How to Book More Weddings in 2026: What Every Wedding Pro Needs to Know

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Why the way couples book weddings is changing going into 2026
• What’s causing longer booking timelines and how that impacts your sales process
• The difference between what struggling wedding pros are doing and what booked-out pros are doing
• Why relying on chance inquiries is so risky in today’s market
• How to position yourself as the clear choice for your ideal clients
• The role a strategic marketing plan plays in booking more weddings in 2026
• Practical steps you can start now to prepare your business for a stronger booking season

How to Book More Weddings in 2026: What Every Wedding Pro Needs to Know

0:00:00 – Heidi Thompson
Want to book more weddings in 2026 and beyond? Here’s what you need to know.

0:00:06 – Intro
In a world where wedding professionals are struggling to market and grow their businesses, one podcast brings together top experts and actionable strategies to help you build the wedding business of your dreams. This is the Evolve your Wedding Business Podcast. Here is your host, Heidi Thompson.

0:00:39 – Heidi Thompson
Hey, my friend, welcome to the podcast. I am your host, Heidi Thompson, and I am all about helping wedding professionals of all different kinds book more weddings and build businesses that give them freedom and flexibility. Now I just wrapped up hosting the Book More Wedding Summit, and if you are feeling like bookings are just weird right now they’re not really making sense, you’re not alone. If one week you’re staring at an empty inbox, the next week a random inquiry comes in and you’re just kind of left thinking, wait, what am I doing something wrong? The truth is, it’s not just you, and we saw this on a massive scale during the Book More Wedding Summit, with over 3,000 attendees and more than 45 speakers.

The way couples book weddings has changed, and we now have the proof from the data, from the stories that were all shared during the Book More Wedding Summit. As I mentioned, we had over 3,000 attendees from around the world, with more than 45 speakers. Throughout the week, I had the opportunity to speak with photographers, officiants, florists, planners, and DJs. I delivered four of my own presentations and between those talks and the live panels, I noticed some patterns coming up time and time again, and today I want to share the biggest takeaways from the summit and what you need to know in order to book more weddings. I want you to really know and understand what’s happening in the market, what you need to watch out for, where wedding pros are losing out on bookings, and I’m going to keep it really simple by breaking it up into two different buckets. The first is couple behavior shifts. The second are vendor blind spots. So let’s start off with couple behavior shifts, because there have been some really key changes in how couples are behaving. The first is that really across the board, we’re hearing that booking timelines have absolutely flipped. Couples are inquiring much later than they used to Not all but several and at the same time, they’re taking longer to make decisions. My research showed that couples are taking somewhere between 30 to 40% longer to book after they reach out than they have in previous years, and they’re also contacting vendors later in their planning process. So that means short inquiry windows with long decision cycles, which is kind of weird, and it results in a lot of waiting and uncertainty, and this is one of the reasons why ghosting feels worse than it ever has. Most wedding pros take silence, take the lack of response to mean no, but in reality we’re really saying that, it usually means not yet or I’m not ready to make a decision.

In my presentation that I did on ghosting, I talked about how most wedding pros follow up once, maybe twice, and then they give up. The problem with that is that most bookings happen after the fifth touch point. So that means if you stop at two follow-ups, you’re ghosting them just as much as they’re ghosting you, and this is one of the biggest shifts that wedding pros need to accept. Booking timelines are not what they used to be. If you are just expecting a yes right away, you’re going to really think that you’re being rejected when you don’t hear back, but more than likely you’re still in the running. I created an AI tool for members of the Wedding Business Collective to solve this, called the Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard. It creates a custom seven email follow-up sequence for your specific business and your specific voice, so you can follow up over time without just having to show up in their inbox with you know hey, are you ready to book yet? Because that’s not super helpful and we don’t like sending those follow ups, so we don’t send them. Right, it’s a self perpetuating process. That wizard is also available as a standalone product and I’ll link to it and the Wedding Business Collective in the show notes, but you can find it at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/ghosted if that is something you need help with.

The second thing we noticed and when I say we like me and all the speakers and all the attendees we’re noticing these things bubble up over and over and over again. And the second thing is that price transparency is a non-negotiable. And the second thing is that price transparency is a non-negotiable. Couples want to see pricing. This was actually one of the loudest themes that just came up over and over. No matter where you’re based, no matter what type of business you’re in, we’re seeing couples will not inquire if you don’t show them some kind of number. This could be a range, it could be a starting price, it could be an average spend, but they need to have some kind of number or it feels like you are keeping that from them and, honestly, that’s our own fault.

For a long time in the wedding industry, I remember when I first got into the wedding industry it was practice to keep this information to like, really try to gatekeep this information and basically for lack of better words trick people into getting on a call and then pushing them to book. Yeah, people don’t fall for that anymore. That doesn’t work and they know what you’re trying to do, and it’s given the wedding industry a particular reputation. So I’m seeing this be the case at every level of the market. Even photographers that are charging $30,000, $60,000 are putting a starting price on their website. Why? Because couples need to know if they are even in the ballpark before they reach out, and they can find out this information anyway. If you don’t provide that clarity, they’re going to turn to Google, they’re going to turn to Reddit or chat GPT and get that information, and when that happens, you lose control of the narrative.

My friend, Adrianna McDermott, talks about this all the time. You know people will tell her oh no, you can’t find my pricing anywhere. And in five minutes she can find it online and they’ll say, oh well, that’s last year’s pricing. Well, that’s what people are judging you based off of. That’s the information that is out there, and I’ll link to the episode that I did with Adriana about trust, because a big part of this entire price transparency conversation is around trust. Right, it’s that reputation that the wedding industry has built of being not trustworthy that you know.

When you say the word wedding, a bunch of money gets tacked on. Those things exist for a reason because of things that people have done in the past and unfortunately, we have to deal with that. The other part of it is just the way humans are used to doing things right now. I mean, think about it. Is there anything in life that you can’t go online and get at least an idea of a price or you know, a range, a starting at something? We are so used to having this information at our disposal that it’s jarring and it strikes us as untrustworthy. When someone is holding that information back, it comes back, as you know, like skeevy kind of sales behavior and in my talk about competing on price and how that happens, we want to avoid it.

I shared why this matters so much, because hiding your pricing does not make you look high end. It makes you look like every other vendor. Showing clear, contextual pricing paired with strong messaging, strong copy. That makes you stand out as the perfect fit and not the cheapest option. That’s what’s going to help you get chosen. This is also where your perfect fit statement comes into play that message at the very top of your website that makes it unmistakably clear who you serve and why you’re different. I talked about that a lot during the summit. And when you combine that with transparent pricing, you filter out all the wrong couples quickly and you make it very easy for the right couples to say yes to you. That’s why creating that perfect fit statement is a part of how I teach wedding pros to create their marketing plans inside of the Wedding Business Collective my membership because people need to be able to tell in five seconds or less if you are the right fit for them or not. And let’s be honest, if you’re a maybe, you’re getting thrown in the pile with tons of other people. You don’t want to be in the maybe. That’s like the gray zone of death. You want to be a hell yes or a hell no.

The third thing that came up was couples want for connection and clarity. This was another really big shift that couples are craving human interaction again. So after years of everything happening on Zoom, I found it really interesting to see that more couples wanted in-person meetings. They also want faster and more casual communication. A huge percentage now prefer texting over email because it’s more likely your message is going to get lost in email along with all the other things they’re putting off responding to. What this shows us is that couples want reassurance. They want to feel that you are real and trustworthy and reliable. They want to trust that you will not make them the next horror story on Reddit, that you will not disappear with their deposit.

In my presentation during the summit about attracting better clients, in my presentation during the summit about attracting better clients, I shared how important it is to be a magnet and not a megaphone. Couples are not just choosing based on what you do. They’re choosing based on like you understand them. You really get them. You win their trust before you ever meet, whether that’s in person or on Zoom.

The fourth thing I noticed is that couples are researching harder than ever. Decision fatigue is at an all-time high Okay. Plus, we have rising costs, economic and political uncertainty and industry of mistrust it all plays into this and couples are comparing five to 10 vendors per category, sometimes more. They’re cross-checking reviews across multiple platforms. They’re looking at portfolios and asking themselves is this real or is this AI? If your reviews are vague, if your portfolio looks too perfect or if your messaging doesn’t match across different platforms, you unintentionally raise red flags. That’s why, in my presentation about creating a marketing plan, started with the foundations.

If you skip understanding your ideal client and what’s going on in their head, if you skip creating messaging in your marketing that speaks directly, directly to them, you look interchangeable, you get lost in a sea of vendors that could work and you get chosen based on price instead of value, because you didn’t give them anything to grab onto, you didn’t make yourself the go-to person for anybody and your messaging isn’t speaking directly to them. It’s causing a lot of vagueness, a lot of, I guess, and that gets you thrown in. You know the gray, it’s not. You know this black and white thing of like hell yes, hell no, it’s the. I guess this could work. And when something you know could work, just like when any of us are buying any sort of commodity or something we just need, if everything seems the same, well, how are we going to make that decision? We’re going to choose the cheapest option.

Number five this was interesting. Couples want roadmaps, not surprises. I think there is a higher level. I don’t think I know. I’ve definitely seen that there is a higher level of anxiety among couples right now and I think it’s largely due to things they’ve read, things they’ve heard, things they’re afraid of. They know all the things that could go wrong that couples didn’t hear about or know about before. Most of them are planning a wedding for the first time and they don’t know what to expect. And that’s on top of all of the anxiety. They’re nervous about the unknowns, and vendors who really take them by the hand and spell out what happens next stand out.

So this could be something as simple as here’s what happens after you inquire on your website, letting them know what those steps are. Just like when you order food on DoorDash, you see exactly what’s happening with it. You see on the little map where the delivery guy is. There’s a reason for that. That really makes our brains happy. It takes away the uncertainty. You could have a social media post walking them through the steps of booking or working with you and really showing people the process. You could have an onboarding email or guide that explains the process really clearly. But the key thing to remember here is predictability builds trust. When couples know the path, they are more confident in saying yes to you. So that covers the couple side.

Now let’s flip it, because while couples are changing, there are also things pros are doing that make the problem worse. The first thing that came up was over automation costing bookings, which is weird, right, because we’ve talked about how important automation is. But some vendors are automating their inquiry responses so much that they sound like bots, or I guess another way to put this is they’re not putting any personality into their automation. And couples investing thousands, tens of thousands of dollars do not want to feel like they’re dealing with a software or dealing with a bot. I don’t even want to feel that way. When I have to contact, like my internet company, I don’t want to deal with the bot. Automation should absolutely handle admin contracts, invoices, reminders. Those are fine and really essential, but your communication needs a human touch. This is such a human industry and we are in such a personal business.

In my ghosting talk, I shared how just dropping a giant PDF on people with all of the things that you offer and ending the email with let me know kills the conversation. Couples need you to keep the back and forth going. This needs to be like a tennis match where you are, like I said in that presentation, a tennis match where you are, like I said in that presentation, ending your emails on a question and not overloading them with information. That part is really, really important, because when we get too much information, we just shut down because we don’t know enough. We haven’t taken it in to the point that we need to in order to be able to make any decisions or be knowledgeable about what our next steps are. So do not overwhelm them by dropping a giant PDF and don’t end your emails with let me know, because that instantly kills a conversation. I just had a client inside the Wedding Business Collective tell me she just booked a client and she really attributed it to her ability to take this principle and run with it, ending every email on a question mark, keeping the conversation going, keeping the lines of communication open and that turned into a booking for her. And that was under two weeks after I had talked about this. So it really does make a substantial difference.

The second thing and it’s something I’ve talked about before, it’s something I will probably never shut up about is a lack of positioning means you compete on price. Too many wedding pros still market themselves with the same tired lines that wind up meaning absolutely nothing. Stress-free wedding, dream wedding. Stress-free wedding, dream wedding capture your memories. This is why they end up competing on price and in the talks I did about this I showed how really defining who you want to be, the go-to person for what category you want to be a part of creating your own category. Really, you can make yourself the perfect fit and stop competing with every other vendor in your category Because if, instead of parroting these same things that they have open in 23 tabs on their browser and they’re seeing the same language over and over again, nobody’s standing out, nobody is saying anything different, nobody is stepping up and saying, hey, I’m the best fit for you if this is what you want, oh my God.

Their eyes just glaze over. And of course they do. They would for you, too, if you’ve ever been in a situation where you’ve had to shop for something and everything looks literally identical and you can’t tell why you should choose one business over another. That’s why you have to make yourself the go-to person for something specific, for someone specific, so that you are no longer just a photographer, just a DJ, just a planner. You are the only choice for the couples who want the exact thing that you provide. This is a pattern I’ve seen a lot inside the Wedding Business Collective, because we do talk about it a lot in there, and also when people come to me wanting help booking more weddings before they join the collective.

Nine times out of ten, they don’t stand out. They might think they do, but they really don’t. And that’s why I created a step-by-step process for making sure you stand out and attract the right clients inside the Wedding Business Collective. It is so important. It is a huge determining factor in your success. You can be the best at what you do, but if you blend in with everyone else, you’re not going to get booked and you’re going to have to compete on price.

Wedding pros who stand out and position themselves as the go-to for their specific ideal clients can weather even the worst downturns and many of them are thriving right now. I talk to them every day. The ones who don’t stand out, they wind up competing on price and that’s a race to the bottom. And then they get frustrated and resentful, which I get. But the reason why this happens is because they are not standing out. They are not making themselves the best choice, the no-brainer choice for anybody.

The third thing I’m seeing is no marketing plan, just throwing spaghetti at the wall. This blind spot came up over and over again. Most wedding pros are winging it, posting randomly on social media, randomly deciding to pay for directory listings, boosting ads, hoping something works but winging it is both exhausting and ineffective. And in the presentation I did on creating your marketing plan, I laid out the four pieces that matter most. One is know your ideal client. You need to understand them, why they make the decisions they make, because marketing at its root is psychology. Two is nail your messaging. What do they need to hear from you in your marketing in order to see that you are the perfect fit for them? Three decide on the how from a CEO perspective, not random spaghetti of the wall, panic mode. And when I say the how, this is what most people jump to when they do their marketing. This is the. I’m going to post this kind of thing on Instagram every Tuesday.

It’s making the decisions about where you’re marketing, how you’re marketing, what are the specific tactics that you’re doing. But none of that works if you don’t understand who your ideal client is, what they really care about, what they really want and what they need to hear in your marketing to see that you are the perfect fit. We have to build that bridge between what they want and what you have to offer. Then, when we make decisions about the how, as I call it, you know where should you market. It becomes so much easier because we’re making decisions based on your ideal client. We’re making decisions based on data and not random scrambling, which takes me to part four of this, which is let the data tell you what to do more of and what to stop. Marketing should get easier and easier over time in your business. When you skip this step, you just keep spinning and it never gets easier. But you have data in your business that is telling you what works and what doesn’t work, and if you can get more strategic and build your marketing plan around what you already know or have a clue that works you already know or have a clue that works it is going to be so much easier for you to attract and book more clients that you really love. And creating your overwhelmed, squashing marketing plan is something really key piece of what members do inside the Wedding Business Collective, and it makes their marketing not only easier, but it helps them book more weddings quickly. I take members through my step-by-step process of doing this. You don’t have to be good at marketing. You don’t have to be good at sales. You don’t need to know anything about marketing. The Wedding Business Collective walks you through it step by step, so any wedding pro can create a marketing plan that brings them the bookings they want. And if that sounds like something you need, you can get started for just a dollar at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/join.

The fourth thing that came up one of the biggest blind spots was isolation and panic. I can’t tell you how many conversations I had with people that thought they were the only one, that thought they were the only people on the planet that were experiencing this in their business, that didn’t know what to do, that were trying to just like figure it out all on their own. They panicked when they weren’t booked you know the normal 18, sometimes even 24 months out. They were comparing themselves to what they see online on other people’s social media, which is, you know, always the highlight reel, and they were assuming something was wrong with them. But the truth is this has changed for all of us. Timelines have shifted for everyone. At the summit, when we had live panels with real wedding pros, there were so many light bulb moments. Because of this, people realized they were not the only ones feeling this way. That community piece was just as valuable as the strategies, because it reminded everyone that they’re not broken. The market has shifted and now it’s about adapting.

So, overall, what did we learn from more than 45 speakers and more than 3,000 wedding pros at the Book More Wedding Summit? Well, couples are booking differently. They’re taking longer to decide, they are inquiring later, they are demanding pricing clarity and they’re craving trust and connection and leadership. They want an expert that’s going to show them how this whole thing works. Vendors many of them are still stuck marketing the old way. They’re hiding prices, automating everything, winging it without a plan and just trying to white knuckle and figure it out in isolation. The gap between how couples buy and how wedding pros sell is exactly where bookings are being lost right now. The good news is, all of these are fixable problems.

You don’t need to burn yourself out chasing every trend. You don’t need to pay to play on directories that make you look like everyone else. You need clear messaging that makes you stand out. You need transparent pricing. You need consistent and prolonged follow-up and you need a plan that is built around what actually works. That’s what we do inside the Wedding Business Collective we help you adapt to this new market. Stand out with messaging that attracts your best clients and build a marketing plan that works without burning you out. In fact, most people end up working less, which is phenomenal.

If you have been feeling like bookings are weird right now, I want you to know this. It’s not just you. The market has shifted, but you don’t have to stay stuck. You can adapt, you can book better clients and you can build a business that works for you, and you don’t have to figure it out alone. Inside the Wedding Business Collective, I walk you through how to create that marketing plan that actually works, how to stand out, how to adapt. So if you’re thinking, Heidi, this all sounds great, but how do I actually do it, you can get started for just a dollar at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/join and I really encourage you to do that.

If you want 2026 to be your best booking season yet and you want to stop feeling like you are just on this hamster wheel and things are getting harder and you’re trying to figure all of it out alone, evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/join and I will have all of the links that I mentioned in this episode over in the show notes at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/327. If you were at Book More Wedding Summit, I would love to hear from you. What did you learn? What opened your eyes. What did you realize that you now can move forward and put into place in your business? Send me a DM on Instagram. I love talking to listeners of the podcast. I am evolveyourweddingbusiness over there and I will speak to you again very soon.

Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Get your Ghosted Lead Booking Wizard
Your Wedding Business Marketing Plan: Book More Weddings Without the Marketing Overwhelm

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