(Editor's Note: Today, we welcome a fantastic guest post from a faraway contributor - Fabrice Orlando of Cocoon Events Group, based in Morocco! Read more about Fabrice at the end of the post)!
No matter where a wedding is, there are a number of things that are the same when it comes to the planning process – whether it’s a few miles from your house or halfway around the world. That being said, destination weddings also come with its own set of specific considerations to keep in mind.
Couples: "We’d love to meet with you on the weekend to plan our weekend wedding that only happens on one weekend of our entire lives."
You: "I’d love to meet with you sometime during the week because I work almost every weekend on weddings that occur only on the weekend."
I kid, but the struggle is real, for you and for your potential clients. You may not work every weekend or every day of the weekend, but let’s face it, you might want a weekend off every once in awhile or to recover from a long day by relaxing. It’s difficult to schedule meetings in this 9-to-5 (and exceedingly 9-to-9) culture when your business hours are slightly more ambiguous or the opposite of most of society's schedule. You also don’t want to fall in the trap of working seven days a week just to appease your clients, or neglect to schedule time off so you can recharge and get back to the grind the following week.
As business owners, we tend to be full of passion and dedication to our work, and it's easy to assume that everyone we hire will feel exactly the same way. Unfortunately, this is a common mistake that often leads to under-training our team, a shortcoming we don't even realize until something terrible happens at a wedding and we're left to answer for it.
Sure, most of us with employees or contractors are fortunate enough to have fantastic, loyal, talented people representing our business. As I've often said at speaking engagements, though, other people will never be as invested in your business as you are. That's just a fact, and keeping it in mind as you plan your training will help you avoid many a headache along the way.
As our loyal WeddingIQ readers know, we eagerly solicit anonymous rants from our colleagues in the wedding industry, with the purpose of bringing other professionals' real feelings into the spotlight. Let's face it: sharing our real thoughts can be hard, especially when we don't want to jeopardize our referral relationships or make our next networking event even more awkward.
Collecting anonymous submissions from our readers enables us to bring up problematic issues and actions for discussion here on the site, and to determine what's important to the people who follow our blog. (With that in mind, we invite you to submit your own anonymous rant, or, if anonymity isn't your thing, email us directly with what matters most to you!)
(Editor's Note: Starting today, we're kicking off a whole new content theme for the month of June. All our posts this month will be exploring the topic of event-day management, and how you and your team can be more productive, prepared and successful than ever!)
Most professionals have some sort of routine on wedding days. Perhaps it involves some sort of equipment preparation, product assembly or simply a personal routine to help mentally ready yourself for the day ahead. These days are, by nature, lengthy and intense. There is a strict schedule, many tasks to fulfill and a team of vendors to work with, many of whom you may not know. Oh, yeah, don’t forget dealing with your clients and their guests, and delivering the service you were hired to perform. Needless to say it’s a lot of work. Encouraging you to concentrate on marketing or networking during the day may seem like I’m asking too much, but I promise it can be done and is highly worth the effort.
