Economics and ethics drive wedding cost
Being a wedding planner isn't always easy, and the task of building a realistic wedding budget can't rely on information presented by commercial wedding planning websites . Before evaluating wedding cost or initiating the wedding planning process, it's essential to understand the origins, economics, and ethics of the multibillion-dollar wedding industry. How did the industry become so large? Which sectors most powerfully influence excessive consumer spending and unethical wedding planner behavior? Where do so-called wedding trends really come from? What are the most expensive items in the typical wedding budget, where are they made, and how high is their markup? Who's responsible for keeping a couple's wedding budget on track, and what's the proper role of the professional wedding planner coordinator in controlling wedding cost? What are wedding coordinator duties worth, and what's a fair wedding planner fee? Anyone starting a wedding planning business, diversifying an existing wedding event planner business, or hiring a professional to plan a wedding needs answers that can’t be found on a commercial wedding website.
Ethical Wedding Planning Helps Control Wedding Cost
True, an astonishing array of wedding planning timelines, wedding checklists, and wedding cost comparisons is available on a multitude of wedding planning websites. But as experienced professional wedding planners know, economically-driven wedding budget projections can be biased by self-interest. To promote their brand identity and increase their percentage of wedding-cost revenues, the wedding industry's biggest media companies have exploited the Internet information matrix to integrate wedding planning products, online sales, and direct marketing to couples getting married. This trend has dramatically reduced the earnings of independent wedding planning publications and negatively affected the average wedding planner fee. How can couples on a limited wedding budget penetrate the brand-name hype, navigate the fantasy and fluff, and make intelligent decisions about high wedding-cost items like wedding rings, wedding catering, wedding facilities, and wedding dresses? How can an ethical wedding consultant compete in the industry-dominated world of online wedding planning? How should an ethical wedding planner fee be calculated: as a percentage of total wedding cost, or as a flat fee within the total wedding budget?
Course Video Tutorial: 'An Economist-Ethicist Teaches the Wedding Business' (30:17)
The Rev. Allen Newman, PhD, is uniquely qualified to summarize the ethics and economics of the wedding industry, analyze wedding budget guidelines, and enable couples and planners to control wedding cost. An economist with a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he taught economics at Loyola and Tulane universities in New Orleans while serving as a hospitality management consultant for the U.S. Small Business Administration. An Episcopal priest with a divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York, he has collaborated with South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, studied marriage customs around the world, and led multicultural parishes throughout New York State. Currently, he is the rector of a predominantly Caribbean congregation in the Bronx and a business partner in Alan Brasington, Inc., an international enterprise providing staging accessories for upscale retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch, period props for major motion pictures such as 'Revolutionary Road,' and set elements for TV shows such as HBO's 'Boardwalk Express.' In this course video tutorial, Allen draws on his knowledge of economics and business ethics, his experience as a management consultant, and his entrepreneurial skills to teach Members how the wedding industry really works, how to make ethically informed buying decisions, and how to establish, promote, and diversify a wedding planner or vendor business using an easy-to-understand, step-by-step approach.
Learn 12 essential elements of budgeting a wedding and building a wedding planner business:
- The modest origins of the modern wedding
- The anatomy of the multibillion-dollar wedding industry
- Why industry spending statistics are unreliable
- The invention of 'a diamond is forever'
- The mass-marketing of the white wedding
- The history and economics of bridal magazines
- The rise and retailing of the wedding gift registry
- The new age of wedding planning creativity
- Mega-sourcing and multi-sourcing of wedding information and ideas
- Understanding mega-wedding media like 'The Knot'
- The ethics and economics of the wedding planner fee
- How to set up and market a wedding planning business
