As an aspiring wedding planner, when you find a position or a company you’re interested in working for, grabbing their attention and making a quality first impression is very important. Your approach, effort, creativity, and attention to detail will weigh heavily on the impression you’re making.

Here are 10 Secrets on Getting Hired for a Wedding Planner Job:

1) Send the applicant a personal video.

Professional wedding planners get many calls and emails from aspiring wedding planners who want to work for them. Frankly, these job inquiries are often very generic and easy to ignore.

To stand out, send a personalized video message using the recipient’s name, referencing their business, and expressing your sincere interest. I am positive you will stand out and the person seeing the video will be thrilled to instantly have a sense of your personality and creativity, which is so important in this industry.

2) Have a web presence.

Create a wedding planning portfolio online, even if you do not have much experience in the wedding industry. Buy a website domain, publish a blog, share images of events, photo shoots, and creative projects you have done or that you are working on. Include a professional photo of yourself and a few paragraphs about your personal and professional experiences.

Knowing where you’re from, where you went to school, where you live, what your availability is, and why you reached out to this event planning company specifically will help you stand out and create opportunities to connect and get noticed so that you can become a wedding planner

3) Carefully curate your social media accounts.

A potential employer is checking you out and vetting you—as a potential quality member of their team and an extension of their beloved brand. Poor grammar, foul language, or inappropriate photos will immediately turn most off. Keep your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media accounts clean and appropriate. Check out the key guidelines for wedding and event planners using social media.

4) Be active on Instagram Stories.

I’d love to be able to get to know who you are, what you do, and how you spend your time and express yourself. I am looking to work with creative and interesting people who are current, tech-savvy, and doing cool things. I’d love to see where you’re eating, where you are going on vacation, and how you’re spending your free time.

5) Make yourself knowledgeable and marketable.

Attend networking events and read industry blogs and articles. Check out local chapters of national organizations like NACE and ILEA and attend local meetings to get connected to people in the wedding and events industry in your area. Here are strategies for effective networking as a wedding professional.

6) Follow the planner or company you’re interested in.

Get to know them and reference your knowledge of their work and/or life in your initial contact. Find something you have in common and make that connection.

Consider engaging with them on social media and commenting on their posts if appropriate. Then detail specifically how you can add value to their company through specific skills or areas where you excel.

For example:

• I can write 3-5 blog posts for you each month, here is an example of my writing.
• I can help you grow your Instagram following by 20%. Here are the tools I’ll use to do that.
• I’ll instantly become indispensable to you on the day of an event, by always arriving early, enthusiastic, eager to help, prepared, and ready for a long day.

7) Celebrate your skills and highlight what makes you special or different.

Lead with this information when reaching out to a wedding planning company to inquire about a job. Get their attention early in a confident yet humble way. Have you won awards, been published, have a post that’s gone viral, have a past boss or client that has said something incredible about you? Make it difficult or impossible for us to not hit reply and want to learn more about you and your skills.

8) Incentivize the planner or employer to want to connect with you.

Inquire about opportunities to shadow the planner, work reasonably on a trial basis, or volunteer for a charity project they are involved in. Wedding planning is a very competitive field. You may need to start out as a volunteer to gain experience.

9) Show them what you can do.

Share relevant examples of your work, experience, role on the event day, blog posts that have attracted great traffic, or something you’re extremely proud of. Here are 4 ways to gain experience in event planning.

Have a flawless resume that is compelling, well written, and looks great. Hire a graphic designer and copy editor if you are not experienced in these areas. They can make your resume creative and relevant to the role you are interested in and make it stand out in a crowded job market.

In your cover letter, include details such as:

• What’s your favorite part of an event?
• What skills are you most looking to develop?
• What is the superpower that makes you indispensable to an employer?
• What gaps can you fill that may be missing in the business you’re interested in?

If you can provide answers to these questions in your wedding planner job inquiry, you will stand out among the competition.

10) Follow up.

Request a phone call, meeting in person, or an opportunity to get better acquainted by providing support for an upcoming wedding or connecting at a future networking event. Many aspiring wedding planners do not follow up after sending an initial job inquiry. Set reminders in your calendar to follow up via email and on the phone. Continue to connect with the business on social media to keep you at the top of their mind.

Bonus:

Overall the best advice we can provide is to be genuine, be patient, yet persistent. Be kind and be gracious. This is a demanding, yet rewarding industry.

It’s likely that the wedding professional you’re reaching out to is busy and in need of your expertise, but they may be overwhelmed with their own responsibilities. The thought of hiring and training someone new may be daunting but necessary. Make it easy for the person to get to know you and your qualifications and to see if you are the right person to help them accomplish their business goals and meet their current staffing needs.

Have you successfully connected with a professional who hired you for an event planning job in a creative, original, or thoughtful way? If so please share your approach in the comments. We’d love to hear your ideas and are open to the next big thing in our industry, especially ways to improve the use of technology and social media to grow your career in the events industry!

Best of luck!!

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This is a guest post from Tammy Golson Fallon. Tammy is the owner and creative director of Tammy Golson Events, and a co-founder of Boston Planners Dining Club. With over 10 years of experience, Tammy plans luxury weddings for couples throughout New England, in New York City, and in the Midwest.

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