Wedding Planners – Building an Office that Works

Assuming you have done the research and made sure there is a need and demand for your wedding planning business, here are a few things you need to run a wedding planning business from your home office. This isn’t a shopping list to take to office depot, but a list of things a new wedding planner business owner should know.

1. Wedding Planner – Office Space

As a wedding planner, you need a special space for your home office. An extra room is the perfect answer for a home office. Unfortunately, not everyone has an extra bedroom. If you don’t have spare rooms, than just find some way to make a part of any room a space for your office. Take a remotely quite room and create a section of it for your wedding planning office. You can divide off your office space with dividers, partitions, or even curtains. The division is important though. It gives a way to draw the line between working for the bride and playing with the family. You need to be able to see that, inside those walls is your office. Outside of the walls is your life.

Because you are a wedding planner, you will be doing a lot of business outside of your house. Thus, an entire room might not be a need, at least not starting out. As a wedding planner, you will be doing most of your work at lunches and on location. So you might want to think about a “mobile” office, such as, a laptop, digital camera, cell phone, PDA, etc.

2. Wedding Planner – Internet access and phones

You can’t expect to present a professional wedding planner business image if you have your 5 year old child answer the phone for you. Setup a separate phone line in your wedding planning office space. Your clients will appreciate it more and it will help present a professional business image. If you use dial up internet access, get a separate phone line for that as well. Nothing is more annoying to a bride than not be able to get in touch with their wedding planner when they want. Better still, get high speed internet. With so much business being conducted via the internet it is worth the extra cost to go high speed. It will save you time and help your business run more smoothly.

High speed internet is almost a must for a wedding planner. You will be using the internet frequently to find new brides, talk to other service related companies, and get new ideas for wedding planning.

3. Wedding Planner – Separate bank account

This isn’t required for most business entities, but it is still a good idea. You don’t want to mix your business and personal money. It makes it harder to keep track off. Plus, if you do happen to get audited by the IRS it will make it harder to prove you aren’t spending business money for personal use. Getting a separate bank account just makes keeping your finances organized better and lets you track sales better.

4. Wedding Planner – Business license and tax id

Some counties or cities may or may not require a business license. I would recommend getting one even if you are not required too. It is a good way for you to tell yourself that you are actually going to do this. That this wedding planning business is for real and that you are going to make it work. Call it a mental milestone if you will. A tax id on the other hand is a must. You can usually get the paperwork for these online via the IRS website.

5. Wedding Planner – Website and email account

Today there is no way to operate and grow a wedding planning business without a website. A website is your doorway to the world. It is a way to market yourself and your business. With a professional looking website and a well run home office you can give the image of an expensive wedding planning firm. You would be surprised at how many “big business” on the web are run by one person. When I say website, I mean get your own domain and hosting. Don’t waste your time on some free domain that gives you a complicated something slash this dot that address. No one will remember that. Get your own domain. It is easier to remember it helps with your wedding planning businesses branding. Same with your email, get one the matches your domain. A something at yahoo.com is unprofessional and won’t help your business image.

6. Regular hours

This is one of the most important things to have in a home based business. Some wedding planners find it to be the hardest part of running a business from home. You need to set your own work hours and keep them. That way when you walk out of the office and close the doors you know you are done working for the day. Don’t fool your self by thinking you can work for a few hours, then do some yard work, come back and work for an hour, then go pick up Susie for soccer. It won’t happen, you will spend more time trying to get back in the right frame of mind then you will working. Make hours, keep them, and you will be golden.

This rule will only apply for when you are actually working at home. Running a wedding planning business means keeping a lot of strange hours, but when you can have control over your own hours, do it.