Love is the reason you got into this business in the first place. Love fuels the wedding industry. While the wedding industry is booming at $72 billion, it grew to that insane number because of love. Your work should support your living expenses and beyond, no doubt. Just because you love love doesn’t mean you give yourself or your work away. You deserve to be paid justly for your work. But at the end of the day, your work should showcase your belief that you’re in the business of love. Love is love is love is love. And your clients are in love. That’s why they’re hiring you. Of course, they’re interested in your artisan wares, your modern aesthetic, your equality-mindedness, your incredible venue, your connections and your value of privacy. But the impetus of even having the need to hire you in the first place all goes back to love.
When you’re in the business of love, how should you alter (altar!) your thinking? What does that even mean?
1 / Remember that your clients’ relationship is paramount. Treat your clients’ bond as sacred. Don’t make light of one marrier’s concerns to the other (even if they have disagreements in front of you). Their marriage is important—one of the biggest commitments of their lives. And likely the only one they’ll having in their life. You might witness weddings every weekend but they do not. Treat this wedding like it’s the most important one you’re working on.
2 / This is their wedding. Not yours. You might be known for a specific style, but let your client make the ultimate decisions. Some wedding vendors are specifically known to practice this way—thinking that the wedding is more of a marketing technique or another sample for their portfolio rather than caring for what the couple values in terms of aesthetics and special details. Always come back to what they’re asking for.
3 / The amount of money a client can spend is not equatable to the amount of love they have for each other. Whether or not they can afford you is a different question. But don’t pressure your clients to spend more under the guise of the importance of their commitment to one another.
4 / Each couple’s wedding is special. When discussing plans for working with your client, whether it’s planning their big day, the flowers and plants that’ll be on display or photographing their wedding, don’t just treat them as if they’re buying groceries from you—show them your passion for love and the celebration of their love.
5 / Believe in their right to legal marriage and professional equality-minded treatment from all of the vendors they’re working with for their wedding. Do whatever you can to ensure that they’re treated well, whether that means saying something to another vendor who whispers transphobic or homophobic insults out of earshot of your client or going the extra mile with the venue to ask them to change their sign on the bridal suite to wedding suite and/or finding out if there is an additional, equally spacious area for the other celebrant to get ready in. Try to think like us and make everything more accessible to us.
“Work is love made visible. And if you can’t work with love, but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of the people who work with joy.”
― Kahlil Gibran
