A word about the wedding industry for people getting married

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Hi! My name is Josh, and your favourite little bundle of wedding joy, White Magazine, has asked me to write a monthly column for you: the marrying public.

For my first unbridled moment in the wedding press sun I’ve spent all month thinking about a topic. It’s not as easy as you think. I went back through hundreds of emails looking for hot topics that people getting married want answered. But this one stuck on my mind all month long.

It’s a stupid topic, because it doesn’t really matter to you, and it’s quite selfish, so I didn’t want to type any words of the sort regarding the issue. But despite all of these wars going on in my brain, the subject needed attention so why not address it first so we can move onto the real stuff next month.

Wedding vendors.

Did you know that wedding vendors are human too? A celebrant colleague recently likened different wedding vendors to handbags, because some are fancy and some are not, some are expensive and some are cheap,

and that’s all ok because the handbag consumer gets to choose which handbag they want and everyone wants a different handbag.

But wedding vendors, an odd title so from here I’ll call us wedding creators, are humans, not handbags.

We’re an odd bunch of creatives who have seen weddings happen and thought “I could do better” so we signup for a new Instagram account, order some business cards and before you know it someone has paid for us to do a thing.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to waste your whole day with a bleeding heart argument on the economics of running a small business in the current financial climate like I have any idea what that means. I did want to highlight how this whole wedding creator thing works though.

We’ll start with you, the marrying public. I can guarantee you that not one of you is planning a terrible wedding. Every single wedding being planned on the whole planet is #awesome. As it should be. Your one and only moment to truly celebrate the miracle that is your relationship deserves the very best.

Then there’s Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, blogs. Our old friends, the Internet. Loads of ideas all algorithmically organised to provide you the quickest route between “I don’t know” and “YES!”.

And finally there’s us. The wedding creators. 99.9% of us are exactly that, an “us”. For me it’s myself and Britt. For some it’s a small team, and for almost all it’s only an “I”. However big or small the creative team is you’re almost certain to find everyone doing all the jobs, answering emails, scrolling Facebook, creating weddings, sending our contracts.

There is no wedding tax. There’s an “us” tax. The tax you pay when the people creating something is just them. There’s no big corporate board of directors and middle management behind them. These are the people that don’t get paid an hourly rate by an employer. Your wedding creatives are striving with every breath to create a sustainable business which not only is alive today to answer your enquiry but still around in a year or so when you get married, and we’re happy about it.

We’re the excited creatives not whining about you in an industry Facebook group, we’re the ones hustling in the wedding fair trying to find the people who like what we create.

When you ask for a better price you’ve just shot a dart into the heart of our self-worth and value, and when you don’t book us our hearts break a little.

But don’t feel bad, I’m not a bleeding heart looking for mercy. In this first column I just wanted to land a shout out to my brothers and sisters creating weddings, elopements, and events every week. I wanted you, the marrying public, to know that behind every Facebook page, inside every inbox, there’s a passionate little creative who has had the guts to sign up for an ABN and put themselves out there.

We are the wedding creators and we are super pumped to create an event that screams your names from the mountain tops in the most personal, beautiful, and meaningful way possible.

We’re looking forward to meeting you!

Credits

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Carly Tia