TWO NOTES FIRST:
I just got back from attending and speaking at the first ever WIPA National Conference, and the conversations/experiences I had there were the farthest thing from this article as could be. It was among the most welcoming, accessible, and open-circle events I’ve attended within the wedding industry. This article was not prompted by people or experiences there!
Some people who read this article will feel a deep conscience prick where none should not be, simply because you are so eager to be open and kind within the industry. Others who read this article will be offended or will dismiss it as “not relevant” or “doesn’t apply to me,” when maybe it does. It’s worth slowing down, taking a minute to be honest with yourself, and asking trusted friends for feedback… just as I did when writing this. None of us are infallible, and we should ask our closest circles for honesty!
I’ve worked on this article about a dozen times in the past six months, but it always stays in drafts because while my thoughts are clear, I’ve worried that I will come across too strong, too “doom & gloom,” too critical. I have spent eighteen years in the wedding industry, and I love it—a lot. I love the people who work in weddings. I love the events we produce. I love the clients we are privileged to serve. I love what we get to create. And I care too deeply for this space, for the small businesses & creatives who comprise it, and the beautiful collection of people we have the privilege of serving to simply be quiet. After having this topic come up numerous times in the past few weeks, I decided it’s time to sit myself down and actually finish this.
Wedding professionals: we have lost the plot.
The first time I wrote that sentence, I phrased it as a question. “Have we lost the plot? Have we lost our way? As a collective community, did we forget why we are here?” But I don’t think this idea is up for debate anymore.
Over the past year, something seismic shifted in wedding vendor culture. Perhaps this shift has been a slow, creeping change over the course of many years and I only recently noticed, but to me it feels as if it happened overnight, all at once. The fabric of this industry is very, very different today than it was a few years ago.
Maybe it’s the ways that social media (aka, “free” marketing) has changed the daily cadence of our jobs from one kind of creator to another—many of us spend more of our daily mental energy creating for a future, hoped-for client than for our current ones.
Maybe it’s the steep, intense distrust that now seems to permeate wedding culture, both within vendor categories, and in vendor-to client relationships. I love reading Big Budget Brides on Reddit and I think TikTok wedding influencers can add a lot to the conversation, but the free sharing of opinions & “experience” from peers can also be an echo chamber of bad advice.
Regardless of the cause, things feel different. It’s hard to tell between what’s real or what’s fabricated, when something a smart branding choice or an egocentric move, what is good taste or what is simply meant to feed an algorithm.
There have always been pockets of the wedding industry that put more stock in likes and accolades than in the satisfaction of a job well done for the person who hired them, but that used to be the exception, not the rule. Today there’s a shocking (no other word for it) emphasis on self-promotion over brand promotion—a “main-character energy”, more than I’ve ever seen before. More than on collaboration, more than on cultivating a unique point of view or refining ones creative voice, even more than actually being good at your job! Marketing has it’s place, of course, but while it was once a part of our daily jobs, it now seems to have been replaced with a frantic, almost desperate grab for attention at every turn. We have turned to “more for the sake of more,” and it’s exhausting.
So yes, we have lost the plot. What do I mean by that? I mean that we have forgotten who we are, why we exist, and who we are meant to serve.
I said this during my breakout session on Monday—why do we exist as an industry? Because two people found each other, chose to love each other, and have made a promise to keep loving each other for the rest of their lives. They invited friends and family to help them keep that promise and to celebrate it with them. It’s a beautiful story of love, commitment, community, sacrifice, joy, and legacy. We exist to help them celebrate their love and remember that promise. That’s it. That’s the full story. That is why we do what we do.
So why have industry events—networking, education, “girl dinners,” conferences, and even adjacent events like Bridal Fashion Week—turned into a fierce competition for attention? Why have we made everything about… ourselves?
We are not the point. Our clients are. Without them, none of us have a business, none of us have a brand, none of us have a foot to stand on.
And yet… I have personally watched or experienced:
A luxury networking event where people are so laser-focused on being photographed and videoed, so focused on making it onto that event’s social media carousel, that they dropped conversations and literally ran to dance and pose as soon as they see the cameras come up.
Planners hiring their own content creators & photographers to document them at events they were invited to (not events they designed, just ones they attended) and spend an entire evening posing instead of connecting.
DJs and bands set the volume so loud that conversations can only happen by screaming into other peoples’ ears… at daytime networking lunches.
Photographers at Bridal Fashion Week so desperate to “get the shot” that they threw elbows and literally body-blocked people from getting into runway shows and to their reserved seats.
People bring content creators to Bridal Fashion Week to document them photographing (or simply attending!) shows as a way of gaining marketing content— completely overlooking that the whole point of NYBFW is to sell bridal gowns to bridal gown boutiques.
Countless wedding professionals at professional networking events dress for shock value in order to gain attention—without pants, without shirts, with a whole lot for the world to see. Again, during professional networking (daytime!) events.
It’s beginning to feel like we’re living in the story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
And then there’s the marketing content for these events. Shock factor. Trend-chasing. Proof of a “good time.” It’s all “It-Girl” vibes, dancing on tables, letting hair down, always bigger, always edgier, always wilder. Since when did a person’s ability to drink and dance until 2am become proof that we know how to direct a team of filmmakers, design a beautiful wedding tent, or listen and respond to a bride’s insecurities in the makeup chair? What are we doing??
Wedding friends: WE ARE NOT THE POINT.
To quote Natalie Pinney:
“The event industry has spent years optimizing for “Instagram-worthy moments,” i.e.: flower walls, neon signs, branded backdrops, huge facades. Really cool stuff. But have we become so focused on creating moments worth sharing that we’ve stopped asking whether they’re worth feeling? I’m realizing that might be something by another name: immersive on the surface, but empty underneath (depending on why they are designed).”
Or pulled from a conversation about networking events with Sarah Porter:
“People need to ask themselves, am I here to better myself as a photographer or to better the wedding industry, or just to make myself look good? Am I elevating other peoples’ experiences? Am I contributing in a helpful way? Or am I just creating congestion? If I am not a ‘contributing member of society,’ do I really have a place here?”
Let me be clear about what I’m NOT saying:
It’s egotistical to post photos of yourself attending an event.
Attending styled networking events undercuts your ability to serve your clients.
All “fireworks” forms of marketing are inherently wrong.
Bold personal style has no place in the wedding industry.
All self-promotion is evil.
Of course there is a place for brand expression. Of course there is a place for personal, unique style. Artists have always pushed the envelope in both attire and experience, and I enjoy that! I’m not saying it’s always out of place. And I do recognize that while my brand looks best wearing Ralph Lauren, that’s not for everyone. I’m not saying we should all look and act and sound and function the same. Not at all!! But I do want us to question if showing how little we can get away with wearing is really the thing that we want as a marketing tool for working in weddings.
Not everyone is a Fireplace Brand. This industry is full of Fireworks, and I think that is SO GOOD. We need the sparks to keep things interesting! But this is an urgent call for wedding vendors to get back to the heart of things:
We serve at the pleasure of our clients. We tell their stories. We honor their legacies. We design for their visions. We program for their enjoyment. Let’s get back to marketing with our clients at the center of things.
Here’s what I am saying:
Keep the main thing the main thing.
It’s better to make money with people than to make money on people.
Make sure that how we show up online/at networking events is aligned with how we show up for our clients, with our brand ethos, and with how we want to be remembered after we leave a conversation.
Remember that weddings are an extension of the hospitality industry. We exist to serve, not primarily to entertain.
Remember Maya Angelou’s words: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
A growth mindset/abundance mindset will always win out over a fixed mindset/poverty mindset.
Relationships with people are more important than social capital. Hard stop.
This Can Be Done Well!
While I have spent my virtual breath for paragraphs now, criticizing the current body of wedding vendors for its egocentric choices and frantic attention-seeking, not everyone in the industry is like this. There are many who do a stand-out job of platforming others, trusting the process, collaborating with & elevating the entire community instead of only prioritizing their own brands. A few worth mentioning:
Ben Finch, a photographer who regularly tells other photographers which planners they should connect with… and then connects them.
Neillie Butler, a planner who regularly shows up online to share her life with her clients, but doesn’t make herself or her story the center of her brand. It centers on service to others.
Elisa Bricker, who co-hosts an informal “Supper Club” with me to give Charleston-area wedding vendors the chance to connect on a deep level without the pressure to show off.
The whole industry isn’t going down the drain. Not everyone is selfish and self-focused. I really do believe that the vast majority of wedding vendors have a heart to serve and care for their clients first, and think about marketing themselves second. Read all of this as a call back to the basics, to the heart, to your personal why. Let’s lift each other up and make each other better!
If you need help figuring out how to do that, comment below! Let’s make the comment section a place for a useful, fruitful conversation!
Sarah, amazing take. It's true and something I have been struggling with for a while. I actually wrote about it on Substack a few months ago. Hopefully more will speak out so we can continue the conversation.
So good Sarah, thank you for getting this out of drafts for us to share, I think this will start a lot of good conversations within our industry. It’s time. See you in November for WIPA Nashville :)