Association of Bridal Consultants (ABC) Certified Wedding Planner Program

Full overview

Personal traits, grooming, knowledge, and habits will make you the best planner that you can be. Each planner winds up with a niche market where they get repeated calls for their services. This unit will help you learn what you need in your own toolbox.

Etiquette is alive and well, and can make a tremendous difference in our careers. Grounding in business etiquette provides the confidence we need to face every situation in the best manner we know. Once you become comfortable and confident with finely polished skills, business etiquette will be second nature. Mastery of social and professional skills will allow you to enjoy being a wedding planner and business professional in a much greater way.

A wedding business is part of a service oriented industry. What does this mean? It means that we succeed when we serve well. You may be a planner and all you are offering is your expertise, experience, and your ability to think clearly. You may be a photographer who is offering a product – photographs – but you will also be offering the service of expertise, experience and clear thinking. You will be sensitive to the emotions of the wedding, the incredible amount of time that the wedding takes to be planned correctly, and the expectations of the bride and groom and families for your particular service. If you are able to do all of that, and turn a profit, your wedding business, no matter what it is, should succeed.

Part of the wedding planning process involves understanding and following wedding etiquette. The wedding planner is responsible for knowing standard wedding etiquette and making sure the wedding participants follow it. A good wedding planner will stay abreast of changes in etiquette and make sure clients have the information they need.

Getting a wedding business up and running is a step by step process. Missing a step can mean missing opportunities to close a sale. In this lesson you'll learn how to coordinate and conduct all of the different meetings you will have to manage as a wedding planner.

You will need to work with a variety of vendors in planning a wedding, so getting to know and work with reputable wedding professionals is an important part of your business. A good place to meet other vendors is at ABC meetings. As you develop professional relationships with others that you like to work with, they will likely refer clients to you, as well.

When you have booked your first clients, in the months leading up to the wedding, you will always be preparing for the big weekend. Some planners do only weekend orchestration and some work with their clients in planning every detail. No matter which way you work, you will be preparing for a meaningful ceremony and a fun reception.

Once all seven section exams, final exam and project have been passed under ABC’s grading standards, the student will earn the designation of Certified Wedding Planner and 25 education points that will be placed toward their Education and Professional Development requirements to earn more advanced and distinguished designations.

NOTE: While cellular hotspots may allow access to our courses, users may experience connectivity issues by trying to access our learning management system. This is due to the potential high download and upload latency of cellular connections. Therefore, it is not recommended that students use a cellular hotspot as their primary way of accessing their courses.

NOTE: While we understand that our courses can be viewed on Android and iPhone devices, we do not recommend the use of these devices for our courses. The size of these devices do not provide a good learning environment for students taking online or live online based courses.