Weddings are down, get used to it!
I’ve been hearing and having a lot of talk about weddings being down this year. Yeah, and? We’re coming off an unfair benchmark, and a time that’s roiled the waters to the point that we’re still sailing on choppy seas. In this episode I try to give some perspective on where we came from and where we’re going, and what that might mean for you and your business.
Listen to this 8-minute episode for some musings on the current and future state of weddings and events.
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– Weddings are down. Get used to it. Listen to this episode to see where I’m going.
Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the “Wedding Business Solutions” Podcast. I’ve been having a lot of discussions lately with people who are talking about, “Weddings are down. Weddings are down and it’s terrible.” Well, they’re certainly down from last year and I say this in 2023 because 2022 was not a normal year. Matter of fact, 2021 was not a normal year. 2020 was not a normal year. If you’ve been in business long enough, then if you go back to 2016, 2017, 2018 or whatever, 2019 was actually a pretty good year for a lot of people.
But if you think about that, are weddings really down now or are they going back to a level that feels more like something like that? I don’t like to say the new normal. I always like to say the next normal because things change and then they change and then they change again. So from a statistical standpoint, if we go back, I like to call it BC, Before Covid. If we go back BC, the number of weddings as a percentage of the population had been declining for a long time. The population going up the number of weddings staying stable, it actually wasn’t going down the number but the percentage was going down and the percentage of people getting married has been going down for a number of years. The statistics actually point to the future of not being that rosy but I’m not going to be doom and gloom here.
We’re not talking about tomorrow, we’re not talking about next year. The number of babies being born is also down, right? They talk about the population replacement, people dying, babies being born, that the future is going to show that the population is actually slowing down, right? Because we’re having more people dying than being born, right? People are also living longer which is also a good thing there. But now we’re getting into all kinds of statistics. But let’s talk about this. What I like to look at when it comes to any individual business in the wedding or events industry is what are you trying to do to make yourself and your business successful and profitable? What do you need to do? How many weddings do you need to do? How many events do you need to do? And then can you make yourself more profitable doing the same or a smaller number of events?
Because all of the people that I’ve worked with are only trying to get a small percentage of the number of weddings that happen in your market or the number of events that happen in your market. If you think about it, if there are 5,000 weddings that happen in your market and you’re trying to get a hundred, that’s 2%. That’s actually a pretty big number, right? 2% of all of the weddings that happen, that’s probably a bigger number than in a lot of other markets. But that’s a 5,000 market wedding. You know, 5,000 wedding market. And then if you think about corporate events and quinces and Mitzvahs and all these types of things and a lot of you do more than one of those things you can get into school events and all that. There’s all these possibilities.
What any of you need to do, just the same as with my business, is just need to get enough events on your calendar that you can profit the way that you want. And that doesn’t mean stuffing and stuffing the calendar. I think 2022 proved that to all of us that doing more events is actually not a good thing. Because you’re doing more events doesn’t mean you’re necessarily profiting more and you’re certainly getting burnt out more. It’s finding that right sizing that, if you’ve been listening to this, you’ve heard me speak about before, is what is the right sizing for this? And this is any business. This is not just wedding and event business. This is any business. What is the right size there that you say, “I’m busy enough, I’m profiting enough, I’m still able to have a life besides this.”
So if we look at, are the weddings down? Yes, they’re definitely down from last year, the year before it was a crazy year as well where in that you know, the seas are rocky here, they’re going to find their level, but that level is going to be a level that doesn’t look like 2022. And nor should it, it was the busiest wedding year in our lifetime. It should not look like that again. So don’t focus on that. Don’t focus on the negative that the number is down. Inquiries are down as as, they have to be. If there’s less people getting married there have to be less inquiries. I can say this until I’m blue in the face but the biggest opportunity that you have is the people that have reached out that haven’t told you no.
So if your business is still getting inquiries, that’s a good sign because the top of your funnel is getting filled. If the bottom of your funnel doesn’t look good the problem is within the funnel. The way you’re responding is that’s just not resonating with people. I’ve been in the industry long enough to know that about every three to five years things change to the point where you have to change the way you’re responding because it’s not resonating with today’s audience.
The sad fact that I’ve mentioned many times is that every year, we get a year older. Our customers don’t necessarily, so if you think about it if you are doing weddings every year, you get a year older but your couples are about the same age, right? In the 25 plus years I’ve been in the industry, couples have gotten about five years older. Well, that’s not fair. I’ve gotten 25 years older. They’ve gotten five years older? That’s not fair, right? If you’re doing mitzvahs, right, if you’re doing bar mitzvahs or if you’re doing quinceaneras, you’re dealing with pretty much the same age customer all the time which is again, the parents probably of those kids but the parents are probably about the same age. And even if they’re a little bit older, you’re still going to be dealing with that same, pretty much that same age customer. And yet you’re getting a year older, a year older, a year older, a year older which means we have to adapt to them. It’s not up to the customer to adapt to us.
So if there’s less weddings, if there’s less events, right? Are you just getting enough to fill your calendar the way you want to? ‘Cause that’s all you have to do. There have always been new competitors. There will always be new competitors. People will go out of business, people will come into business. That is the nature of the wedding and events industry is that people will always be coming in. I always want to remind you that that was you at one point, that was you. You were the newbie, you were the new venue, photographer, caterer, invitation, person, planner, whatever. You were the new one at one point.
So never fault anybody for getting into the industry because that was you at one point. And if you’ve been able to carve out a successful niche within that, allow somebody else the ability to do that as well because it doesn’t take away from you as long as you’re still doing it at a high level in a way that your unique selling proposition is coming across to people so that they want the results that only you can provide.
So let’s not focus on a negative because the negative is artificial. The number of weddings down is artificial. And it doesn’t mean that the number isn’t real it just means that it’s artificially down because we had an artificial high. And that’s focusing on something that, A, you can’t change. B, is not a fair comparison and C, has nothing to do with the future. The future is going to be what it’s going to be which is the number of weddings is going to be similar to what it was BC, Before Covid. Yes, it might even start to scale down. And that means that people that don’t do it well and don’t adapt are the ones that are going to go out of business. And if you do it well and if you adapt to today’s customer and if you prove that you have results that they want from you, not from anybody, from you, they have to pay your price to get it.
So let’s focus on the right things here. Make yourself successful and not focus on the negative because you can’t motivate someone in the negative. If a baseball coach tells the pitcher, don’t pitch this person, this next batter low and inside, that’s all they’re thinking is low and inside, that’s where the ball’s going to go. You have to motivate them in the positive. It’s the same with your business. Let’s not focus on the negative. Let’s not focus on things we can’t change. Let’s focus on the positive which is there’s still plenty of leads coming in. There’s still plenty of people. Even if the leads are down, there’s still enough leads that if you convert enough of those, you can fill your calendar with people you want to do business with. And that means things are just fine. You might have to adapt a little, but things are fine. Hope it gives you something to think about, thanks.
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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