Professional Wedding Planner
Interviewer: That sounds great; when you–there’s a personal touch to it.
Catherine Porterfield: Yeah; it’s–it’s very, very nice.
Interviewer: So I know you touched on some of them earlier, but what would you say are the–the key–the essential elements that go into wedding consulting, like what are the must-haves?
Catherine Porterfield: The must-haves are you need to have, there’s two different things basically I feel like–you need to have a–a good sense of–of basically wedding planning of–of the industry and where it’s going and how it’s growing and just stay on top of the trends, stay on top of you know–that means from flowers to the kinds of bridesmaids dresses that are popular to you know new traditions and breaking old traditions and kind of the protocol and do you still do things, you know they did in the 50s–just watching how things shift. That’s really important.
And then it’s also important to know the tradition and kind of the styles of the area in which you do most of your work because it changes from area to area and you really need to know that in order to be able to best kind of guide your client and to tell them what you know–if they’re going to come with questions to you you’re the expert and they’re going to look to you for advice and you really just need to be on top of your game and–and know the industry. And obviously with any kind of you know planning profession, you also need to be extremely organized, extremely detail-oriented, you need to follow through and you need to really be–you know you are there for them, so basically when they–if your client calls you need to make sure that you’re taking care of them at all times.
Interviewer: Great; so you know times have changed–issues, events. Things have certainly evolved over time. How would you say that is so for wedding consulting?
Catherine Porterfield: For wedding consulting I think the industry is definitely growing and I think more and more people are hiring wedding planners than they used to and I also think that it’s–it used to go if they just wanted someone–the family would want someone there for the day of, but that’s still you know such a struggle because it’s also hard for people who are hired just the day of an event.
It’s very difficult because you don’t know; you haven’t worked with any of these vendors before–typically the planner will call and just introduce themselves, so you haven’t made any decisions; you don’t know–you know a cake is supposed to be delivered but you have no idea really what you know–what exactly it’s supposed to look like.
So it’s hard because you have a little bit of control but not really very much and so it’s been very difficult and plus you’re not there to advise your client the entire way. Whereas now weddings seem to be getting bigger and they’re much more an event and experience especially all these weekend weddings and I think that that’s why the industry is growing–people want bigger weddings; they really want to make it this huge experience for their families and friends and they really want their families and friends to feel like they’re taken care of.
So wedding planners need to be able to take care of all events that go with–aside from just the wedding and reception but to be able–all the logistics for the pre and postevent
as well as take care of the bridal party and everything that do-of–really just–it’s no longer just something that’s just for one day. It–it kind of runs for three or four days you know sometimes and it’s just things are getting bigger and bigger. And so wedding coordinators and planners need to be able to prepare for that and have the staffing for that and have the facilities and the time to really be able to evote their time to such large events.