From the Experts, Wedding Planning Tips
6 Ways to Style Your Wedding Planning Portfolio
QC Event School tutor, Heather Vickery, is the Owner and Event Director of Greatest Expectations Special Events and Weddings, one of Chicago’s most celebrated event planning and design firms. This month, Heather outlines her advice for creating a professional wedding portfolio.
Developing a powerful portfolio as a wedding planner is extremely important but very difficult to do. Portfolios can, and should, be in many different formats. The entire purpose of having them is to connect with clients in as many different ways as possible – and on the client’s terms!
Here are several different mediums for producing your wedding planning portfolio.
Hardback book
This is the traditional, old-school portfolio method. This book is used in a face-to-face meeting only. It is a product that you show your potential clients so they can see the breadth, variety and quality of your work.
Designing and printing these books can be costly and time consuming. If this is not your skill set and you want to have a hardback portfolio book I strongly recommend hiring a professional designer to lay it out for you. It is important to remember that these books can be expensive and if you are planning a lot of weddings, they are almost always outdated by the time they are delivered to your office.
My favorite resource for designing these is Blurb but another alternative is My Clear Story.
Website
Your website is your first line of defense. Before a client contacts you, they are going to check out your website (and likely all of your social media outlets). The quality of your website will tell a client a lot about who you are as a company. It will tell them if there is a “connection” between their wedding vision and your work. If they like your website, they are likely to reach out and ask for a consultation.
It is imperative that you have a portfolio page on your website. Make sure you take the time to curate your images. Make sure they are on brand and tell the story you want to convey. Again, if this is not your strong suit, hire a professional like Editors Edge to help you with this crucial process.
iPad
In this age of technology, many planners are opting to put their portfolio in a portable, digital format like an iPad. This would likely eliminate the need for a traditional printed book. It is much easier to update with new event photos and you don’t really need to worry about layout.
You can divide the photos up into sections to show off specific elements of your work (like invitations, ceremonies, floral arrangements etc.) or break them down into “wedding stories.” If you are doing stories, the order of the photos is important. Be sure to start with the invitation and then present them in chronological order for the day.
Another option for your wedding planning portfolio is designing a PDF with some info about your company and a few highlight photos. This document can be sent to vendors to share with their clients when passing off a referral and when you respond to client inquiries. It is just another way to connect with vendors and clients, and the more you connect, the more business you will have.
Stay tuned for Part Two of Heather’s guide to styling your event planner portfolio!
