Entrepreneurship Management

Expert Advice About How to Start a Wedding Business

By Ciara Lawler

Is it time to turn your side hustle into your full time career?

There’s a lot to consider when you’re thinking about turning a side gig into a full-time career. In fact, there’s a lot to consider before you decide to turn your passion into income. The good news is that many successful, full-time wedding vendors, from photographers, videographers and content creators to planners, coordinators and officiants started their work part time, and you can too. Once you’ve decided to take the leap, the first hurdle is “How?”

To help make this transition a little easier for you, we turned to three wedding industry experts and WeddingPro Educators to find out how you know you’re ready to take your side hustle to full-time.

3 essential tips for launching your full-time wedding business with Carolina DJ Professionals

With a passion for business development stemming from building one of the top DJ companies in the U.S., Troy has been a sought-after professional for more than 25 years. 

It’s hard to know when to make that jump from a side hustle to a full-time job. I know I held off for a long time until I was finally pushed to do so—and it was the greatest push ever. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else. Better yet, both my business and life improved when I made that jump. Let me give you three things to look at that can hopefully help you make the decision.

1. Finances

It’s likely going to take some time to build up the income you want. While growing my DJ business, I was working a full-time job to slowly build things up the right way and not make rash decisions. Before you make the jump, make sure you’re in a good place financially so you can make informed decisions on things like clients, staff and expenses based on your core values and goals, instead of financial reasons.

2. Community

Now that you’re a business owner, you might start feeling like there is nothing you can’t achieve. This isn’t always the case, as it is only natural to face hurdles in your new business venture. I fully understand (and am right there with you) that this business is going to be your baby. It’s your vision, your blood, sweat, and tears. The best business owners are the ones that have a solid network to help with workloads. Those who divide and conquer. Those who know what their strengths are and who are capable of delegating tasks to a wider team. 

Look closely at what you’ve done to build up your business. Keep getting out there and making potential client, partner, and staff connections. That way, when you’re ready to make the jump you’ve already built a network of connections to help take it to another level.

3. Time

Starting a business takes time. A lot of time. Even when you think you’ve covered everything, something new comes up. Make sure you have the time (personally and professionally) to dedicate yourself to going all-in. You need to accept that the first year is likely going to be one of the hardest you ever have—and ever will—work. Start off on the right foot and make all your hard work worthwhile. 

Ceremonies by Bethel‘s checklist: Is it time to go full-time? 

In addition to having married more than one thousand couples as a wedding officiant, Bethel has been coaching wedding pros to elevate their own businesses using their unique skills and passion.

There are so many things to consider when debating whether to keep your business as a side hustle alongside your full-time job or leap into it as the only thing you do. Some of those things have to do with the business, and some have to do with you personally. 

There are lots of pros to keeping your business as a side hustle, both financially and emotionally. Having a guaranteed income and benefits can be a great thing and might be more important for some people. 

If you do decide to take the leap, you might feel a little out of your depth in the beginning, but it will get easier with time. 

Here are some questions to ask yourself before moving to full-time: 

• Are there things you would like to be doing in and for your business that you can’t do now with it as a side hustle?
• Are you ready for the time, needs, and emotional ramifications that come with having a full-time business of your own?
• Do you have a good sense of this business’s costs and needs, including what you will be expecting to earn if you need to rely on it for income?
• Are you turning away business now?
• Is your business continuing to grow, with more and more quality inquiries and bookings coming your way?
• Have you been able to increase your prices over time?
• Are you looking to scale the business and bring in more staff in order to grow further? 
• And, last, but in no way least, is this something that you want to do (and don’t feel pressure to do)?

Advice from serial entrepreneur Jasmine Smith: Wear many hats 

Jasmine is a serial entrepreneur and event production expert. She has experience consulting, wedding planning, and creating large-scale events.

Getting to the place where you’re truly ready to take the leap is a journey that involves so many feelings, thoughts, and actions. A lot of your time will be spent second-guessing yourself, wondering if you are really qualified to be the CEO, accountant, marketer, and all of the other hats you wear when you first start out working for yourself full-time. As you navigate this new journey, you might also find yourself talking to other self-employed people, both inside and outside of the industry. Making these kinds of connections will allow you to share stories about your experience and find out what pushed others out of their 9-5. 

When it’s time to make the move to full-time self-employment, there has to be two critical components in place: guaranteed client work for at least three months and self-determination masked as grit. It’s important to have revenue coming in especially when you start. Those clients are going to help you shape your business model and learn which processes suit you best as you grow. Self-determination is really going to push you, the person, not the business person on the hard days. 

Just know that when you make the final decision, you will experience every emotion possible, and that’s normal, especially when it’s your time. The ride begins the moment you make the decision.

Did that get your wheels turning? If you want more expert advice about what it takes to run a business in the wedding industry, be sure to check out all our articles in the entrepreneurship section of the blog!

Photo Credit: Renee Hollingshead