This is a preview podcast episode titled 'Sneak peek - Coming soon, Bali Weddings Unveiled. 14.01.25' featuring Tristan Moy reflecting on running a wedding planning business. Key points: the team uses a comprehensive (50-page) wedding brief that enables staff to step in at short notice; the speaker supports same-sex marriages and comments on event creativity; starting the business involved steep legal/tax learning and required significant upfront savings because the venture took about a year to become profitable (and likely no real profit in the first two years), partly because early pricing undercharged for the many hours wedding planning demands.
Chapters
We have evolved and changed every single year. And you know, you can attest to this. A few weeks ago I came home, me and Britta lived together and she was literally on the couch, like in tears, sick, crying. And she had a massive wedding the next day. And I was like, you're not going, I'm going. I'll take over your wedding now. I didn't need to sit down and do anything with you. I didn't need to ask you any questions because the way we do things now, we have a 50 page wedding brief. And I opened it up and I knew exactly how to run your wedding. You know, I think it's really important that you do your research against the religion. Yes, we would love to do same sex marriages. Going to be so much, honestly, they'd be so much more fabulous than straight weddings. No offense to straight couples, but I just think, you know, we've seen what, you know, Al wears to the office. Like, can you imagine what kind of wedding Al would throw? It would be fantastic. So, yeah, I think legality wise, like starting business here has been really tricky because there's constantly new things to be learning. There's constantly new laws, there's constantly like taxes and changes and things that you just don't know about when you're starting a business or you're trying to. And I think that's been the biggest thing for me as well is when I started business, no one tells you don't make money straight away. Like it took us a year to make money. So I had to make sure that I had enough savings to live off without earning an income for a while and to be able to pay Yanti and our taxes and our office rent, you have to have, you know, upfront cash to be able to do that because you don't make money. And honestly, for the first two years we probably didn't really make any money because by the time I paid all the bills, like there was no money left over and I wasn't charging enough for our time. Like it takes hours upon hours to plan a wedding. If you think about it, people work a full time job. Our full time job is wedding planning. Like that's 40 hours a week that I am just sitting down and that's not an enough. Yeah.
More from Tristan
PodcastS1 E14 - Behind The Beats: All things wedding music with Lydia and DJ Arshad