is, okay, well, if I don't already have clients, I don't know what to post, which means I can't market my business, which means I can't create a sales funnel. And I'm like, That's crap. You're making excuses. Here's the thing. We all had to start somewhere, right? And to be able to create that sales funnel, you have to start marketing your business. so if you haven't had any clients yet and you don't have any real wedding content to post, then what on earth do you post To start reeling in those ideal clients. It's actually quite simple. Here's the thing. If you're starting a business in the wedding industry, you likely are already an expert at what you do just because you haven't been a business owner yet. And you haven't produced events under your. Own brand yet doesn't mean that you haven't already either photographed events or been a DJ or planned your sorority party. Like there's things that you know that your clients simply don't. So you have to use that expertise that you have to start really talking about what your clients are concerned about. That means posing yourself as an expert Talking about things that your clients have no idea about. Things like the difference between escort cards and place cards, how to make a budget, what are the first few things that they should do once they get engaged, what are the top five bridesmaids photos that they're definitely gonna want, What are the most popular songs of 2025 that they should do their special dances to? There's so much information that you have access to that they simply don't. So you're just going to want to get on there and pose yourself as the expert and really start hitting those questions that you know that they're searching. Other things that I love to see new business owners posting about are things like inspiration. You can create color palettes, let's say in Canva, you could create an entire inspiration board and then do a reel talking about why you would design this wedding, what style the bride's dress would be, what kind of a venue would work well for it, how much a wedding like that would cost. All of these things are inspiration that you can use to talk to your ideal clients. Another one that I love to see is behind the scenes content. You're doing things every single day to build your business. You're going on venue tours. You're meeting with vendors. You're creating these inspiration boards, right? You're posting on social media. Take us behind the scenes. Your couples want to get to know, like, and trust you. So you want them to get to know who you are as a person behind the brand. Talk so much about everything you're doing on a daily basis, because this is what's going to draw them in. The biggest trick with starting this sales funnel and starting to market yourself is to be social and to be consistent. Remember, engaged couples follow you long before they ever reach out. So even though you think that they may not be paying attention, they are. You need to be on social media, you need to share all the things going on behind the scenes, share the inspiration, share your expertise, and I promise that will start to churn that sales funnel and draw in those ideal leads. Okay, number two is to not overthink your website. this is the kryptonite of any new business owner is you feel like you just keep iterating on your website because you think, oh, my website's the reason people aren't booking. That's false. Your website just needs to be simple, clean, and easy to navigate. That's it. There's very few things you actually need on your website to draw in new clients because in reality, what we're trying to do here is just make sure that when our ideal clients land on this website, that they can figure out how much you charge, who you serve, where you do it, and then how to reach out and contact you. So how are we going to do that? We're going to keep our website simple. And easy to navigate. The first thing I want you to have is a homepage. And on your homepage, I want it to clearly state what you do, where you do it, and who you do it for. And this is going to be for that searchability factor, that SEO. We want to make sure that when someone types in Orlando wedding photographer into the search, you're going to come up because you have put that right there on your homepage. So we're going to keep it super simple. We're going to make sure that's on our homepage and then some really simple copy as well. The next page we're definitely going to make sure we have is your about page. And here's the thing, write this from the first person. Way too often. I see companies write it in third person and they're writing about the company from an outside perspective. That's what third person is. When you write from your heart, when you write about Yourself, about your team, about what your company values are. That's going to resonate way more with a couple. And the most common mistake I see that's done on this page is that you don't use your own name. Oh my gosh. CEO, listen to me right now. Even if you've been in business for 20 years, I want you to go to your website right now and check your about page and make sure that your personal name is listed somewhere there. The reason for this is because if you're at a networking event, if you're out and about, or if somebody refers you by your name, you're going to want to make sure that anybody that goes into Google and searches your name, you're still going to come up. So for instance, Susie Blum is going to be searched. We want to make sure your company website comes up. And I cannot tell you guys how often I go to Wedding Pro's websites and I cannot figure out what their name is. For my life. It's not on their Instagram. It's not on their about page. It's not anywhere. I end up having to go to Google and read reviews and pray that the review is actually about the owner to be able to call them by name. Okay, the third page that you're going to need is a services page and this is going to be a super simple page. We way overthink this. There's two things I want you to think about on this page. I want to make sure that you have pricing on this page. This is so important. You need to either have a starting at or our average investment is. We don't want a McDonald's menu of pricing here. Not at all. But we do want to make sure that we have an idea, a ballpark of our pricing on our services page. At least what you start at, right? The second thing I want you to think about on this page is I don't want to see all of your bullet points. This is a really common mistake that I see wedding pros make is that they list out so many bullet points. It gets overwhelming. That is not what we're looking for. We want to be able to really quickly in one paragraph, understand what is this service about? Right? What is this service going to get me? That's all we're doing here. Now, in your pricing brochure, you're going to be able to list out all those bullet points, all those things that are included, but here on your website, we're working with emotion. We want to just capture that couple that's on that page, and we want to be able to clearly explain what each of our services is in a really simple paragraph about that service. Okay. And the last page you need on your website, literally, we're just talking about four pages here. Okay. We're keeping it simple. We're getting it launched because 2025 is when we're going to kick it in our business. And we're going to turn out that first six figures. So this last page is going to be your contact page. And I want this page to be incredibly Simple. And when I say that, what I see most often on contact pages is you've got all this wording above your contact form. You've got more paragraphs. You've got more pictures. And here's the thing. If they've made it to your contact page, they're ready to inquire with you. So we don't want to make it any more muddled, which I see. so often It's like, I've got to scroll and scroll to figure out how to inquire. No. Once they click on that contact page, the very first thing I want them to see is exactly how to inquire. So there's a couple of things that I want to make sure that you have on this page. One is going to be your contact form, right? So that's going to be super, super simple. We're going to have that contact form. We're also going to have an email address for your company. Yes, you must have an email address in case they just have a quick question. They want to click on it and they want to ask you a question. I also really like for my students to have a phone number on this page. I think that this is really, really important as well. And the last thing that I want you to have is a direct link to go ahead and book a consultation with you. Why is this important? A lot of times what's going to happen, especially in the beginning, you're going to get referrals. So, they're going to be referred by someone else, and they're going to be ready to just go ahead and book a consultation. So why are we going to make them go through the contact us form first? No, let's just get them straight to that consultation. Everyone at this point that's listening to this should have a scheduling link where you can just go online and book an appointment with you. Put that link right there on your website and make it super easy for somebody to go ahead and book a consultation. So far we've talked about number one, we want to make sure that you're marketing yourself effectively right away. And number two, your website. Number three is. To build strategic relationships. And this one actually gets overlooked way too often. Because in our digital world now, we think we can just post on social media, that we can just show up on stories, that we can hide in our little houses and like never have to go out into the outside world. And I get it. I really strongly do not love going to networking events. And I know if you've ever seen me at a networking event, you probably don't believe me because I flitter about the room and I love talking to people when I'm there. But my philosophy is this one. I know it's necessary to my business because in person relationships matter. They mean so much and Your most warm leads are going to come from referrals in your own market. Like that's going to be your best referral source. So, especially as a brand new vendor, I want you at every networking event you can possibly be at. But here's the thing. I don't want you to just go to a networking event and then just like sit against the wall or not talk to anybody or not leverage those relationships. Because that is actually a waste of your time, right? We want to use every minute of your time in the Best way possible. So I want you to go there with intention. I want you to really think about who is it that I'm hoping to meet at this event and then what do I want to come from that right? Now, what I don't want you to do is go up and say, hi, my name is Susie photographer and I'd love to work with you. No, like that's the biggest turnoff, right? But what you could say is, Hi, my name is Susie photographer. I love your work. I've been following you on Instagram for a while. What made you get into the business? Start a conversation, be interested in who they are. People love to talk about them, ask about their clients, how they got their clients, what they look for in a great photography partner, how you could best benefit their clients If they're ever looking for a new photographer to refer, this is so important is these grassroots relationships. And what I see, so often with brand new business owners and honestly seasoned business owners, too is that they're like I don't want to go to networking events because I don't like them or I don't want to go to networking events because they're a Waste of time or I just don't like going to networking events I'm not gonna do it and I'm like, you know what? There's a lot of things that I had to do in my business to get to where I am today that I didn't like doing But I did it anyway, and I can tell you 100 percent I've said this on this podcast multiple times. The number one reason that I am successful is because of the relationships that I forged in the very beginning of my company and that I continued to cultivate throughout the years. I would be nowhere without the partnerships that I have in my industry. And I'm so thankful that I have those. So do not sleep on this. Get out and create those relationships. Number four is we're going to charge To make a profit. what happens so often in the very beginning when you're building a wedding business is that you just kind of like look at your competition and you're like, Okay, I'm going to be less expensive than those people and I'm going to be slightly more expensive than these people, right? And that's just like how you choose your pricing. And listen, no shade if that's what you did. I also did that until I learned to be better. But you are investing in your education right now. You're listening to this podcast and you're like, no, tell me how to do it right, right from the beginning. So let's talk about that for a second. You want to price for profit. You want to be able to pay yourself and make sure that you're actually going to make money. But how do you do that? Right? Okay. So the first thing you're going to do to be able to price your packages for profit is to understand your numbers. This is simple. You're not going to have a ton of expenses right in the beginning, but you will have some. What are the expenses that you have for driving back and forth to appointments for having possibly a paid zoom subscription or any other type of Online softwares that you have. If you have any kind of equipment that you need to purchase, like those are all things that you need to take into account. You also need to think about your time. And this right here, my friend, is the number one thing that new business owners fail to think about is how much time you're putting into each of your services. You need to understand this number because. If you just say, uh, it's my time. I don't really have any overhead. This is how you end up not making enough money to actually pay yourself. You're doing the work. You need to be paid for it. So you need to understand how many hours you're putting into each of your services. And then the last thing is just any hard costs that you have per event. Like if you have an assistant, a second shooter, if you do a client gift, any kind of things like that, you're going to want to make sure that you account for those too. And then my rule of thumb is that I want to make sure that you're at least doubling your costs. At least to be able to charge for that package. So if your costs are 1, 200, you need to charge 2, 400 for it. Right? And that's what I want you to think about when you're looking at how to price your services. The other thing I really want you to be mindful of when you're pricing your services Is you need to be pricing for your expertise and not just the service. Here's the thing. Even if something doesn't take you that much time, but it's saving the couple a ton of time, there's a lot of value there, right? Or because you have so much expertise, maybe it's saving the couple a ton of money in all of the vendors that they're going to work with, because you know how to get it done quickly. Right? So Charge for your expertise, not just the service. Another thing to think about when pricing your packages is to make sure that you price with confidence. If you are confident about your pricing, the couple will be too. I promise you. So when you're speaking about your pricing, when you're speaking about your services, know that And that you are an expert in your field, that you are really good at what you do and that you are confident in your pricing. When your body language and your voice come across as confident, I promise that they will hear that and they'll be more likely to be excited about working with you. And the last thing here in this pricing section is just to test and adjust. You have to test and try different pricing. If you're not getting very many bookings, then you need to maybe lower it and see if that's going to get you a few more bookings. If every single client is saying, yes, where can I sign? You may be priced too low. So continue to test and adjust here in this beginning stage of your business. The final thing that I would do if I was starting a wedding business in 2025 is to Simply. Be. Relentless. there's very few people that will put in the work that it takes to be successful in this or any small business industry. To be better than 99 percent of your competition, you simply have to show up every single day ready to put in the work and ready to do what everyone else is not willing to do, which is to market yourself, to be bold about who you are, and to go out and get the clients. Being relentless means showing up every single day, even when it's hard, and even when you aren't seeing immediate results. Because that is when so many other people tend to give up, but not you. Not you, CEO, if you're listening to this and you're like, yes, Brandee, I'm 100 percent all in. And I want to scale this dream big time. I want you to go back and check out episode 251, where I break down how to be better than 99 percent of your competition. You would be shocked at how simple it is to be part of that 1 percent and to scale super quickly. Okay, that's it for today's episode. I love being here every single week and getting to chat with you and pour into your business, inspire you to grow that profitable business that you've been dreaming of. And guess what? We have a brand new talkback feature that we're so excited to roll out because we want to hear from you. If you have a question that you're dying to get answered or you simply need some advice on how to grow your wedding business, we want to hear from you. Just head to the show notes and hit the ask a question link, drop your question, and you may be featured here on the show. Thanks so much for being here, CEO, and I will see you next time.

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Brandee Gaar

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