Brian Franklin – The Niche: Vows and Speeches
About Brian Franklin
Brian Franklin is the Co-Founder of Vows & Speeches and oversees all interviews and script writing. Prior to forming the company, most of Brian’s 25 years of work in writing and advertising has been as an award-winning political consultant and communications strategist (including speechwriting) for federal and state campaigns.
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– How do you go from political speech writing to wedding speech writing? Listen to this episode and find out. Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. I have a very interesting guest on that I met recently at a WeddingPro event in Chicago. Brian Franklin with Vows and Speeches. Brian, welcome to the podcast.
– Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
– Well, than you for- Thank you for joining me. We were talking, chatting over lunch or wherever we were sitting there. And as you go to any of these events, you talk to people. So, what do you do? Okay, you’re a photographer, you’re a venue, you’re a whatever. And you are not an officiant but you write ceremonies, right? And you write speeches for weddings. So first of all, give a little background ’cause I already teased people that you was a political speech writer. What did you do and then where was the transition to this?
– Sure. Yeah, we do custom vows as well. We started about a year and a half ago mainly because my wife and I… My wife also works in politics. We don’t really like politics. It was a fun industry for a long time. We both came from advertising. I worked as a copywriter. I worked as a creative director. Later on, I started a company that did political consulting and a good portion of that was writing any number of things for politicians and for campaigns. That could have included speech writing, but also included debate prep and countless ads and that sort of thing. So we were part of the machine that has torn this country apart. And as it started to go sour, we started to look at different ideas that might get us out of it. I tried a couple of different businesses that were not related to weddings and loosely related to politics. And then as I… We were in the middle of the pandemic and I started to do a podcast of my own and I started to interview some of the more interesting people that I knew. It’s a lot of musicians actually, a fair number of drummers. But one of the people that I interviewed is this guy named John Mills who was a writer on the “Tonight Show” for 17 years, the joke writer, and did a lot of speech writing and ghost writing for other people. And so I started to look at speech writing as something that maybe I could do, I was qualified to do. Initially looking at corporate and then started to think about weddings. And something clicked in me. I went on Clubhouse and there were a few people there that were moderating a room and I raised my hand in Clubhouse. And for those people that aren’t familiar with Clubhouse, it’s like an audio conference room app where you can jump into different rooms and raise your hand and it’s moderated. So I raised my hand and I brought up the idea of doing wedding speeches and immediately someone said, “You should add custom vows and ceremony scripts to that.” And while we were in the room, I bought vowsandspeeches.com. I had our designer who works with us on the political stuff make up a logo. He’s a fast logo designer. Two hours later, I had a logo, put up the Squarespace site, and sent it back to the moderators who were blown away. You know, it was a fully flesh site. And then put up some ads the next day on Google and got clients. And so I said, “Okay, there’s something here.” You know, it took a little while to work on it, but this… While there are few others that are kind of poking around on it or have in the past, nobody’s really made a niche out of it. Nobody’s really made a national brand or business out of it as far as I can tell. And so I saw an opportunity to do that. And as we talked to people in the business, they responded quite favorably, and now the clients are. So that’s kind of how this thing developed.
– So, vows make sense. So, you’re dealing with a couple. They don’t know where to start with writing their personalized vows.
– Or they run out of time, yup.
– Well, gee. Running out of time planning a wedding, how could that happen? Oh, wait a minute. It’s next week. We need to do something about this. But then the speech part, so the people that are giving the speeches, I suppose it could be the couple thanking their guests. But who else are you writing speeches for?
– Father and mothers of the bride, for instance, or the groom, best men, maid of honor speeches are typically what we would do. And sometimes those are provided to them by the couple. So they’re given this assistance in part because the couple knows that they are going to be a problem and they want to make sure that they’re not embarrassed or go on too long. That’s one of the things that we’re… You know, one of the things we’re solving. But we also get a fair number of people that are simply nervous about speaking or they’re not great writers and they just… You know, they’ve got a wedding next weekend and they don’t know what to do and they found us somehow either through the wedding planner or through just doing searching.
– That was going to be my next question. So, how are people finding you? Obviously, you said Google. So, Google ads or Google searches, but what are some of the other ways that people have found out about you so far?
– Well, we’ve been lucky. In parts thanks to OFD Consulting and Meghan Ely. We’ve been lucky to get some early press in “The Knot” and “Brides” and elsewhere that has helped us in the search optimization front and we’ve gotten into some articles like how to write a speech and that kind of thing. So we’ve gotten business out of that. We seem to be rising through the Google algorithms anyway in part because of those articles. But I think just… You know, we’ve been working on it so people are finding us through organic search as well. I think we’ve gotten two referrals already just from previous clients. So that’s been fun, yeah.
– Right. And again, somebody sees that. It’s like, “Hey, that was a great speech.” And then the question is, did they tell them that they had help?
– It’s been an interesting… Yeah, we have some clients that are like, “Yeah!” They are not afraid to tell anybody. And then we have a lot of clients that were… It’s one side of the couple and they don’t want their fiance to know that they got help. They simply just feel outmatched as a writer, or like I said, ran out of time. But they want strict confidentiality on it, and that’s totally fine. You don’t have.. We don’t need your testimonial, you all. It’s okay. Or if we do, we’ll just use your first and last initial, or something like that.
– Exactly. Yes, you help me, but don’t tell anybody that it was me.
– Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
– Names have been withheld to protect the innocent.
– And look, the truth is they shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help. If you look at all of the other professions attached to a wedding, most people aren’t doing their own photography or doing their own hair. So it’s something that they shouldn’t feel anxiety about. But at the same time, when we do these speeches or these vows, we’re interviewing them for 30 or 40 minutes. We’re getting all of their own words or sentiments. This is stuff that came from them. So it’s not like I’m writing somebody’s vows and I’m just giving you this fictional interpretation. This is something that came from them. And often, it’s almost word for word out of the interview, but we have to assemble it properly and cut it back.
– Well, that’s, again, asking good questions. You’re getting it. This goes back into sales and what I teach, you know? If you ask them good questions, they will tell you what they want. And in your case, if you ask them the right questions, they’re going to tell you what they want to say. They just don’t know how to put it together.
– Right, right.
– It’s like ghost writing of a book. Somebody’s like, “I have my thoughts but I don’t know how to put it together.” That’s what editors do, right?
– And in a lot of cases, they forget the fun parts, right? They know what they think they want to say, but they forget the fun parts. And so what happens is I’ll interview them and we’ll get to a point in the interview where I’ll go, “Whoa! Hold on a second. Let’s go back to this part where you left her out into pouring rain or you stumbled upon each other in a supermarket. Let’s go back. What were you buying? Do you remember?” And then you know, that’ll be the color that goes into it that really makes it fun.
– Then what are you looking for? When you’re doing that interview, what is like the formula? I know, again, it’s formulaic. It’s not cookie cutter, right? So, there’s a certain thing there. What do you want to have in that end speech there? What are some of the elements that would make it, “this is a great speech.”
– In the speech or the vows?
– Let’s start with the vows.
– What I’m looking for the vows, I think, are those moments that… Are those moments that make it particular to them and their personality. When you have things that… I always ask them a question like, what are some of the things… What are some of their pet peeves about you and what are your pet peeves about them? And we’ll get into some of the things that they have fun teasing each other about, right? Whether the person has a collection of army men or…
– Or guitars.
– Or guitars. Yeah, or one person has grudgingly gotten into the “90 Day Fiance” or whatever it might be, right? There’s always these little things that they talk about that… My favorite, I think… My favorite example of this is there was this groom that was very, very shy, was very standoffish with strangers and just known for being that and she barely got him to talk when they first started to talk and it became a personal challenge for her. But then he find out that for her birthday, he not only got her tickets to Ariana Grande which was her favorite artist, but he learned every song Ariana Grande had so that he could sing along with her and the 12-year olds that were in the audience on the floor, right? And so that’s the kind of thing that has to go in a… There’s nothing formulaic or templated about that. That has to go in and we have to talk about this guy being this person, right? Whether it’s in the ceremony or in the vows. None of them are like… I think the formula is that we end with some kind of vow or vows and I usually insert a couple of fun ones in there. But other than that, it might start in the middle, right? There we were on that beach in Mexico and you had gotten food poisoning and we were running or… You know, that kind of thing.
– Spoiling my honeymoon? Wait a second.
– Yeah! Or there we were in the… And you shouted bear but there was no bear and I ran like hell and left you behind. We could start in the middle, we could start in the end as long as it’s fun and it captures their personality.
– It’s funny ’cause as you’re saying that, my mind, I’m happily married for a long time, goes to these things with my wife, the things that I could tease her that we both laugh about now, but at the time… You know, like the time she thought a chipmunk was a rat because she’s a city girl.
– Yeah. I mean, that’s the stuff that makes people interested in what we’re talking about, right? I mean, otherwise it’s just the same old wedding that everybody’s heard before. You want to hear these stories. And especially when it comes to the ceremony, I think you need to tell the story of the relationship because the people don’t… The people in the audience, they might know one side or the other. They may be friends with you, but not know your origin story or who you really are as a couple. And one important component of our service is that we also do delivery coaching. So once they have a draft that they love, it’s included in every package, they get one rehearsal session with us. And that gives us a chance to say, “Let’s emphasize this word for comedic effect. You need to slow down here. Or you’re reading it, you’re not saying it, and you need to practice it more and put some more lift and some more fun in your voice. You know, you’re saying something funny. Let’s say it in a way that you would say it if you were saying something funny,” right? And go through it with them. And it gives them a little bit more confidence. I’m a speaker. I’ve done a lot of public speaking, but I am not a comfortable speaker extemporaneously. I have natural stammers and I go “uhm,” and I do all the things you’re not supposed to do. But if I practice and if I know where I’m going with it and I’ve written it down and I practice it, then I can do it almost flawlessly. It just takes a lot of work. And so you’d have to take them through that process too because that’s what’s going to give them the confidence when they stand in front of 150 or 200 people that they know and spill their guts, right?
– And as a professional speaker and I’ve been doing this for a long time, I tell people you have to practice out loud.
– Absolutely.
– You know, I’ve been reading it through.
– No, no, no, no, no. You have to practice out loud. Your mind never gets tongue-tied. Your tongue gets tongue-tied. Words don’t run the well together out of your… And then then you start, you know? And as a speaker, I’ve been doing this a long time, I know when I’m reading things in my mind. I know what they’re going to sound like ’cause I’ve been doing this 20 years. It was not always like that. The filler words. There are some politicians that I can tell when they’re on script and off script because they’re different. They’re different. It might still be good, but on script when they’ve prac- Man, it just killing it off scripts. Like, “Okay, there’s the filler words again.” The filler words come in because they’re just “uhm,” they’re thinking.
– Right. Especially when they’re in a debate or if they’re being asked questions or that sort of thing. The other thing that I think people do wrong when they’re speaking and they’re not experienced speakers is that they don’t really know what three minutes or four minutes is on a page, right? So this is really pertinent to the planners out there. You can tell them three minutes all day long. You can tell them four minutes all day long. But unless they’re reading it out loud and timing it, they will never know and they’ll make this mistake over and over again. And so that’s why you get people that come in with three to four pages of material at 12 point font and think that they’ve got a three-minute speech and it turns out to be 12 minutes.
– Right. People have no concept of time. When I started doing the podcast, I said to myself, “I want to make my personal ones about 10 minutes. And the guests, I’ll let go longer like this, but my personal one’s about 10 minutes.” And I would put a timer out. And then I realized I do have a better conception of time. Not a great one, but a better conception of time. And that for me, the timing wasn’t important. It was, did I finish the thought? And I had some… I remember the first one I did that was like four and a half minutes and I went to my podcast producer Richie. I said, “Richie, it’s four and a half minutes.” He said, “So?” I said, “It’s only four and a half minutes.” He said, “Did you finish the thought?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You’re done. That’s it, you’re done. Don’t add.” What was it? Mark Twains wrote a letter. I would’ve made this shorter, but I didn’t have the time, right? ‘Cause, you know this as a speech writer and I know this, it’s really hard to write a short speech. It’s really hard. If you give someone 30 minutes, it’ll go on. You tell them you have three minutes and you time them for three minutes-
– That’s where-
– My-
– Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
– My most harrowing speaking experience ever was two minutes on stage in front of 1,700 professional speakers with a clock in front of me counting down two minutes and when they hit zero, my light and microphone were going off. That is two minutes. There’s nobody going to put a hook and say, “Hey, you have to finish.” No, your light and mic went off. You are done. That has been my hardest speech to give.
– There’s a reason why when you put on a rock song, it’s like three or four minutes at most, right? On the radio. And they do radio edits for songs. Not every song is Led Zeppelin or…
– No American Pie.
– Bohemian Rhapsody or that sort of thing.
– American Pie, yeah.
– Yeah, there’s a reason those songs are shortened. It’s because of people’s attentions span. And the couples themselves don’t think about all the weddings they’ve been to where you’ve had to sit through even a five or six minutes. It’s hard to pull off a five-minute speech and be good, right? You have to really nail it to do five minutes of good content and three minutes is difficult enough and I think that my… I come from the perspective of someone that has… It’s not only a speech writer so I’m paying attention to this stuff, but I’m also a little ADD. And so I look at it like this is going to be something that people are going to want to listen to for more than three minutes. Or is this a paragraph that is just simply too long? And that goes to something else, I think, which is flow. You could even have… If you have three minutes of material that is the same tone or the same… You know, if it’s all serious, if it’s all sweet, if it’s all monotone in its presentation, then those three minutes will seem like 10, right? So I look at these speeches almost like concert set lists, right? Where you have to have a slow song. If you’re doing all fast, then insert some slow songs just to break it up. Your little acoustic part in the middle of a heavy metal concert maybe, right? Or vice versa. If it’s all kind of adult contemporary, you’re going to want to punch up or down a little bit to give some dynamics to what you’re doing. And that’s part of what we do when we write it and that’s part of how we work with them when get to the presentation part of it. See? I can’t talk. The presentation part of it, but that’s what we’re working on. And as they practice and then they work on it, the whole thing starts to take that shape.
– Are you also helping people that where they have the friend doing the officiating?
– That’s exactly what we’re doing. So that when we write ceremony scripts, most of the people that are new or inexperienced officiants don’t know… First of all, they don’t know all the components of a ceremony. You hope that they remember to tell people to sit down or put their phones away or that sort of thing, right? But the other part of it is it takes a pretty good writer to do 8 to 10 minutes of ceremony and make it fun. And that’s a reasonably short ceremony. Especially if you consider the procession and the ring exchange and all that, it works out to maybe 15 or so. But 8 to 10 minutes of narrative is a lot to ask somebody to write. And even good writers are going to not necessarily have the time to do it right and they’ll go online. Like everyone else, they’ll grab a quick template and it will not be personalized and that they picked you for that reason. They picked you to create a feeling of personalization. In those cases, we not only interview the couple and get all of the information that we need, but we also interview the officiant themselves and get their perspective on the couple, or the people that they grew up with or whoever it might be, and get their voice and their perspective on marriage if they’re married and that sort. And so the thing becomes very much a family affair in that sense.
– Right. No, that’s great ’cause so many people these days are having somebody do that for whatever reasons. But yet they don’t understand they’re asking someone who’s unqualified because they’re funny because you know, they’re life of the party.
– Charismatic, yeah.
– They’re all those things. I was at one where somebody did a good job, again, which is more unusual, so much so that people were coming up asking for his card because they thought he was a professional officiant. Happened to have been a lawyer by trade, so maybe he’s used to doing jury speeches or something like that, and he did a good job. And then there’s the others where, “Yeah, it’s okay. It’s okay.” But it’s nothing special about it and I think that’s where you come in making it special.
– One more quick example, I had a friend… Sorry, I had a couple that asked their best friend to do it. The couple was 26. Their best friend was 22. That person had not only had never spoken in public before, but had an incredible fear of doing that and on the first call said, “I don’t even know why they’ve asked me to do this. I’m terrified. I can’t do this. This is terrible.” When we got to the rehear… We worked through it. We wrote the script. When we got to the rehearsal part, he froze up. Completely could not speak one word.
– Wow.
– And thankfully the couple worked with him a little bit to try and get him warmed up, and he did. He wound up doing it. We worked with him. It was great. It was one of our best achievements. But this was eight days before the wedding. He didn’t know that he could speak the first line. Like “ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.” He couldn’t even get that out with me, right? So, that’s what we’re dealing with. And that’s one of the things… I believe a sage person wrote “people buy outcomes, not process” or something like that, right?
– Yeah, they buy the results. Not the process.
– It might have been-
– Might have been.
– It might have not paid…. I’m not trying to be too cheesy, but it might have been in my wisdom and the business of wedding.
– Business of weddings, yes.
– But anyway, the people that are purchasing this want freedom from their fear of speaking or writing or embarrassing the person. They want to pay the best tribute to that person. And so I think that’s the business model here is to alleviate tension from not only the couple, but the wedding party speakers, but also just the timeline, right? Just keeping Elda vendors happy and everything moving in the right direction would be a massive accomplishment, so.
– So what you’re saying is that every wedding planner should have you on speed dial because every time a couple says, “Oh, my uncle, my friend, my cousin…” That should be red flags for them. We need help. And every couple that says, “We’re going to write our own vows.” Well, you know what? You probably want some help. Not with every wedding is what we’re saying here.
– Absolutely. Absolutely, but I would would also tell you that because it’s such a new thing for the wedding industry and for couples themselves, the couples generally would never ask for it. They might be proactive, but for the most part, they don’t know this help exists. And so that’s our marketing problem. Going to the business side, there’s obviously the B to C piece which is our responsibility. Right now, most of our business comes B to B to C, which is through the wedding planners and the wedding planners saying, “Yes, this is going to help them. Yes, this is going to make the wedding better. I’m going to proactively talk to them and say, ‘Hey, is there anybody in your wedding party that you’re nervous about or they’re nervous about speaking? Hey, do you need help with your vows?’ Or ‘Hey, are you having somebody do your ceremony that isn’t an experienced officiant? We’ve got a service to help them.'” That kind of thing.
– It actually brings up another possibility ’cause I know a lot of DJs who are doing officiating or other people getting into that.
– Yeah. MCs, yeah.
– So do you do coaching for people like that?
– You know, it’s a great idea. I haven’t thought about coaching. We’ve talked about providing some assistance to wedding party… Sorry, WeddingPros that want to punch up their presentation and punch up the people that are doing some of the educating and we met each other at Wedding COR, right?
– WeddingPro COR, yeah.
– In Chicago. And the vast majority of the speakers, yourself included, were wonderful. But there were a few that could have used some editing and some punch up to make it a little bit more fun. And so we thought about doing that, but that’s a good idea. We haven’t really thought about the DJ piece of it.
– Well, I think about people… Some people became ordained as a backup, you know? The officiant doesn’t make it, has an accident, whatever. He need to be there. And then some of them got a little taste, they were like, “You know what, I kind of like this.” Or “I want to maybe not have to be there for six hours. I can come and do the ceremony and go home.” And yet this is a skill to be worked on just like the skill of DJ or planning or photography or whatever that is. So, I just threw you another business there.
– There you go.
– That’s my marketing brain.
– I’m going to put that in my business plan with my various sales prongs, yeah.
– That’s my marketing marketing plan there.
– Going straight into Trello, yeah.
– The other thing, you mentioned actually, is another episode. I’m not sure if it’s coming up before or after this which is one where I said they can’t ask for what they don’t know exists. And this is both in terms of results ’cause that’s what I talk about, sell the results. We in the industry see these results because we see all these different events, whether personally or vicariously through industry events and things. Couples have their blinders on and only can see what they see. And yes, if they go to Instagram, they still have their blinders on ’cause they see one… You know, if they’re lucky, they see 1% of what’s happening over there. This type of thing, it’s always an interesting marketing thing for me as a marketer to say when they don’t know to ask for it, right? How do you market it? And Steve Jobs was brilliant at this, right? Nobody knew they needed an iPad until they couldn’t live without it.
– Their iPad-
– Right.
– I remember when they first came out, I was thinking, “Huh, who needs that?” I think I’m on my fifth, right?
– Yeah.
– Who needs that thing? So, it’s the why. It’s not the what, right? What you do if you say, “Oh, I could help you with that. Okay, I can do that.” No, no, no. This is why. And that’s the whole sell. And for everybody listening, it’s the same thing for your business whether you’re… You’re a DJ, great, but why you? Not, why do I need a DJ? Why do I need you? You’re a venue, great! But why you’re a venue? And it’s getting to that why people pay more money to eliminate negative things than to get positive. You know that as a political… From politics who’s always like telling them why the other person’s bad and you don’t want them instead, right? If you tell somebody this is a benefit, good. If you say… I’ll give you an example. You know, your house is getting older. You should probably check the plumbing. Yeah, yeah, I’ll check it. Brian, a pipe is leaking. Call the plumber now, right? We’re going to fix it now if we see that there’s a problem. It’s almost like your sizzle reel should be all the bad fails that we’ll find on YouTube somewhere and then your good ones showing here this is what it could have been.
– Well, SNL did this… Back some months ago, SNL had a sketch that was very, very funny. That was essentially a maid of honor speech gone horribly, horribly wrong. And it’s essentially a five-minute commercial for us. I know you say not to send out links, but I always send it. I always said that it’s fine. It’s just going to reinforce everything.
– Right.
– But it is an interesting… Look at some interesting problem when you have all of these weddings happening and they don’t know that they need this because they don’t know that it exists but also because they’re idealizing their own wedding. They go in thinking that it’s going to be great, right? We got Uncle Bob’s going to through the officiating and we’ve got… You know, my best man’s going to deliver a great speech ’cause I know him and… You know, and they always think everything’s going to be fine. And I think that’s incumbent upon us as professionals to remind them that that’s not exactly how this is going to go, right? It’s going to be great. It might be. It might be perfect, but it’s never going to go without a problem, right? There’s always going to be something.
– And they’re going to say it was perfect and we know it wasn’t because we know that the swan was gliding gracefully on top of the water while paddling like mat underneath. We know that. And that’s why you hire professionals because when things go wrong, the couple may never know and it’s taken care of. All those things are fixed. Somebody else that I met, it’s going to be on much again before you or after you, I interviewed him. It was the wedding weatherman. I don’t know if you met Andrew there.
– You know, yeah, I heard about him. I think I went to Engaged In.
– He was at Engaged, yes.
– He was at Engaged In and he was… I didn’t get a chance to meet him, but people were talking about the unique services that were at Engage and it was us and the weather man.
– And that’s why I want you on because I have my series. The niche is this, which again, the good news is you’re in a very narrow niche. And nope, there were very few other people doing kind of what you’re doing. There are some that touch it, but… And then same thing with him. The downside is if they don’t know to ask for it, right? So that’s where this visibility comes in. So, I hope that this gives you a little bit of visibility.
– Absolutely. And that’s by the way where competition helps you, right? I mean that’s when you have… This is one of those situations where I don’t really worry about competition. Not because you’re not supposed to pay attention to them, but because the more that they talk about it, they’re helping soften the marketplace and then someday maybe we’ll get into who’s better. But it doesn’t really matter right now because right now the more people that do it, the easier it will be for all of us.
– And I actually did another episode, are you really better or just different? Because we’ll never know if you’re better.
– Right.
– If they hired you and somebody else and then you could compare them side by side, we would know.
– Absolutely.
– You’ll never know. So they just have to feel that they want the results that you’re going to give. And competition, I just think about it. I just came back from the UK. So on Savile Row roll the fine tailors in London and they’re all there. Why are they all there? Because that’s where you go for that, right? Well, you go to 47th Street in New York for jewelry. Why? ‘Cause all of the jewelers are there. That’s the place to go. So competition draws attention to that as opposed to actually hurting you because no matter how money you get, and I wish you had tons of success, you’re going to do a small fraction of the number of weddings that happen in the country. 2.2 million weddings. Well, this year more. But 2.2 million weddings, you know? A small fraction of that is going to keep you really, really busy.
– Oh, yeah. Well, please let me get 0.5% of the weddings in this country alone.
– Any plans to go international?
– We’ve talked about it. We’ve talked about it. You know, there are some… Even with the English speaking countries, there are language and cultural barriers that would require a franchisee essentially to be there. So it’s a downstream part of the model. We’ve also looked at other industries outside of weddings or other events that are outside of weddings that could have their own specialization. I think as we build out right now, I find when I keep my eye on as focused on the ball as possible, I play better. And so I try not to get too lost with other projects, right? I’m not one of those people that can do 15 businesses at once. I got to do one and do it right.
– And that’s a great lesson as well. Know that those things are there, but focus on what you’re focusing on and then when it’s time, give that full attention. Treat it like a business. When I decided to narrow my niche to the wedding and event industry, which people listen to this might have heard this before, somebody said my niche is an inch wide, but it’s a mile deep. And I know what I speak about translates to outside the wedding event industry. I choose not to look for that business. It finds me occasionally. That’s fine. I’ll speak outside or tangential to it, but I don’t look for it. It’s not there. The reason I mentioned it, having just come back from the UK and going to Canada, wedding hosts are a big thing in some other countries. So it’s different than here, you know? You call maybe an MC, but in Canada very common to hire a wedding host and then you’re going to have your entertainment and stuff.
– We’ve run into that. We’ve done a few weddings that originated in the United States but wound up in destinations where they were hiring destination planners there and also you officiants. I should have mentioned, we are doing work in Canada, which I guess culturally feels close enough.
– Again, listen. People outside this country say, “What’s a wedding like in the US?” I say, “Where? Where? Don’t just say the US. I mean, this is a pretty big place here. I grew up in the New York-New Jersey area and I never knew that dancing between courses of your meal wasn’t the thing in other parts of the country. It’s actually a novelty. It’s a novelty. So, just things like that. But we can go on forever here, so.
– Absolutely.
– People want to find you, vowsandspeeches.com and “and” spelled out?
– Yeah, vows A-N-D- Yeah, vowsandspeeches.com.
– I’m sorry.
– Yeah, go ahead.
– Same as on Instagram. Vows and speeches, yeah.
– Vows and speeches. Great, this will be in the show notes as well so you guys don’t have to write that down. Just take a look at the show notes. Brian, thank you for being gone. Much success to you and I look forward to seeing you the next event.
– It was a pleasure and thanks for having me again.
– Yeah.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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