Here are the 15 things I wish I had known before I started planning weddings as a career:

1) How important SEO {search engine optimization} is. Seriously. If you don’t understand it, there are many tutorials online and people who can help you. Get professional SEO help if you don’t want to learn it yourself.

2) That I would love business as much as I like planning weddings.  Sometimes I love the creativity of building a business more than the creativity of event design.

3) That some of my closest friends would be other planners and wedding professionals.

4) How many different types of table linens you can rent.  No, really. I had no idea that I could spend hours looking for just the right shade of aubergine.  Actually, I didn’t know what aubergine was before I worked in the wedding industry.

5) How hard I would be willing to work to make my company a success. Having a career I am really passionate about makes a big difference. There are many reasons why event planners don’t succeed.

6) That the sizes of rental tables and linens would be ingrained in my head.  120″ round, 90×156, 108″, 90×132, etc…it’s like learning multiplication tables in grade school then you never forget.

7) Working the actual wedding day would be the hardest physical work I have ever done.  Fifteen hours on my feet is A LOT even if I’m working out on a regular basis. You may want to read about the reasons not to become a wedding planner for more details about this.

8) Having my clients hug me and thank me for producing an incredible wedding would be the most rewarding part of my job.

9) Having a disrespectful client who treated me like a servant was my worst wedding season. It still makes me cringe that I let them take advantage of my time and services. Lesson learned.

10) That I would form close relationships and lasting friendships with my clients.

11) That I was a good designer. When I started, I knew I was good at logistics and being organized but it wasn’t until my fourth year of business when I realized I had an eye for design.

12) That I would ever want to do anything other than plan weddings. I still enjoy wedding planning but also opened and ran StudioWed Denver for 6 years and launched the Planner’s Lounge in the fall of 2011.

13) That I love to lead people but I don’t like to manage. When I worked in the corporate world, I thought I would be a great manager. By having my own business for more than 13 years, I know that I am a big picture person who loves to lead and teach but hates to manage or even worse, micro-manage. Training and managing event staff takes a significant amount of time and effort.

14) That I can handle an extremely large amount of responsibility and tasks without being stressed.  This doesn’t always apply to my personal and family life but on the wedding day, I am on my “A” game and can handle anything that happens without getting stressed.

15) How much I would grow as a person.  Having a wedding planning business is like taking multiple personal growth seminars in a very short amount of time.  Not only have I learned an immense amount about myself, I have grown more than I ever would have imagined.

What do you wish you would have known when you first started your event planning business?

Are you a new or aspiring wedding planner?

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