Wedding Pro CEO | Building Profitable Wedding Businesses

318. 54,000 Couples Spoke: The Brutal Truth About Why Your Wedding Bookings Are Slowing Down in 2026

• Brandee Gaar • Season 7

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You didn’t start your business to stay stuck. If you're ready to finally hit 6 or 7 figures WITHOUT burning out — book a call with our team → https://weddingproceo.com/application

I know you’re likely coming off a long wedding weekend feeling a bit drained, but if your 2026 leads are starting to feel like a trickle, it’s time to trade the guesswork for the data-backed truth from 54,000 real couples. 

This episode of the Wedding Pro CEO podcast is your blueprint to stop the booking slump, effectively educate clients on their budgets, and finally build the profitable, sustainable business you deserve.

The (FREE!)ASSUME Sales Training: 2x your wedding bookings in 30 days—step by step. Thousands of wedding pros have already used it to land more clients immediately! http://weddingproceo.com/freetrainingorg

A favorite book of mine: Profit First by Mike Michalowicz 

https://amzn.to/4lbqZFw

Another favorite book of mine: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell 

https://amzn.to/3ITKLb4

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https://weddingproceo.com/wedding-bookings-slowing-down-2026/

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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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Heads up, CEO! Some of the links I share may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase—at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools and resources I actually use and love, and that I believe will help you grow a profitable, sustainable business you’re obsessed with.

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Have you ever noticed how your leads don't drop off all at once? They trickle quietly. A little fewer this month, a little slower next month until suddenly you're staring at an empty calendar wondering when the demand dried up. But here's the uncomfortable truth. The market didn't slow down. Your couples evolved and most wedding pros didn't. This new global study of over 54,000 couples basically hands you the blueprint for who's actually getting married in 2026, and the spoiler. They don't buy the way you're selling today. I'm breaking down the real numbers. What couples actually spend, how they actually choose vendors, the platforms they trust, and one factor that Outranks Referrals awards and your perfectly curated Instagram feed. If you wanna win in 2026, you can't continue to rely on vibes and guesswork. You actually need data. So let's get into the numbers that will either make you the most in demand vendor in your market, or expose exactly why your bookings have stalled. in this episode, I'm gonna be reviewing some of the interesting pieces of data that came out in the 2026 Global Wedding Market report from Splendid Insights. They surveyed over 54,000 newly married respondents, and so these couples were married from November of 2024 through October of 2025. Why I love this survey so much is because that data is very, very timely, right? Like that's literally in the last 15 months that these people got married. And so it's, it's fresh. It's not like, you know, this was two years ago that these people were surveyed. They literally do all of this research and then put the report out immediately. I absolutely love it and I've been looking through all of this data for a couple of weeks now. And some of it is so intriguing to me, but let's talk about who was actually surveyed. So we talked about when, right. So, 54,000 couples over 10 months. They also did the survey in 10 languages, which is honestly insane, but it makes it such a cool survey because it's not just us, it's not just English. It's literally from all over the world. Hence the name, the Global Wedding Report, right? They have spent so much time curating this data and really giving us an insight into how today's couples are buying and how they're planning. So now that you know who was surveyed, let's get into some of the highlights that I found so interesting about this data. This first piece of data that we're looking at is the real wedding budgets breakdown. Now, the first thing that I love about this is how they break it down into six different categories, and they show us right here what each one of those things mean. And so if you haven't heard some of these terms before, these are widely recognized terms. I think it's important for us to understand what each one of them means. So here intimate is a thousand dollars or less Economical.$1100 to $10,000 Standard$11,000 to $30,000. Premium is $31,000 to $95,000 luxury, $96K to $500K. And then ultra luxury is over half a million. Now, some of us define these terms differently, right, depending on your market. But this remember, is a global wedding report, and so it's important for us to define what each of these terms are, for instance. Our average wedding in our market for my business is around a hundred thousand dollars, so we don't consider that a premium wedding. We would consider that just a normal standard wedding. Anything really from $60K to a $100K is a normal standard wedding in our market. However, again, just to keep us all on the same terms, I want you to understand what terms they're using here, but either way, regardless of the terms, it's helpful to see how much people are spending on their weddings because again. The bulk of our weddings are right around that a hundred thousand dollars in budget, but only 17% of all weddings fall into that category, which is crazy, right? And so the, the more interesting statistic here is that only 2% fall into the luxury market. Now, that's been the standard for probably a decade at least. And. It's always blown my mind why so many vendors fight to be in this space, in this luxury space. It's like, yes, we all love luxury weddings, right? They're a lot of fun. But when you say you only do luxury weddings, only 2% of the entire market, 2% falls into this luxury space. so I think it's really important for you to understand who your ideal client is and what the market has to bear, right? for instance, my company Blush, most of our weddings fall right around that a hundred thousand dollars mark. Now we plan weddings that are 2, 3, 4, or 500,000 and more quite often, however, the bulk of our weddings fall right around that a hundred thousand dollars in budget. But the reality is that's only 17% of the market. So when we're looking at how many leads we're getting, let's say, in comparison to maybe a company that really focuses on clients that are doing.$30,000 budgets. We have to understand that we have a smaller market share to begin with. So you really wanna understand this when you're focusing on who your ideal client is. I especially think that this is important when you're looking at, say, this luxury number, and you're like, well, I only plan weddings that fall in that luxury category. And it's like, that's totally fine. You do you. But if you're trying to build a large, consistent business, it becomes really difficult to. Only serve the luxury market because you kind of have to leap from one giant wedding to the next and hope the next one is coming because it's only 2% of the market, 2% of the market. Right? So this is a really important thing for you to just understand as you're focusing on who your ideal client is and who you're serving. One of the other interesting key data points that I wanted to point out before we really get into how they're buying is who these people are, right? So we just talked about how much that they're spending, but I really wanna focus here for a second too, on who's actually getting married. this last data point that I wanna point out about who was surveyed is what generation is getting married. So as you can see here, 84% of couples who are getting married still fall into that millennial category. Now I think this report was a little generous with who falls into the millennial category. I've seen others say that. Gen Z really starts around like 1997, but either way, we're gonna use this data. So 84% of people still getting married are millennials, and while it's interesting that only 12% is Gen Z, what I want you to understand is that Gen Z is coming in hot. They are just gonna continue to take over this market and Gen Z buys. Very differently. And dare I even say that young millennials still buy very similarly to Gen Z. 'cause if you think about it, someone that was born in 2000, right? Like that's a young millennial, even 1998, they really still grew up with social media. Like they, their teen years where an iPhone existed, texting existed all the time. Um, social media came into play like their formative years are so similar to those of Gen Z. So we really have to think about them almost all as one category. But I do find it interesting that it's still only 12% in the market. That's Gen Z. But think about that the, this is born 2001 or later. So the people that they're considering are here in 2025 are only 24. So it makes sense that they're only 12% in the market 'cause only a handful of them are even of the marrying age. Right? But just a data point that I wanted to point out. It's so important.'cause here at Wedding Pro CEO, we talk about Gen Z and their buying habits so much. I've actually caught some heat over that before when people are like, why do we keep talking about Gen Z? There's such a small portion in the market. And I'm like, well one, because we've talked about millennials for probably 15 years at this point. I'm so over it. It's like if you don't know how a millennial shops. Like, I don't even know what to tell you at this point, but because Gen Z is so different and because they're coming into the market so hard and fast, that's why I really spend a lot of time talking about how their buying habits are different. But again, those buying habits can apply to young millennials as well. So I would even say, a much larger portion of this buys like a Gen Z. I thought that was really interesting. Okay, so now let's get into some of the information in this report that's really gonna help us as we start to formulate our marketing and our sales plans for 2026. I find some of this so interesting and you guys know. You guys know I love data, right? So when I saw this report come out, I was like, BUYYYY!. Like right away hit the add to cart checkout button immediately, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it because you know, way too often we're like, well, I feel like this still works, or I feel like this is fine, and it's like. What are you basing that on, right? Like your gut, I mean, a gut comes in handy every once in a while, but the reality is our feelings can often lead us astray. And way too often we think, well, I've always done it this way, so I'm just gonna keep doing it this way. And the reality is the market is changing. I mean, everything post COVID, like anything you did pre COVID is out the door, right? But that was six years ago now. And so we really need to be understanding, COVID changed our world so much that we really have to understand this new generation, these people that were shaped by COVID, we need to understand how they learn about their vendors, how that they research their vendors, and then how they choose their vendors and also how they're planning. This is some of the insights that I find are really, really interesting inside this report. So let's talk about this first one, which is, how did you come up with the number for your original budget? I think this might be like my favorite piece of insight into this survey because the number one way with 61% of the couples responding this, the number one way that couples came up with their budget was they just chose a number out of thin air that felt like enough and wedding pros are you listening to this and you're like, oh, eh. Right? Like I feel that in my soul because this happens all the time where couples come to you and they're like, oh my gosh, flowers cost how much a DJ cost, how much? And they do that because they just. They don't know. They have literally no idea how much a wedding costs. And the reality is, I actually just had this conversation with a couple from church recently. they're so cute. They're gonna have such a cute wedding. Adorable. Like they're just a, a really cute young couple. But they came and they were like, you know, we have 130 people on our guest list and, um, we're thinking that we wanna spend $15,000. And I was like. I mean, wow. Like no shade at all. You guys, listen, I take budgets very, very seriously. I did not come from wealth. I grew up with nothing. So $15,000 is an, it's an extremely large amount of money for a party, right? Like so please do not hear me say, oh my gosh, that's not enough money. But the reality is. To have a wedding like you see on Pinterest, to have a wedding, know, like you see on the knot or like on all of our Instagram feeds, those aren't $15,000 weddings. That doesn't mean you can't have one, but it was a really tough conversation that I had to have with her. I mean, she came to me for advice and I really had to have a hard conversation with her to help her understand that like. It is difficult to host 130 people at Outback for $15,000. You know what I mean? Like, it's very, very difficult to get flowers and photography and a dress and a venue and your, your invitations and your food and your alcohol, like, there's so much that goes into that event that doesn't normally happen at an event that's just like at your house, right? Like there's so much that goes into it and they don't even think about it. They're just like, okay, $15,000. And so that was a very difficult conversation because she came to me for help. So I was very honest with her and I said, you know, you have options. You can cut the guest list significantly. Like to like. 50 or 60, or you can really be thoughtful about how much more you could go up. And so I helped her to understand like, here's an average amount for a dj. Here's an average amount for invitations. Here's some things that you could do yourself. Here's some things that you could get friends to pitch in for. Like, there's lots of options. But what we can't do in 2026 and beyond, I mean, I've been telling my staff this forever, we're planners, right? Like I own a planning company here in Orlando, so I tell my staff all the time, I'm like, your job is to educate your clients, not to become a genie or a fairy godmother. That's not our job as wedding vendors. Our job isn't to say, oh, you wanna spend$15,000 for 130 guests and you wanna have it at a beautiful estate home here in our market, it's, it's just not gonna happen. That would be like bending yourself into a pretzel and you, you simply aren't gonna do that, right? What you need to do is to educate. Your clients that are coming to you and help them to understand there are options. Like I'm not telling you that your budget isn't enough, but I'm telling you, your budget isn't realistic for what you want to do, right? So here's ways that you can fix that. You can cut your guest list, you can trim your vision. You can come up with more money. Our job is to educate, not to become a genie, and I want you to remember that so, so clearly, as you move into 2026, I want you to say to yourself over and over, my job is to educate, not to become a genie, right? I don't grant all wishes. That's not how it works. You have to be able to educate your clients and help them to understand. Now what does that mean for us? It means as part of our marketing, we need to educate our clients. As part of our planning, we need to educate our clients. Everything that we do as part of our sales process, we need to educate our clients. They are planning a wedding most often for the first time. And so right here, this data right here tells us they literally pulled a number out of a hat, that felt like enough, right? I actually even had a luxury client do this to me recently, we were getting ready to do the budget. I said to her, it's gonna cost about this much. It was close to $300,000. I said, this is about how much the wedding is gonna cost based on everything that you guys are looking for. And she said, this was the mother of the bride. She said, um, well, my husband Googled it and said that typically most people spend about $300 a ahead on a wedding. And I was like. Well, I don't know what he Googled specifically, but that's why you hired a planner, because based on your vision, it's gonna cost somewhere closer to a thousand to $1,200 per head. Now, can you plan a wedding for $300 a head? Of course you can. Can we plan the wedding you are looking to do for your daughter that way? No, we can't. And so again, it comes back to education. So we have to say to our clients. If we wanna spend $300 ahead, here's the type of wedding that we're looking for. Like this is what we're gonna be able to do. Or we scale the guest list way back so that we can move the per head price up. Right? There's options, but we are not a genie. Okay? So I know I'm like belaboring this point, but it's because so often in the wedding industry I see us, you know, well, a client only has $40,000 and they have this, this, this, and this, and they're stressing over how to make it happen. I'm like. It's not your job to make it happen. That is literally not your job. Your job is to educate them. And in both of these scenarios that I just gave you one that had a $15,000 budget, one who wanted to spend about a hundred thousand, and I told her her wedding was gonna be 300,000. Both of them ended up increasing their budget and slightly decreasing their guest list. And the reason for that wasn't because they didn't have the money to spend. They genuinely just didn't know. They just didn't know. And so when I educated them and helped them to see what the options were to fix it and to have the vision that they wanted, then they were able to make smarter decisions, right? So it's so important that we do this in our marketing and our sales and in the planning of the actual wedding. So what does that look like when we're educating: venues, planners and photographers. But to be honest, venues, you get the brunt of this because nine times out of 10 clients are shopping for venues number one. They get engaged, they go find a venue. Now, every once in a while they're gonna hire their planner or their photographer first or at the same time as their venue. But most often the venues are getting the brunt of this. And so what that means is that you have to be educating your couples in your marketing. In your brochure that you're sending out at the tour, in the sales process, in the planning, you need to be saying things like an average wedding at our venue for a hundred people with, you know, plated dinner and a call brand bar is this much money, right? Like there's upgrades, it can go up, it can go down, but the average is this. This is about how much you're gonna spend. Be realistic about it. So many planners come to me and they're like. I have this venue I work with. It's such a nightmare because they never give an accurate proposal to the couples, and it's so frustrating because then they come to us and we're like, Hmm, that's not accurate. This is how much you're gonna spend. And they're sad because they've now locked in with this venue. So venues do not, please do not undersell a client how much they're actually gonna spend just to get them to sign, because that's not doing any of us any favors, right? You're gonna get crappy vendors in your venue that are lying to the clients as well. Then you're gonna have frustrated clients who get 60% into their planning and realize they can't forward any of the things that they've waited till the last minute for Right. So, and planners, photographers, this is so important for us too. Speak to it guys. When you're planning out your social media, especially here in first quarter, I want you to be thinking about how many couples just got engaged. Like, ring just went on the finger, they just got engaged. Now what? Right. They need to be thinking about. Their budget, their budget, their budget, their budget. And so we need to help them understand, I think a really fun reel to do. And when I say a reel to do, I mean like do like 20 of these and just spread them out over your content during first quarter is to find a picture on Pinterest of a wedding, maybe even a collage of pictures, and talk about the breakdown of how much that would cost for you. So if you're a florist, find a picture. Even better if it's one of your pictures, right? Don't talk about who the couple was. That's obviously getting into things that our couples might not want us to share about them. But I do want you to. Take a picture, green, screen it behind you, and talk about what's involved in that. Talk about the labor. Talk about the lighting. They may not see. Talk about the rigging that's in it. Talk about the actual blooms that are in it, right? Planners, you can do the same thing. Talk about the vision board. Talk about how much each of those things is gonna cost on average for a hundred people. Photographers talk about why your pho photography costs. What it costs, what questions to ask, how many hours they should be thinking about ways to cut cost, right? Like these are all things that we need to be doing because our couples right now in quarter one are like. They're clueless. They're literally clueless. According to this right here, it says it right here. We all knew this already, but like this data just proves the point is they do not know what it costs, so they're pulling numbers out of a hat. But if you're the vendor who educates them and helps them to understand what it's gonna cost, you're gonna be the one to win their business because they're gonna trust you and they're gonna see you as an expert, and they're gonna be like, thank you for actually explaining that to me. It, it's such an important piece of our jobs as wedding vendors. Okay, so I think I beat that one to death. How did you come up with the number for your original budget? This is so, so important. some of the other top answers were, based on the expected value of monetary gifts from guests. I think that one's silly. I. I actually don't know a single human who's ever done that, but 41% said that that's how they do it. I think that that's insane. the other really large one that people said was based on what friends and family spent on theirs. So I think this is really interesting too. Because, you know, there's so much at play here, right? Like you could have a friend in Oklahoma who gets married, you know, at a farm and you, their best friend are comparing it to your wedding at a beautiful, a estate home in Orlando. Like, it doesn't make sense. They don't take that into account. Or somebody could say, oh, I spent, you know, $50,000 on my wedding. They only had 70 people at their wedding. You're having 150, but you think everything should cost the same. Like, it, it doesn't make sense, but it is the reality of what people do. Another thing that happens, I had this happen with one of my couples last year, they were comparing everything to how much they spent on their other daughter's wedding. Well, come to find out a few months into the planning, that wedding happened 10 years ago. And I was like, guys, listen, I understand everything's more expensive, but post COVID it's like way more expensive. So nothing that you've spent for that wedding is gonna be even remotely the same. And again, that's why you hire a planner. That's why you hire vendors that know what they're doing so they can help you to be educated in this. I just wanna drive this home for 2026, that the more we can educate our couples, the more we can stop getting couples who are like, oh my gosh, I thought I was only gonna spend $500 on my planner. I thought I was only gonna spend $1,500 on my photographer. It's not realistic. But they don't know that, and they're not doing that because they don't wanna pay for your great things. They're doing it 'cause they just don't know. They just don't know. And so it's our job to educate them. Okay, so this next piece of research I find super interesting as well when it comes to our marketing. And this one is how long after you were engaged did you start looking for your wedding vendors? And the reason I think that this was really interesting is because. I think we often think that people get engaged, then start researching their vendors, then reach out and immediately book, and that's just not how the process goes. Okay. So there's research involved. Now some of our couples know a ring is coming. Right? And so, especially like in my ideal customer, my avatar for blush, most of our couples. Are very traditional couples and so very often, we have been well researched prior to them even getting engaged. Like we actually have been hired many, many times by the parents of the bride before. There even was a ring because they're like, we know we want to work with you guys. A friend used you or we've seen your work and like we know we want to work with you, and so we're gonna go ahead and lock you in. And as soon as they get engaged, we'll pick a date. And we're like, okay. So that happens. Right? But what I think is really interesting is understanding that we need to be marketing all the time and even more important than that is we need to understand that our calls to action on our posts need to have strategy behind them. We need to really be thinking about not everyone seeing this post is currently engaged. Right. Some of them are past clients who loved your work, loved working with you, and wants to tell all of their engaged friends about you. Some of them are waiting on a ring, so they're not even engaged yet, and they're like, I'm not gonna reach out till I have the ring. But they're loving everything you're posting, so we need to remind them about what they need to do with our posts. So some examples of that would be, save this for when you're engaged. Remind them. Don't just keep scrolling. Hit the save button, right? Hit the save button Another one that you could use is share this with an engaged friend. Again, that could be for past clients that are on there, or even like bridesmaids who are on and they're scrolling and they're like, oh my gosh, I have to send this to Susie. I know she's getting engaged soon. The friends always know that the engagement's coming. So little things like that, you want to make sure that your CTAs are really covering all of those different people in the researching stages. Because as this data shows, depending on what type of a vendor you are, these couples are reaching out pretty early on. They're at least researching really early on. Another reason I think this is really important is because we have to understand the buying cycle. So I actually have a videographer in my program that we were talking about this the other day because videographers are often booked almost last, right? Almost last in the buying cycle. It's like if there's money left over, then we'll go ahead and we'll reach out to a videographer. I hate that for you, but videographers. Love, right? Love you. Um, it, it is what it is. But understanding that means that when engagement season starts, here around Thanksgiving and then continues through St. Patrick's Day-ish, that first kind of quarter of the year, you have to understand that that may not be your buying cycle. So if you're a videographer, for instance, if According to this data, most couples reached out to videographers or started researching videographers four plus months, which is the last amount of time that was given on this survey. So the, the options are before I was engaged in the first three months, or four plus months after I was engaged, 78% of couples said for videographers, they reached out after four months after they were engaged, which means this first quarter is not really your target booking season as a videographer. And it's, it's helpful to understand that so that not only your marketing can center around the appropriate times, but also so as you're looking at your lead flow, you're not like, oh my gosh, it's first quarter, it's booking season. Why am I not getting tons of leads? Well, it's not your booking season right now. If you're a venue. If you're a venue, 76% of couples said that they started researching venues within three months and the first three months after they were engaged. Now, my guess is it's like the first week after they were engaged, but what I find interesting about this too is it says 20%. All engaged couples research their venue before they were even engaged. So venues this is so much more important for you. Think about that for a second. If engagement season starts around Thanksgiving, how imperative is it for a venue to start marketing? Like really cranking up their marketing and their educational series in like September, right? September, October, before these couples are even engaged and then that way it's hitting. By the time that they're engaged around Thanksgiving and going into the first quarter, right? So it's so important for you to understand when you get booked in the booking process. And while this report is extremely helpful because it gives us so much of this data, what's even more helpful is for you to track your own history. And this is why I preach. I preach, I preach probably in like every third podcast episode. Track your inquiries, track your inquiries. It's the first question I ask every single pro who joins our program. Where's your tracking data on your inquiries? And the reason is because it gives us so much information, it helps us to understand when you typically see the spikes in your booking, when you typically see the spikes in your leads, knowing that is gonna help you to know when to market, how to market, and also to not completely freak out when you have a down month. If you can look back and be like, well, every June is a terrible month for me. It's like, okay, well then what are we freaking out about? Your seasonality. It is what it is, right? So having this information about when your clients buy, when they're researching is super, super helpful. This next data point, how did you find your wedding vendors that you hired? Y'all know, this is like close to my heart, right? Because we talk about it all the time. It's like you need to be on social media. You need to have an omnichannel marketing strategy. So it's really important to me that our clients don't just have one way to get leads into their funnels. All of our students inside of Wedding Pro CEO, we talk about multiple ways to market to couples. So obviously we all love referrals. Some of you like having listing sites, no shade on that, if that's for you. But we also wanna have Instagram, TikTok, strong SEO for Google search. And we also wanna start digging into A.I. and here's why. 80% of all respondents in this survey said, how did you find your wedding vendors that you hired? 80% still said Google search or internet search. 80% you guys. Now I know a lot of you are like, oh, I don't, I don't need to have heavy SEO. I don't need to get found on Google because I have other ways of doing it. And I think you're lying to yourself. because 80% still used a Google search. Now, I will say that with TikTok and Instagram now being included in how Google searches SEO, certainly your social media is playing a really large role in that, but still. Will this change next year? A hundred percent. A.I. was really only a big factor in 2025 for part of the year. Right? in 2026. I think that's gonna change significantly, But for right now, we are still seeing a ton of couples using SEO, internet search, Google, Bing, all of that kind of stuff. So SEO is still king, and you need to be paying attention to whether you're coming up in search or not. Go search yourself. Go Google yourself. Go not your company name because that's obviously gonna come up, but go Google your number one keyword like Orlando wedding planner or Dallas wedding photographer. Do you come up on page one? If not, we need to do some digging into your SEO. the next biggest one was social media with 78% of couples saying that they found their wedding vendors on Instagram, TikTok, any kind of social media source. Now, I'm not gonna belabor this because. We talk about getting found on social media so often here on the Wedding Pro CEO podcast. So this is not something that you need to like be shocked over. I've told you this for literally years, that social media plays a massive role and again, why we need to be omnichannel. If SEO is still king. And you also are posting on Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok. Pinterest is owned by Google, so hello, getting that SEO right there. Now Instagram and TikTok can also be searched. SEO searched by Google. So you posting on all of these different platforms using keyword strategy and also having great SEO on your website is only gonna help you to now have this great omnichannel marketing strategy. A couple that were lower than I actually expected was recommendations from family and friends. So 51% said that, which I thought was actually, lower than I thought. And then also recommendations from wedding planners was only 47%. That's nothing to sneeze at by any means. Obviously these are almost half of all couples are finding their vendors that way, but I do think it's interesting. It was lower than I expected. so this one was one I found it very, very surprising and I don't know if you guys will as well, but I'd love to know in the comments, if you're watching on YouTube, drop into the comments and tell me if any of this data was surprising or if you already knew it. I'd love to know what your. Thoughts are on this data that we're sharing in this podcast. So drop into the comments and tell us, let's get involved in the conversation. But the question is, when hiring wedding vendors what was most important to you and. The one that was chosen the least is someone I knew worked with them, and I thought that that was really interesting. It was scored as very low, and I thought, wow, that's really interesting because so many of us rely on referrals, right? And so you think like, oh my gosh, it's so important that someone I knew worked with them. It's actually ranked really, really low in order of importance, but what was ranked very high, like very, very high is their personality, the vendor's personality. Now, let's talk about that for a second. How do couples even know what your personality is if they haven't worked with you? Hmm. Let me think. One. Your social media, right? This is why it's so important to not be a faceless brand. This is why it's so important to not hide behind your logo, because your personality is huge. They wanna know what are you like? What do you do in your spare time? What's it like to work with you? They want to understand who you are as a person and as a business owner, not just your logo. So. Your social media is so important, but also sharing what other couples have said about working with you. Now, you can do that by getting them to make a review on Google. Obviously that's the best case scenario, and then sharing those reviews on social media so other couples can see them and see what those couples say about working with you. Your personality is key. This was ranked the highest of all of the reasons that someone booked, and I think that that was so interesting to me because I talk about it all the time, like you can't be a faceless brand. You have to make sure that you're talking about who you are all the time. You have to have brand identity. You have to talk about what makes you unique. But if, if there was ever a data point that you guys needed to actually start doing it in 2026, this is it. Your personality is so big. Okay. So two more data points that I found really, really interesting about this report. And you guys, if you're interested in reading the whole report, it's 75 pages long of just data, after data, after data. We'll link it in the show notes below so you can go grab your own report and go support small business because Splendid Insights doing this data, they're like doing the Lord's work for the wedding industry, right? And they put out a new report every year. So if you wanna get the whole report for yourself, just drop down into the description. We'll put a link there for you so that you can grab it. And I'd love for you to do that. Support, small business support, somebody who's really trying to support the wedding industry and, and help the wedding industry grow based on data. Okay. So these last two points are which types of media did you use to plan? I don't think it was surprising. So what type of media did you use to plan your wedding? Um, so wedding websites and wedding blogs was a really high one, 61%, magazine websites. Wedding podcast all really, really high. the ones that ranked low, and I don't think this is surprising. Wedding apps, wedding television. I mean, you watch wedding television, but you're not exactly like. Finding your vendors there, right? A.I. tools was 52%. You guys, 52% A.I. And I think by the time this report comes out in 2026, I think it will be, let's see, we'll come back to this. Um, and, and see, if I was right, I would say it would be closer to like 80%. 75 to 80% will be using A.I. By the time this report comes out next year, but 52% are using A.I. tools. Like that's massive. Right? And then the other one is, what social media platforms did you use while planning your wedding?'cause we all know that they're using social media, but which platforms in particular were most popular? So let's talk about it. 85%. Was Pinterest, so that was the highest. And I don't think that's surprising to any of us. That doesn't necessarily mean they're finding their vendors there, but they're certainly using Pinterest. I would say a hundred percent of our couples are using Pinterest. Right? Of my couples. So, but here it says 85% are using, Pinterest while planning their wedding. So the question is, which social media platforms did you use while planning your wedding? And that doesn't necessarily mean that that's how they found their vendors again, but it does mean that they're using these platforms. And so you showing up, you being present, you being in front of your ideal clients is massively important here, right? So 85% Pinterest. This one did shock me, this statistic shocked me, is 70% YouTube. I was blown away by that, and I'm immediately like, uh, blush needs to be on YouTube. Obviously you guys know Wedding Pros on YouTube Wedding Pro CEO because you're probably watching this on YouTube or you know, we have a YouTube channel. But I found this super interesting that so many couples are using YouTube and the reality is there's not that much. Wedding planning content on YouTube. There's, I mean, there's a lot obviously, but in the scheme of YouTube content, there's really not a ton. So this is a blue ocean for any of you who love being on camera, love creating long form. YouTube is a blue ocean for wedding pros to find couples. Instagram, 62% Tik Toks 74%, and I guarantee you that at least half of you are sleeping on TikTok still, and 74% use Tik Tok to plan their wedding. I think that that is amazing. But even more reason that I want you guys to really listen to this and think. As I'm creating my marketing strategy for 2026, where do I need to show up? How do I need to show up? What do I need to say? How am I creating a marketing plan that's actually going to lead to inquiries coming into my inbox and turning into booked clients? Not just what feels good, what's always worked for me in the past, things are changing, and this is the data that you need to actually create a strong marketing plan and a strong sales plan for 2026. The brutal truth is most wedding pros are gonna listen to all of this data and they're gonna nod along and be like, yes, Brandee. And then they're gonna go right back to this same tired marketing that's been slowly killing their wedding bookings. But not you CEO. If you're listening to this and you're like, I'm an action taker, like I'm the kind that's like I'm in. I want my business to win. If you actually want to win in 2026, you're not one of these people who's just nodding along. You're actually gonna take action, hear this data, and you're gonna go, here's how I'm gonna implement a better strategy for 2026. Because now you know what today's couples value, how they choose, how they spend, what makes them say yes. If your business isn't built around that, you're leaving money and momentum on the table. So here's your next move, CEO. I want you to stop guessing. I want you to stop hoping, stop waiting for better leads, and I want you to book a gap assessment with my team. We'll show you exactly where your sales process is, leaking, bookings, and where your marketing is out of sync with what couples want and what to fix first so that your calendar gets back on track. We don't do fluff in these calls. We don't do vague advice. We just give you the truth and it's backed by your numbers and your data because in 2026, vendors who clinging to the old way won't make it happen. Vendors who adapt, they're gonna scale, so it's your choice. The link to book a Gap assessment with my team is in the description below. I want you to grab a spot before someone else takes yours. And CEO. Hey, listen, if you found this episode valuable, please hit subscribe on whatever platform that you're listening on right now. Make sure you follow the show and turn on notifications. And if you're feeling extra generous, I would love it if you would take two minutes to leave a five star review On the platform of your choice, because those reviews are so helpful to our team to understand what you guys love, what kind of content we can keep making, and it helps other wedding pros know how valuable this information is. thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you next time.

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Brandee Gaar

Host