Hi, I am an aspiring wedding planner. I have wanted to be a wedding planner from the age of 13 and I am on a journey in order to hopefully become just that by constantly looking for ways to develop myself. I aim to learn more and more about the role of a wedding planner and to get as much experience as possible.
I have previously done work experience at a wedding dress shop for a week which was amazing, working there helped me to understand more about customer service and sales techniques. I also learnt some of the types of dresses that there are, how to steam dresses, dress a mannequin, type up invoices and clean and reassemble stock on the shelves.
I have also done work experience at a travel agents working for the destination weddings, honeymoons, anniversaries and events planner. I got to know the ins and outs of what it takes to become a wedding planner and I was given a lot of hints and tips to make the job easier. I learnt how to type up spreadsheets, how to do a payment through the card machine and how to budget a wedding according to how much a couple has to spend.
I am currently at college studying travel and tourism resort representatives BTEC level 3. People regularly ask me what travel and tourism has to do with my ambition of becoming a wedding planner. Travel and tourism is a huge sector which covers so many day to day things that we may not even realise. Travel and tourism is in part about going abroad, this is what I thought could tie in with my hope to one day become a destination wedding planner. I love to travel and learn about what is going on in the world, so the course is perfect for me as a person.
I had thought about going to the Wedding Planner college in Bristol for quite some time, I first came across it on the like pages suggestions randomly on Facebook and I did some research and I thought that it was perfect for me. Since starting to go to college in Exeter and working at the travel agents, I realised that I really like living in Exeter. I started to think more about what living in Bristol would entail, I thought about the living costs and how long I would have to work before I could even start thinking about the course costs, it could take me years! I know patience is a virtue and all of that and I am a genuinely patient person (most of the time) but I would rather be a Wedding Planner living in my beautiful city of Exeter and jump in. I would still like to be qualified but I currently have the opportunity to be working with a Wedding Planner and I thought, there is nowhere else that could offer me this kind of experience and my family always said that experience is invaluable and they are absolutely right. I have decided that instead I will do an at home course in order to become a qualified Wedding Planner once I have finished my Travel and Tourism course. This way I can have the best of both worlds by living in Exeter and at the same time become qualified. It just makes sense instead of working for years to move away for three years only to get in most probable debt and come back to living in Exeter.
A lot of people ask me what I want my future career to be, when I tell them that I want to become a wedding planner, a frequent response is: "Wow that is so unique, what inspired you to want to do that?", I always come back with that I have people in my family who are in the event planning business, my aunt has her own event management business which I have helped with previously and I loved it! Also my mum is the events coordinator for a charity and I help her at events often. I also was incredibly inspired by the film The Wedding Planner. I know that this only shows the glamorous side of the job and I know that it is going to be more of a challenge than that but I am willing to go the distance anyway, every job has its highlights and not-so-highlights but when it's something that you really want to do and what you have been dreaming of doing for years, you take the risk.
People have also previously asked me: "So have you thought about just becoming a general events planner?". My answer is yes but I decided that I wanted my career path to be different and unique. I want to choose a career path that is a bit more specialised in a specific area. I thought that if I enjoy helping my family out with their work in events, I love weddings and I am organised, then why not tie all of those things into one job: wedding planning and that thought has been stuck in my head ever since.
I continue learning about what it takes to be a wedding planner and I will keep you posted when I learn new things and when new opportunities arise, until then,
The Aspiring Wedding Planner
