How to Book More Weddings By Saying Something Different
90% of wedding pros think they have a visibility problem. They don’t. They have a positioning problem.
That’s what I talked about with Kari and Gabby from the Just Another Biz Podcast and honestly it felt less like an interview and more like a conversation among friends full of hot takes and surprising perspectives. I’ve known and collaborated with Gabby for years and when she and Kari asked me on the show, I said yes immediately.
We covered a LOT of ground. The real reason most wedding pros struggle with wedding marketing, how to attract ideal wedding clients, the luxury market, systems and automation. I walked away thinking these are the conversations the wedding industry actually needs to be having. Here’s the full recap.
The reason most wedding pros can’t book more wedding clients (it’s not what you think)
When I ask wedding pros what they think they need to fix their wedding marketing, almost 90% say the same thing: more visibility. Post more. Get on more platforms. Do more, even if it’s not working.
And I get why that feels right. If people aren’t booking you, it must be because they can’t find you.
But most of those people ARE posting. ARE showing up. ARE getting seen and still not getting wedding clients the way they want to be.
Here’s what’s actually happening. When someone finds you, there’s nothing that makes them care. Your messaging looks and sounds like everyone else’s. “Stress-free weddings.” “Bringing your vision to life.” “I’m here for couples who want it all.” Nobody said anything wrong. Nobody said anything memorable either.
That’s not a visibility problem, that’s a positioning problem. And those require completely different fixes.
What positioning actually looks like
Most of us market what we DO. I’m a wedding planner. I plan weddings. Accurate, but forgettable.
Nobody wakes up wanting to buy wedding planning. They wake up with a problem. Maybe they’re overwhelmed or they’re scared their wedding will look like everyone else’s. They have a specific fear keeping them up at night.
If your wedding marketing names that fear and presents you as the solution, you stand out in a big way. Because almost nobody is doing this.
How to figure out what to actually say: Clone Your Best Clients
This is the part of the conversation I could talk about for hours. It’s why I wrote Clone Your Best Clients and use it with every wedding pro I work with.
Most ideal client exercises ask you to fill out a demographic profile: age range, income bracket, zip code, wedding budget. That doesn’t tell you what to SAY to that person. Knowing who your ideal wedding clients are on paper doesn’t give you the words to reach them.
What does? Talking to them.
The process in plain English
Think of a specific client you wish you could clone. Not a demographic. A real person. Then go ask her some questions. What was she worried about before she booked you? What made her choose you over someone else? How would she describe you to a friend who needed exactly what you offer?
What she says back is your marketing. You’re not writing it from scratch. You’re collecting it.
What this looks like in real life
A planner I worked with was using the same language everyone uses. She went through this process and found out her best clients didn’t care about “stress-free” at all. What they cared about: they were South Asian couples terrified their wedding would look exactly like every other Indian wedding they’d attended. They wanted their personality in it. They wanted something different.
And she was ALREADY doing this. It was why people loved working with her. She just wasn’t talking about it.
Once she switched her wedding marketing to speak directly to that specific fear, ideal clients started finding her fast. She didn’t become more visible. She became impossible to ignore for the exact person she was trying to reach.
Is the middle wedding market really disappearing?
We got into this one because it’s something a lot of planners are panicking about right now.
My take: it’s not disappearing. It’s getting more specific.
Think about bakeries. There was a time when you went to the one bakery in your town and they made everything. Now you can walk to a bagel shop, a creative donut shop, a French bakery, a sourdough sandwich place. The market didn’t shrink. It matured and split into niches.
That’s what’s happening in weddings. The middle market couple has more options than anyone right now. They’re getting specific. They’re searching for exactly what they want.
If you’re presenting yourself as a generalist, you’re going to get skipped. Not because they can’t find you, but because nothing you’re saying is grabbing them.
The real problem with chasing the luxury market
This might be the most contrarian thing I said in the whole episode, but I stand by it.
Going luxury isn’t a natural evolution of your business. It’s a completely different business.
A lot of wedding pros approach it with what I call employee thinking. You’ve been at a company for ten years, you get promoted, you make more money. That makes sense in a job but a business doesn’t change its market the way an employee gets a raise.
Think about Marriott. They didn’t just decide to become the Ritz-Carlton. They own it as a SEPARATE brand, because those are fundamentally different businesses with different customers, different service models, different pricing, different everything.
If you want to serve luxury wedding clients, that’s valid but you’re building a different business. Luxury clients often demand MORE time, not less. If you’re exhausted right now, moving upmarket might not fix what you think it will.
Automation and high-touch service: do they actually work together?
Yes, but it depends where you put the automation.
There’s a big difference between customer-facing automation and behind-the-scenes systems. Customer-facing automation done wrong (think: Uber’s abysmal customer support) destroys the experience. Behind-the-scenes systems done right make your client experience MORE consistent, because you’re not relying on your own memory to prompt every touchpoint.
The planners with the best high-touch reputations I know have the most rigorous internal systems. You can’t be reliably attentive when you’re running everything from your brain. The system frees you up to actually show up for your clients.
The big takeaway
If you want to book more weddings and get more wedding clients, the answer probably isn’t doing more. It’s doing the RIGHT thing. Getting specific about who you’re for and making sure your wedding marketing speaks directly to them.
More platforms, more posts, more hustle doesn’t fix a message that isn’t connecting. A small shift in positioning almost always does. And that shift starts by going back to your best clients and asking them the right questions.
Listen to the full episode
We covered even more in the actual conversation, including how to get into luxury weddings if that IS your goal, and a really good tangent about whether new wedding pros should start with a “trial brand.” Kari and Gabby are sharp and they ask the questions that actually matter.
Listen to Just Another Biz Podcast
Ready to go deeper on the cloning process? Clone Your Best Clients walks you through exactly how to identify your best clients, what to ask them, and how to turn their answers into marketing that actually books the right people.
