All About Wedding Expos! | Wedding Planning Q&A

Hi and welcome to Union Podcast.

My name is Jamie Wolfer and I'm a wedding planner who absolutely loves to share how I got started and scaled my business to above 6 figures in this amazing and occasionally extremely competitive industry. In this podcast, I share the tech, tactics, mindset, and mistakes that got me to where I am today. No gatekeeping, no cloak and dagger, just full disclosure and a little humor along the way. So whether you're a planner or a solopreneur, my goal is for you to be a better business person than I ever could have been and support you on this journey. Let's dive into this week's episode.

I have a couple including me on every— I have a couple including me on every single email for their entire wedding weekend. While some of the information is useful to me, I find myself spending so much time weeding through what's relevant to the wedding day itself. I've communicated in the beginning that I'm there for the day, but she's pretty much in a frenzy, understandably so, and wants my advice on everything. I like her and her fiancé a lot, but she is creating additional work for me. I suppose this exposed an area where I've not quite created an where I've not quite established/communicated clear boundaries. Her wedding is in May. What boundaries can I establish at this point and how do I communicate them? Or should I— or should I just leave it alone and pocket the lesson? Justine, this is a great— oh, I hate these learning lessons, but this feels like a really safe way of learning this. So basically what you have is you have a lack of boundaries that we have set up, right? And like, you know that you don't need me to tell you that. I'm— it's not my phone that's blowing up. It's yours. So what you could do in a scenario like this could be, it seems to me you could say this, it seems to me as though the level of service that you need feels like it's really beyond just day of coordination. And I would love to make myself available to you because, you know, obviously if I'm being included on emails and stuff, you want my input on things, and I'm really flattered. That actually would be a secondary or a higher tier package that comes with this price tag. Is that something that you're interested in doing, or do you want to go and hold off Um, on the questions and the additional emails, and then we can just really pick things back up when it gets closer to your event time. That's a great way of just setting up a nice, neat, clean boundary of, and I don't know how long you've allowed this to go on for. So it could be for a little bit if you're like, hey, it's been a couple of weeks, maybe she's just not understanding. But the second you kind of start giving into this, you kind of start feeding into this. It makes it a lot harder to put the kibosh on that. So that would be phrasing that I would use if you feel like it's been Um, uh, too long to say something like that, then yeah, maybe that's just a situation that you eat and/or say something along the lines of, um, while this is outside of our package, while this is outside of our contract, I can help you with XYZ. I can give you, you know, an additional hour free worth of time to respond to and look over emails, but if we exceed that, let's do this. Hey, I know I've been helping you out extra for free. Just know that I absolutely adore you to pieces. In the future or moving forward, should you want to continue this level of communication, it's going to be this level or this cost, etc. Or you just don't say anything and you eat it. So hopefully one of these like landed with you and you're like, oh yeah, yeah, that, that makes sense. Or yes, I would like to use that phrasing or that terminology because then it's just a simple like, oh, there seems to be a misunderstanding. I'm so excited that you want me to talk to to you about everything. Like, I just love you and I love planning for your wedding. It's actually a higher tier package than the one that you signed up for. So did you intend to sign up for the higher one so we can continue to work like this? Because we totally can. If not, then we're probably gonna have to kind of keep things, um, pretty buttoned up until we get closer to your event.

I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit that in the beginning, I printed out every single piece of paper, every single contract, I took handwritten notes and created a binder for every single one of my wedding planning clients. Now, in theory, that sounds really cool, and I thought I would look really cool showing up to these meetings with these binders that are full of all of these contracts with handwritten notes. But let me tell you, the chaos that ensued when I tried to stay organized on my own and got over 5 events at a time, it was a nightmare. Enter HoneyBook. I am telling you guys, HoneyBook was literally exactly how my brain was processing wedding planning, but just in digital form. It's so easy to go in there and make any sort of customizations that you want, from adjusting your contracts to adjusting your packages, maintaining conversations back and forth that not only pop up in the app on the website, but also in your inbox as well. It's a great way to stay organized.

So get out of the paper and get onto the digital.

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Okay. And Justine, you have a wedding expo this weekend. What are some things I can do to be prepared? Any and all tips are helpful. Okay. First of all, hydrate. Start hydrating ahead of time. This is— I don't know if it's a multiple-day expo that you're doing or just a single day. I've done, I've done, uh, multiple-day and I've done single days. Um, the multiple days get pretty tiring for sure. Have a meal plan, like figure out how you're gonna get food. Usually it's just you standing at a booth. If you can have a second person come with you, brilliant. Even if it's just another person to be like, hey, hi, yes, here's the package, here's the information. Actually, the person you're gonna want to talk to is Justine right here. She's fantastic. I'm just kind of here to help out and make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak with her. So if you want, I can walk you through the packages here, but if you have additional questions, you can chat with her. Just a secondary person to kind of catch people that might be walking by so they don't see you completely occupied and then go, oh, she's too busy, I'll go find somebody else. That's tip number 1. Tip number 2, or tip number 1 is food. Tip number 2 is bring somebody with you. Let's see, shoes. Shoes are super important. You're going to be standing probably in the same exact position or like within like a 3-foot radius of the same exact position for the entire day. While heels sound and look quite posh, be prepared to throw on something else should you need to, because that does, that does definitely hurt at about hour 6, maybe 4, depending on how used to heels you are. One thing with expos is everyone— it feels like a cattle call. And everyone's there and it's so many bodies and no one feels special, but they're trying to make everyone feel special. So it can feel really disingenuous. So I would just encourage you to, to do your best to connect to the person in front of you. Um, be warm, be inviting, be genuine. Don't be like those, uh, sales guys at the mall where they have like little skincare packets and they're like hawking it at you and calling out your crow's feet from across the aisle. You know what I mean? Where there's like, hey, you have wrinkles. You should try this, but instead of being really intentional, hey, so glad to meet you. Tell me a little bit about your event. That's awesome. Okay. Where are you planning on having it? That's great. What brings you by the booth today? What are you looking for in a wedding planner or in a coordinator? Really proactive questions here, right? I wanna hear more about you. Tell me about your life. How'd you guys meet? Okay. Tell me about this event. This sounds super exciting. Yeah, that's definitely a budget that we work with.

Here are the packages that we have available.

Because most, uh, vendors in situations like this don't do that. They'll ask a couple cheesy questions first. Oh, oh, cool.

You guys are engaged.

Great. When'd you get engaged? Okay, so here's who we are. Um, and here's what we do, and here's all the information. And it goes straight into selling. So instead, I like to make sure people feel seen. If they go straight into questions, of course I'm not gonna be like, let's get to know each other first. Not gonna pull that. But I try to make sure that like, hey, I see you. I see you as an individual. I see you as a couple. I'm so excited that you stopped by. Tell me a little about your event. Um, and what I'm doing is I'm, one, I'm trying to definitely make sure it's a warmer experience than they might be having somewhere else. And two, I want to get a feel for what their event's like. I want to get a feel for what they're like. Are they quiet? Are they Type A? What's their vision? I really want to know what their, uh, budget is, the location of their event, their guest count. Those are things that I really look for because You know, if we're looking at a 300-person wedding at $10,000, that's 3 hours away from me, it's probably not going to be a good fit, right? They probably cannot afford to dedicate that percentage of their budget to hiring me. Right. So I would still treat them with respect and say, here's our packages, should you want to look over them. Um, and at that point, some of them might tell you budget, some of them might not. In fact, as I'm saying this, I don't think I lead with budget. I think I just have them put that on the, um, The raffle thing. And if you've heard me talk about the raffle before and you're like, oh yeah, I know this, that just makes you a really good student. Okay. So here's how raffles go in my opinion. Here's how they should go. Um, and here's how I've treated them for years and been very, very successful because when you go to an expo, part of what you're getting is the entire email list and/or contact list of every single person who attended that event. So afterwards, what most vendors do is they send out a mass spam email to everyone Thank you so much for coming. It was so good to meet you. Even if they didn't meet them, it's clunky, it's awkward, and they're just hoping to pick up some people. Some, someone will be like, oh yeah, I'll book you. Oftentimes they'll include some sort of discount in there, 10%, 20%, et cetera, um, to incentivize people booking them. And some couples do go there for that. They're like, we are bargain hunters. We are going for to make sure we can just get a good deal. That's like goal number one is good deal on every single vendor. Um, but that's not the couples that I typically like to work with. I like to work with couples that I can have a relationship with and a connection with. So if they're just bargain hunting, I'm probably not going to be the right person for them. So instead of using that master list and bombarding everyone, I like to go for a more, um, white glove approach, which basically just means only email the people you came in contact with. I know it does— I say white glove, it's not, it's just Common sense, in my opinion. So the raffle goes like this. You have these little cards, you have a little sign that says enter to win up to 20% off one of our packages. I've heard that sometimes people will up their package rates, like they'll charge more on paper, um, to make up that 10 to 20%. I don't do that. I, you can, if you want to. For me, I'm like, if I'm going to give the discount, I'm going to give the discount. You will still get people who are, we call them freebie seekers, but like discount seekers. We want to make sure that you are still booking people that value you and value what you bring. Sometimes in the beginning though, you just got to get bookings done. So this is how this works. On the raffle card, you need your, their name, their phone number, their email address, wedding location, guest count, and budget. Those, and then you can put a section for notes, some of those lines. So they can just fill it out. They can drop it in the raffle bin, um, a little raffle jar or whatever it happens to be. And, uh, that is a good opportunity for you to then get information for every single person you connect with. Um, I then that evening will typically sit down and put all of that information into a spreadsheet. Name, phone number, uh, wedding date, location, guest count, budget, all in there. And sometimes you'll get duplicates. Sometimes you'll get events for days that you're already booked. And so you can kind of start to cross out ones that like, ah, this one's really far. So I'm not going to offer them a discount. I will send them an email saying, hey, great to meet you. Um, should you want to discuss packages any further, let's go ahead and do that, or whatever. If you want to set up a time to chat about your wedding further, here's my, um, Calendly link. But for the most part, I would only offer discounts to those events that I really wanted to book. The events that I wanted to book the highest, I would offer 20% off. The events that I was like, yeah, it'd be nice if I had this, but it's okay if I don't, they they would get 10% off, et cetera. This to me is a great way of stacking your calendar very early on. Now I touched on like being kind of wary of offering discounts in general, because I wanna make sure this, it seems to be kind of an across the board truth. The second you start discounting, some people will be very grateful. There are some people who go, ah, there's wiggle room and want to look for more. Or devalue your services because they've become cheapened. So that is something worth bearing in mind. But again, in the very beginning when you're like, listen, I just need— I just need couples, okay? I just need couples booking me. I need to build up my portfolio. I need to build up my experience. That's where I think this works really, really beautifully. Um, also decorate your booth. I know you're a couple days away, right, Justine? So it's like this weekend. If you can have fresh flowers, yes. Real plants, Yes. If you can have some sort of, um, one thing I like to do is I actually bring my Apple TV and I know this is so extra. It does not have to be this. You can do something else. Uh, but I plug it into a computer monitor and it'll go through a slideshow of events and I will put pictures up and you might be like, I don't have pictures yet. Okay.

So don't worry.

It's okay. If you choose to do more expos moving forward, um, I would do a slideshow of events and I would try to showcase the type of events we would want to book again in the future. So if I want really ethereal-looking weddings, soft pink, uh, really, um, overexposed photos would kind of be what I'd go for. I would put out what I would like to receive, right? If I want gothic, moody weddings, those would be the photos that I would be displaying on that slideshow behind me. So people could kind of have something to look at, um, while they wait. And again, Justine, if you— I know you're right on the, right on the cusp of this. So if you're like, I don't have time for this, don't worry, tuck this away for another time. Just focus on honing in what you already have going on. And a beautifully decorated booth, in my opinion, is a must as a wedding planner. A lot of, a lot of vendors will kind of just keep the folding table and the pipe and drape behind them and the cheesy sign that's given to them by the expo. There's anything that you can do to dress that up, you want to catch their eye. We are— most of us are not only wedding planners, but we also help with wedding design. And so when a couple is looking for a planner, they want to know that the planner has a design eye, that they have the capability of putting together something that's beautiful. So in the future, I do encourage making sure your booth is on point. Okay, and lastly, let's talk about the paperwork you need. You will need a piece of paper that has your packages on it. Make it very clear and easy to understand, easy to read, and easy to explain. Business cards are a great idea. They are becoming less and less prominent. Um, if you want to have a QR code or some way of sharing your socials with them, you can. Um, that could be a really fun thing to do, and that's something you can print up pretty easily last minute. And then, uh, your raffle cards. So it's pretty simple. You don't need pamphlets necessarily. You don't need, um, lots of extraneous other things. I like to keep it pretty simple when it comes to the paper, when it comes to day of expos because it's just too much to manage. And honestly, at the end of the day, their bag is gonna be so chock-full of magazines and papers, etc. So if you can find something that makes yours stand out— in the very beginning, I— oh, do I have— I told you about how I made my own wood business cards? It was like wood veneer paper. Yeah, and I 100% made my business card. So every time someone picked one up, they'd be like, is this wood? Yeah, buddy. Yeah, it is. And that would just be one way that we would kind of like stick out in their minds. And again, if you're panicking and you're like, the expo is this weekend, okay? I got regular run-of-the-mill cards. Like, I don't have time for this. It's fine. I just want to make sure that you make a good impression, both with how you speak to them and how your booth makes them feel. Oh, April also has a question about first wedding expo. Any advice for attending my first expo? Thinking about doing a sweetheart table at the event with marketing materials, et cetera. Yes, absolutely. Give them an idea of what you would do. Now, for me, the sweetheart table in the past has been my kitchen table and a couple of chairs. And actually Rebecca, who's on the call, would do florals. That's how her and I first started our relationship is I was getting ready for a styled shoot and she worked at a local florist and I went in and bought some stuff. We started chatting and she gave me her phone number. And then she did florals for my very first expo, and we went in hard. Like, I had like a palette backdrop. This was of course back in the day when palettes were all the rage, so it was sheer perfection. And so, you guys, it was so heavy. Oh, my husband was like, I'm never doing this again. Until someone walked by and was like, oh my gosh, literally they said, this is the nicest expo booth I've ever seen. And I was like, see, babe, we got it in the bag. And so Rebecca did all these gorgeous florals. Draping over the sweetheart table. We had shelves built into the, the pallet wall, and so we had stuff up there. It was absolutely stunning. I loved that booth. Um, so yeah, I think it's really smart to decorate it. Anytime you can do a backdrop or draw the eye up— I've seen people have like full-on built-out, almost like a gazebo-style things, just without a roof on it. So like 4x4s in the corners. You can go as elaborate as you want to. Um, just make sure that it makes a visual impact. That's all we have for this week's episode, guys.

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