The ideal wedding senario for wedding pros is usually a small wedding with a big price tag, the ability and the desire of the couple to pay for our top service offering with a guest count of 50 or less. However, this is rarely the case. Even with the rise of micro-weddings, this is going to be the exception to the rule. Curious on why that would that be the case if your couple has the money to spend? Well, that my fellow pro, is what is called “percieved value”.

Couples who are having a smaller wedding, are going to want to spend less - even if they were planning on spending more with a larger wedding. Why is this? It is because once they know they are having a smaller wedding their perception of the wedding changes. It becomes a “simpler” “easier” wedding and there are most likely going to be good trade-offs like spending less because they are having fewer guests. It is simply a mindset that goes along with a smaller wedding and most couples are not going to want to spend the same or more on their micro-wedding when they know the value or cost of a full wedding, the fact of the matter is that they are not doing a full wedding, so there must be a difference in pricing.

While this won’t apply to every couple, in my experience it applies to most of them. I am hearing from planners that they are seeing smaller budgets and this is not surprising to me after doing elopement weddings for over 6 years. The perceived value of a smaller wedding is different for couples and it is only going to help your business if you know this ahead of time.

While the rest of the wedding market is going to try to change couple’s behavior, this knowledge means that you can do something that will better serve and appeal to your couples. Perceived value is hard to change, especially since we already have to spend so much time educating couples about our services and pricing. So, my tip is to understand that spending less with a small wedding is probably a given, so create something that appeals to those couples and provides what you know they need rather than trying to fit them into a larger wedding mold.

Questions? I am hosting a masterclass for wedding planners next week that you should definitely take advantage of! I am going to be sharing the biggest mistakes planners are making right now when planning micro-weddings and elopements and how to avoid them, plus how I came up with our formula for elopements that has our couples raving and resulted in huge growth for our company year over year. It is free! What have you got to lose? Sign up HERE.