Wedding Business Solutions

Beth Fox - Confessions of a Gen Z Bride

• Alan Berg, CSP, FPSA, Global Speaking Fellow

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 41:20

Are you losing couples before you even have a chance to connect? What if simply answering their first question—how much do you cost—was all it took to keep them from ghosting you? Would you book more show rounds if you made your pricing transparent and reduced the friction for Gen Z clients? In this episode, I share a first-hand account from a Gen Z bride and wedding industry insider about why she ghosted her first venue, what vendors are getting wrong with their first responses, and how follow-up and adding genuine value—not just sales tactics—can turn inquiries into bookings.

Listen to this new episode for insights on how clear communication, upfront pricing, and a personal, helpful touch can set you apart and convert more of today’s couples.

About Beth: 

With over 10 years of experience in customer service, I’m passionate about building genuine, lasting relationships; whether that's supporting clients, connecting with venues, or working as part of a brilliant team. I enjoy sharing my knowledge of the wedding industry, offering a unique perspective of an ex venue coordinator and current GenZ bride-to-be. 


Contact info: Beth@weddingdates.co.uk 


LinkedIn Handle: www.linkedin.com/in/bethlucyfox


If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


AI For The Real World - A Practical Guide to AI for Wedding & Event Pros is your easy way to learn how to harness the power of AI, no matter which AI tools you use. 

Get Yours Today at www.ShopAlanBerg.com 

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks. 

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site: 

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com 

Want to hear a Gen Z bride dish the tea? Yeah, I said that. Listen to this episode, see where we're going with this. Hi, it's Allen Berg. Welcome back to another episode of The Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so happy to have Beth Fox on to talk about what Gen Z brides are thinking these days. How you doing, Beth?

I'm good, thank you. Thank you for having me on as well.

Well, thank you for the post you made on LinkedIn the other day, which was something to the effect of, I'm a Gen Z bride and I just ghosted my first wedding venue, right?

Yes, that's me.

That's you. So, so tell everybody what happened.

So a little bit of background really on me is that I was a former venue coordinator myself. So I worked in weddings. I am currently an industry specialist. So I know a lot about weddings and I know a lot of background. And I remember going into the planning process, I was like, I'm not going to do what every bride does and ghost people because I found it really annoying. Unfortunately, obviously that has since changed.

I was doing a bit of research, reaching out to some venues to host a celebration of our evening reception, and I just was getting a little bit frustrated, firstly with the amount of venues that didn't have pricing listed on websites. It takes a lot of time to actually have to go through the websites, and then I dig through like their Instagram pages, their TikTok pages, and it takes time to do all that stalking.

So I contacted this one venue that I really liked the look of. They didn't have pricing on their website, but I was happy to look past it because I was really into their whole vibe and what they were about. My message initially was something to the effect of, I'm only looking at pricing currently. I have X amount of guests. We're very flexible on dates, but here is a rough guide. This is what I want to do for food. Can you send me over your menus and a rough price guide?

The response I got back addressed none of that. It was literally just, are you available to come in for a tour either tonight at 8 PM or tomorrow at 8 PM? And you know when you just think, no, I'm not.

Like, I just thought if this was a conversation face to face and I turned to you and said, hi Alan, I'm interested in your services, can you send me a price? And you said, no, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to ignore every question you've asked and go straight in for a hard sell. Like, it just would sound so disjointed. And I thought, well, why are we still doing that? Why is that still something that's happening? Yeah, despite what all of the experts are saying.

So I didn't respond. I ghosted them and I've got no shame about it whatsoever.

Okay, so a couple of things here. First of all, you ghosted them. Did they follow up again?

No, they never followed up with me.

Wow. Okay, so everybody listening here, this is not a venue thing. This is a vendor thing, supplier thing. Beth happens to be in Ireland. Doesn't matter. I've spoken all around the world. It's the same thing everywhere.

So you inquired, and it's funny because I posted your post. You allowed me—I asked your permission to repost. And it's funny how people were on both sides of this. People like, well, of course, you know, of course she ghosted them. And the other side's like, well, you didn't show us what the venue said. So you sent me what the venue said, which is exactly what you said, which is, do you want to come in tonight at 8 o'clock or tomorrow night at 8 o'clock? Never addressed any of your questions.

And again, I've been talking about this for years. You've probably heard me speak about this. Everybody listening here has heard me speak about this. Yet in the last 2 years, we've secret shopped over 900 companies, and almost half of them are asking for the call, the Zoom, the tour right away. Exactly what you're saying, why you ghosted.

So I actually did a solo podcast, and I don't know if it's coming out before or after this, but it was called She Said the Quiet Part Out Loud, right? Because that's what you did. You could have just ghosted and left it at that, but you didn't. You went online and out of frustration and out of benevolence to help everybody here, you said, hey, I'm going to help you guys, here's what's going on.

But a couple of things here. First of all, they asked for the tour right away, and second of all, they never followed up, which is crazy. But yet somebody else posted—I’m actually doing a presentation this coming week on conversion, and I added something new because someone posted on Facebook to vendor to vendor, how many times do you follow up? That was it. Just how many times do you follow up with a lead? And I was trying to keep track because there were over 100 responses on this. Actually, it was 132 when I finally did the screenshot. And thanks to AI, I actually was able to take the whole thing, turn a screenshot into a PDF, put that into AI, have it analyze. And 57% of the people said once or twice. And that’s it.

It’s absolutely bonkers, right, to think that, right?

Okay, so obviously this venue, you moved on, right? Okay, what's been your experience in terms of people following up? They asked for the tour right away. Were they the only ones that did that, or—I don't know how many venues you reached out to.

So they weren't the only ones that asked for the show round straight away, but they were the only ones that ignored all of the questions and asked for a show round. So that is why I was so strongly like, absolutely not.

And the thing is, my sort of position—I offer a bit of a unique perspective working in weddings, being with WedPro and an industry specialist in that sense, but then also being Gen Z bride-to-be myself. The reason that I would make the post and initially put my thoughts out there was because of my position in my company and trying to be that sort of industry expert. But the thing is, there's so many Gen Z brides and grooms, I should say, who don't work in weddings and don't have that background or knowledge and are ghosting venues. And I can guarantee it's the exact same reason why I am as well.

So I find with the follow-up, and what I find I'm saying a lot of times when I'm giving talks, is outside of weddings, have you ever had it where you see a text from a friend, get a WhatsApp come in, and you think, oh, I'm in the middle of something right now, open it, read it, think I'll respond to them later, put it down to the side, and then like a week later you get another text from them to say, hey, you just left me on read. Like, I do that all the time, and that's what Gen Z are doing as well.

So fine, you get like the first follow-up come through. I hate the phrase “I'm just chasing you” or “I'm just following up.” I hate that. It's putting the ball very much in the couple's court. But regardless, at least they're sending something. But they read that and think, oh gosh, yeah, I meant to get back to this venue. But I completely forgot. I'm in the middle of my working day. Let me respond to them later this evening. And then before you know it, like, it's gone. The couple's gone. That's my opinion on it. And definitely something I do.

Well, it's true because I actually start some of these presentations, or it's definitely in them, where I say everybody in this room is ghosting somebody right now. I was just on a stage in front of over 1,000 people. And I was doing a presentation on conversion and I said, everybody here is ghosting somebody. I'm ghosting somebody, you're ghosting somebody. And it's exactly what you said. It's not that we don't want to get back to you, it's that you're not my priority right now. Something else is taking my attention—work, driving, whatever it is.

And, you know, as they say down south in the US, bless our hearts, we intend to get back to you, but we don't because there's 75 more messages on top of that one by the time we might think about doing that.

So following up. Now, has anybody been following up with you? Let's start with that.

Yes, and the follow-ups that I really like are the ones that are almost, they're useful, they're giving me helpful information. So I've had a venue recently follow up with me and invited me to an open showcase that they're putting on at the weekend. But even just some places will send like blog posts or things like that. There is a CTA question at the end that's like, oh, you know, you can call to action, by the way.

CTA, call to action. Yes.

Sorry, should clarify that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Who will say like you can book a show round or book a call just as a little snippet at the end, which I don't mind because the bulk of the message there is to help. But yeah, I have had that before.

And how many times though? How many times? Because what you're saying again, I thank you. You are validating everything I talk about, which is add value. Every contact should add value. And I actually have my AI, Ask Alan Anything, is trained not to ever have you say, just checking in. There's always supposed to be value. Now, you might have a variation of that, you know, checking in to see how your planning is going. Here's some information that might help you, but never, I'm just checking in. As a matter of fact, I have a GPT which reads the chat logs looking for when it said, just checking in.

But it reads both sides of it. So if the vendor had written just checking in, it'll tell me that, but it's not allowed to say, tell them you're just checking in. Because again, you just said it, there's no value to that. Right? But the fact that you're following up is—now, did you put up—did you book a venue yet?

No, I am still hunting. There are a couple that are on my radar that I'm really into at the minute. And there's one in particular actually that I think just did fantastically. They did contact me through my LinkedIn post and through LinkedIn.

Okay.

It's a venue called NQ64 in Birmingham. I don't know if I am allowed to say them or not, but I will say them because they're fantastic.

Okay.

And I mentioned that actually they are a bar, like me and my partner go there all the time. We really like the space. So I would be interested in hearing more about what they have to offer. They offered me to come in. It's an arcade bar. They offered me to come in and view the space and said that they also give us a drinks token voucher and some arcade, like free games to play as well. And I just thought it's not always about the freebies. But things that you can add in there just to entice people work so, so well.

And yeah, I did feel very like validated, I suppose, and like they wanted to host my wedding, like I wasn't just another number for them.

Right, right.

Okay, everybody kept touching base as well, right?

So a few things there. You did know them already, okay, which is an advantage. But it was the tone of what they said, the fact that they're adding value. They did offer you a little something, a little enticement to come in. Being an arcade, it's completely different space than a banquet room or something like that. Not everybody has that. A lot of people do offer a drink when they come in, but it's not a bar. It's just, come in, we'll give you some champagne or something like that.

But interesting. So let me go back. If the first venue that you really liked, right, how many venues did you reach out to?

I'm being honest with you, I'm very not very decisive. I have contacted over 20 venues.

Okay, but when you reached out to that first venue that said, do you want to come in at 8 o'clock and 8 o'clock, how many venues had you reached out to at that point?

At that point, probably about 10.

About 10. Okay, still a good chunk, still more than average, but you did. And of that original 10, are any of them still on your radar?

The two that are in my shortlist were both from that initial 10.

Okay, okay. And again, because they responded better, they didn't ask for the show round, which is what they call a tour. Yeah, in England or in the UK. Okay, so now have you started looking at any other vendors yet, or you don't have the venue yet so you can't?

We are holding for on vendors per se until I've sort of got the venue. But again, because I'm a previous wedding coordinator, I will more than likely use our recommended suppliers because I loved them and I've worked with them so many times.

Right, right. But again, experience there. But interesting because you're in the industry, but you're having the same experience shopping for a venue that everybody is having, only they'll have it with all these other vendors because they haven't had that experience as you.

So yeah, you reached out to that first 10 all at the same time, all around in the same day?

Yes, it was all the same day. And I think that's what's—just to quickly sort of jump back on the vendor thing—I'm already overwhelmed just from looking at a venue and not having to worry about thinking of vendors or suppliers because I have that contact list. So when we're thinking and looking at other couples who not only have to do this for venues but also photographers, cakes, dresses, flowers, all of these other things, I now understand even more why it's so overwhelming and stressful, because I would hate it if I had to do all of that research as well, right?

The average wedding has 12 to 14 services, which means going through this 12 to 14 times. And then if you add in the complexity where a venue could be just a venue and you have to go get a caterer separately and you have to get the bar arranged separately, or it could be some combination of those things. And you're in the industry, you knew that going in, but yet you still have to deal with that same thing. If we love this venue, but we have to get a caterer, now I have to go shopping for caterers. But if they're already the venue and the caterer, oh, okay, that saves me some brainpower here. And it comes down to this decision paralysis.

Now, part of this is self-inflicted. If you looked at 20 venues, that, that's decision paralysis. But you also know yourself, and you probably do that with a lot of your decisions, right?

Yeah.

Right. And then there are other people. I've told this story before. A good friend of mine, two sons, one of them, like you, a lot of different choices, looked at a lot of different things. His younger brother, they went to the one venue, they booked the venue, right? And that's what they were doing. It's just check, check, check, check, check, check. Let's get this done. We're planned. This, yeah, this looks good. This is good enough. We don't need to look any further. And that's personality.

So everybody listening, you shouldn't sell the way you buy because not everybody buys the way that you would buy. And so you, Beth, buy opposite the way I buy. Right? I do my research, I reach out to the one, or maybe three if it's something I've never done before. I've already done the research, any of them would probably be a good choice, and now it's who gets back to me, who follows up, who gives me the information, who answers the questions, you know, all those different things.

So let's circle way, way back to the beginning about pricing. Okay, now you did reach out to this venue even though they had a terrible answer because they had no pricing, but you really liked what they had done elsewhere. So it's funny how they did so well to attract you and then repel you at the same time. Yeah. How many of the venues that are on your list had pricing versus not? Just approximately.

I would say probably about 70% did and 30% didn't. Those are the ones that I'd actually contacted. I did also disregard so many that didn't have pricing on the website. And as I said with that one venue, although they didn't, they checked the box in every other aspect. And honestly, if you're not putting your pricing on your website and you can't tick absolutely every box that specifically suits one couple's needs, you probably are just going to get passed off.

So yeah, there were so many venues that kind of like I liked the look of, I liked the vibe, I liked the feel of the website, but maybe it was like their drinks didn't quite suit me or the menu didn't quite suit me, but I also couldn't find pricing and I was just like, oh, I'm not going to even bother asking if that's personal, like customizable.

You know, and it's really interesting because as consumers, we're all looking for a price. And I loved what you had said. Can you give me an idea of price? You didn't say give me to the euro, to the penny, to the whatever, to the drachma. You didn't say give me exactly the price. Can you give me an idea?

So let's talk about pricing. Okay, we know about no price. Some people are going to get passed by unless they checked all these other boxes, because there's other beautiful venues, great service, great reviews, right? All those things.

In terms of price, full pricing, complete pricing versus a starting price versus a price range, what are your thoughts?

I personally prefer it when it is like your package pricing are just as they are. But I do understand and have spoken to so many venues that are like, we can't do that because we're fully bespoke pricing. And I would say in that sense, I've seen it a couple of times where in like the real wedding galleries or the real wedding blogs, they'll have these gorgeous photos of real couples, which I also prefer over styled shoots as a side note.

Nice.

Their testimonials, but then on average, a wedding this size costs this. So it's not saying you can have exactly this, this, this for exactly this price, but it's saying like on average ballpark figure, this is what you're looking at. Because what I'm looking for—oh, are you still there?

I'm here.

Oh, my computer just shut down then randomly. And what I'm looking for when I'm looking at pricing is not necessarily exactly to the penny or the cent what it's going to cost. I'm looking to sort you into 3 categories. You are either below my budget and potentially might not be a good fit because I just have a little bit more to spend. You are exactly in my budget with a little bit of leeway, or you are way far over my budget.

So it's not necessarily that I'm going to tie you down to a price because that's what you told me. I just need to sort out, is it worth me reaching out and booking a show round with you, or are you just going to be $10,000 over what my budget is?

Right, right. So again, the idea of price is what we're all thinking. Just, just, just tell me.

Well, again, you haven't booked your venue yet, so I was going to ask you if you went over your budget, but we don't know that yet until you actually—so not asking for any numbers, how did you set the budget?

The budget was pretty much set. So I sort of had in the background of my head, I knew that the venue typically costs 50% of your budget. It's the biggest part of things. So we just sort of worked out, okay, if we were to have it in this date in 9 months' time, okay, so we've got like 8 paychecks between now and then. How much can we put aside per month realistically to be able to afford this celebration? So that's kind of how we did it, was kind of, okay, the maths behind it really.

Okay, right. So you worked into we can afford this, but again, I'll have to ask you this after you booked everybody if you went over that, because we don't know, right? We don't know.

But you also, having been in the industry, you have an idea what things cost, which gives you an advantage over other people. And whenever we're buying something we've never bought before, it's hard to set a budget because you don't have that history. You don't have that previous experience.

And it's actually a slide in my presentation next week. People, they don't buy their budget. They buy the results that they want, that they can afford. And sometimes you have to reach up. And I tell this story about my son's wedding a couple of years ago. All budgets can be changed, right? It's just a number you made up. So all budgets can be changed.

And when they were going to have—well, they ended up with a non-traditional wedding, but when it was going to be a traditional wedding, they were told by their planner their budget wasn't enough for a live band. And when my son told me that without telling me the budget, because I didn't ask, I said, you can have a band. Mom and I will pay for the band. That'll be a part of our gift. So their budget just went up by thousands and thousands of dollars because it can get changed.

Or if Aunt Sally says, I'll pay for the photo booth, or somebody says, you don't need towels. Can I pay for the DJ? Or something like that. Your budget can all of a sudden get changed. My son's going through it now with the baby registry. They have the baby registry on there, and apparently one of his friends went in and checked off a lot of things, which was fine. I was trying to get my wife not to do that. So yeah, you should have seen the shopping cart in Target the other day. But anyway, so we don't know if you're going to go over your budget yet. We'll find out about that later when we do the recap about this.

So you're down to 2 venues. Have you done the show rounds yet?

I haven't yet, no.

Okay. But you figured that you're probably going to go look at these 2?

Yeah, definitely going to go and look at these 2. The thing, we are going a little bit non-traditional with the wedding as well, so we are actually going to, I'd say, probably the UK's equivalent of Vegas, which is Gretna Green in Scotland. So it's kind of like an elopement place. We are going there and we're marrying in August. That's booked, sorted, paid, and done.

What I'm currently looking for is like my evening celebration with the 100-odd guests that we couldn't cart up to Scotland with us. So that's what I'm currently looking for. And I think where my head is at at the minute—and I do think it's actually becoming quite more popular for people to do this—so couples from the UK, I saw it, did fly out to Vegas, do that, and then come back for the evening reception.

And I think in these cases it's so important to understand that, okay, well, right now I'm just under 6 months out from a wedding day whilst also trying to plan a celebration whilst also still working full-time and doing everything like that. And I think with this elopement being on the rise and seeming more popular, I do think people need to be conscious that time is precious and making sure that you're not just sending out fluff and faff to people, making sure it's actually worth their time to read over and to come in to see the space as well.

Well, just to respond, because part of your message was, please start treating these as conversations and not as sales. Right. And again, you said the quiet part out loud because the conversation is started when the contact form gets filled out or when the email or the WhatsApp or the text message or the Facebook message, the Instagram message, the TikTok message, any of these messages go. But the conversation just started.

And exactly what you said before is if you wouldn't say this in person to someone, or I say if you wouldn't say this on the phone to them, don't write it. Don't write it. Would you be that aggressive on the phone? Somebody calls up, hi, I'd like to get some pricing. You gave good information, right? Said, here's the number of guests and all that. And if they said, well, so do you want to come in tonight or tomorrow night? Like, I just asked you a question. Yeah, you're not answering my question.

And if you saw her LinkedIn post or my LinkedIn post, you did the capitalized one word with a period. That did not answer any of my questions, right? That's what you did there. Yeah, it's got to be frustrating, and it would be frustrating for us as a consumer. And I see all the time people doing things that I wonder, gosh, if just turn the table, if you were the customer, how would you feel about that? Right.

And yeah, as far as the Vegas thing, well, you know, what if you're having it at the church, right? You're having a ceremony at a church and then you're having the reception. It's just booking reception only, right? Or maybe a drinks reception. We call it the cocktail hour here, drinks reception, and then the reception. That's it. Every inquiry is a good inquiry until proven otherwise.

Yeah.

If you want to get more inquiries, again, not putting price doesn't get you more inquiries because some people like you are bypassing and they never see it. They just never saw you go to their website and then just leave. Right?

Yeah, exactly.

But I think if I could hammer this home, an idea of price is what people are looking for. Tell me if I'm in the ballpark. And I think you actually even wrote that, you know, let me know if I'm in the ballpark. And that's why I love a price range where if you said we go from here to here, but our average is this, or most couples end up around here, you've satisfied the transparency of you gave me an idea. And now you know 3 buckets.

But I want to go back to one thing you said. If it's lower than our budget, you also were—your face said, we're probably going to bypass you too.

Yes, I think what a lot of people don't also consider on the flip side when putting pricing on the website—this is something that I learned from an industry speaker called Kelly Mortimer back in the UK when I was in the space, and she summarized it perfectly. If you're booking a holiday and your budget is £10,000, you're not going to look at the all-inclusives that are around the sort of £1,000, £2,000 mark. You are going to look at spaces and holidays at the £10K budget.

And so what venues are potentially missing out on by not putting their prices on the website is a luxury market of weddings where they can show like, yes, I can host weddings that are 15, 20K, but if your pricings aren't on the website, people with that budget might just bypass you, might just assume you can't.

So I think that's another reason why I just think it's so important to have pricing on the website. But I find with speaking to my friends as well, somehow all three of my best friends are engaged at the same time, which has been fantastic in our group chat. But all of us have sort of said it's not necessarily about the money and sticking within budget. Obviously we are trying to, but it's about value for money as well.

If I've got like one venue that can for £5,000 give me just the room hire, and then I've got another venue that can give me £6,000, but that includes your room hire, maybe a drink for everyone and the food. I'm much more likely to go for the more expensive option that's got a few more inclusions in there.

Right, right. Again, value. And that's what I was saying. People, they don't buy a number, they buy the results. Now, sometimes you can't afford them. We get that. Sometimes you can't afford them. But the important lesson here is that people that have more money to spend know they have more money to spend, and you're not chasing them away when you put your numbers on your website. You're actually attracting people towards the higher end because they think, oh, you can do the quality work that I'm looking for because I see that.

And I think I've told this story here. I know I've told it from the stage where years ago you would never see the price of an expensive car. And I say expensive, I hate using the word expensive, but a higher priced car. So you would never see the Mercedes-Benz, the BMW, the Audi pricing, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, right? You'd never see a price in an ad, right? Because that was too much, right? You never see that. And now I had in my Instagram feed—I’ve used this in a presentation—a Bentley, a lease on a Bentley car came up in my Instagram feed, right? And I look at car stuff, so that's why, right?

But the lease was $2,999 a month for the lease on the car, and they weren't afraid to say it because the people that can afford that are like, oh, look, it's only $3,000 a month for that, right? The same with apartments and things.

And when you were talking about the price range and the 3 below the budget, with the budget and above, I think about like shopping for a house. You put, I'm looking for houses between here and here, right? And the houses below that don't show up. They don't show up. Now we also have filters. I need this many bedrooms, this many bathrooms, things like that. But you're saying, I want to see this in here. And then if you can't find it, then you expand the range a little bit. You expand the range a little bit, expand, and usually up, not down. Yeah, usually, usually up. It's the same thing.

So again, if you're afraid to put pricing on the website, understand that you're missing out on inquiries of people who can afford you. I don't like starting prices because they're misleading, because almost nobody pays that number. And you've anchored that one number in somebody's head. So when they say, how much is it? And you tell them a number that's double that, and they say, whoa, what happened to—what happened to £5,000 or £10,000 or £20,000, whatever the number is? Oh no, no, that was for 50 people on a Tuesday, right? There you go.

Yeah.

So that's why I love price range. And you can have different ranges for different times of the year, in season, out of season, weekday, weekend, things like that. But the transparency will attract people.

And then also in conversion, knowing the price ahead of time, you're more likely to book that tour, book that show round, because your question was already answered. Is this in my budget? And I’m working with a company that has VenueX AI. They have AI that responds to inquiries, has the conversation. And I was just looking at tracking with them, and the venue that had the highest conversion had prices on their website. They had 75% of the people that inquired booked the showroom. 75%.

That’s amazing, right?

At the low end, it was like 29%, right, where they didn't have pricing on there. Or some people, it's in a PDF, hard to read. And one of my clients said, we give them the price and they ask how much. It was page 11 of a 14-page PDF. Yeah, right.

All right. So let's just touch on that before we finish. Have you had people sending you brochures?

Yes. Yeah, I've had the brochures, I've had PDFs, and the thing that I—if it's also difficult to find your pricing, if I've got to open a PDF tab here to look at room hire, then another one for your menus, then another one for your drinks, and suddenly I've got to do all these calculations to work out a cost, right? I hate that as well. Like, at least you've got your rough pricing on there, but I don't want to have to open a million tabs to figure out what the cost is going to be.

And I think something that a lot of people are scared of that they shouldn't be, because I had no issue with it, is an automated message first. If I inquire with a space or a venue and I get a message back within 2 minutes, I know 9 times out of 10 it's going to be an automated message, and that's fine as long as that message acknowledges that—don't try to pretend to be a person, like, I know you're a bot.

Just saying like, your inquiry's reached us safely. We're either out running a wedding, we are out of the office, but in the meantime, here's our packages and pricing, and also here's a link to our photo gallery or a link to our TikTok page, something that's still beneficial and is still potentially answering the questions I had in the first place with the packages and the pricing. Because it's just so fast-paced, a venue that's given me an answer within 2 minutes or given me information within 2 minutes is immediately ahead of the game for a venue that's given me that information in 2 days' time.

Okay, but that's an auto response that has some value-add, not just, yeah, we received your message.

Oh, yeah, that's it.

Okay.

100%.

Have you had any where you got the automated message but then never got any follow-up?

None that I can think of. I do think typically I've at least then gotten one other message to say like, hi, Beth. Yep, we've received your inquiries. Did you have any questions from our brochure? And I'm like, well, yeah, I had questions. I emailed them to you in my first message.

Right. So I'm personally not a fan of sending the brochures or the links because they've already made the inquiry. And if you send me to TikTok, every other venue is on TikTok. You send me to Instagram, every other venue is there and on Pinterest.

So pricing, certainly you could send an idea of pricing. And again, I don't think you need a PDF. I think, you know, thanks for reaching out. You know, we're going to personally get back to you. To give you an idea of our pricing, it ranges from here to here. Most of our couples average here. That would be, again, adding value.

Have you been reading their messages more on your phone or on a laptop or a desktop?

On my phone. It's always on my phone. Yeah. My spreadsheet's on my laptop, but I read everything on my phone.

Okay. She just self-identified left brain spreadsheet. Got it. All right. There you go. Now those brochures that you're opening on your phone, those are A4 letter size here in the States.

A4.

Were any of them readable without pinching?

You can definitely tell when venues have looked at PDFs on their phone and ran a test on it on phones as compared to when they've just put it on the website on the laptop. And it is like the spacing looks weird sometimes and the photos don't quite fit. Everything's a bit smushed. As you said, you often have to zoom in.

And I wouldn't say it's off-putting in a sense that I won't take the time to read it because I will. But just subconsciously, it just comes across as a little bit old-fashioned. Like, I can tell you're not—or you might be tech savvy, but like, you don't come across as very tech savvy.

Well, it's your impression. That's what it is, your impression. Did anybody send you to a pricing page, maybe a hidden pricing page that wasn't on the site?

Yeah, I did get a few that were like, okay, this is the link to our pricing.

That wasn't a PDF, that was actually a responsive web page. Okay.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, right.

And that less friction then, because you can—well, theoretically you can read it better. It could still be formatted poorly, but theoretically you could read it better.

And what you've described is friction in so many different ways, and friction makes us go elsewhere. Yeah, that's what it is. No pricing could make you go elsewhere unless you ticked all the boxes. That's a lot of friction. To get to that point, right? Auto-response without value, no auto-response, no response, no follow-up, asking for the show round. All of this is friction.

So we're running out of time here. Any thoughts, last thoughts to the suppliers, the venues, the vendors listening in the US, in the UK, Ireland, around the world?

I think what's super important to have in the back of your mind and to remember is that people like to buy, but they don't like to be sold to. If you are leading with, I need to hit targets, I need you to come in because I need the commission and I need to make this sale, it's not going to work out.

If you're going in instead thinking, I'm going to guide these people, I really want to host their wedding, I want to get to know their background and how they came to be and how they came to find us, you are much more likely going to get the booking than if you are just going in with those sleazy hard sales tactics.

And I've said it before, it's a privilege every time they choose you as the venue, the caterer, the photographer, the DJ, whatever, because you're the only one that's going to get the opportunity to do that wedding. And that is a privilege every time. And you need to treat it as that.

And I tell a story about a venue in Texas years ago. I was in there. And she said, I've had my venue for 25 years. And when the day comes when a couple walks down the aisle and I don't get a little teary, that's when I know I'm done. Because it's that important every single time. And you have to treat it as that.

Well, Beth, thank you so much for sharing your story. I will have you back later. Later afterwards, we'll do a little recap of how things went. Inquiring minds are going to want to know which venue you took and how you got those other vendors selected there. But thank you for saying the quiet part out loud. I do have the show notes, which you sent me some information there, so take a look at the show notes, find out a little bit more about Beth. And again, thank you for sharing your story with us, and best of luck with the wedding planning.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2026 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


Head Shot

Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

Host