Keeping your clients (mostly) calm.

Jimmy Kimmel is recommending surviving social distancing with #FormalFriday, where we all change out of our sweats and dress up for dinner at home. Photo by Cameron Clark. — *Jimmy Kimmel is* *recommending surviving social distancing with #FormalFriday, where we all change out of our sweats and dress up for dinner at home. Photo by* *Cameron Clark*.

I’ve been fortunate to have worked with wedding pros from 94 countries over my career and I’ve heard from a ton of them this past month – all with similar questions, stories of lost business, uncertainties of what to say to clients who are completely stressed.⁣

We’re all in this together. If you have questions on Coronavirus and your wedding business, feel free to email me at hello@thinksplendid.com. ⁣I’ll be sharing my answers here on the Think Splendid blog so that everyone can benefit.⁣ I’ll also keep your name anonymous.

Splendid Progress Worth Celebrating

We're an industry that makes our living by celebrating life's milestones, so I'm going to start each of these update posts with a few positive COVID-19 things we can all smile about:

GLOBAL RECOVERY RATE

The recovery rate is now more than 87,500 people, up from 85,500 yesterday.

WHEN YOUR NEW CO-WORKER IS A VERY GOOD BOY

my new wfh coworker is so needy, I can’t get anything done 🙄 pic.twitter.com/FyIeLY45GO
— Kevin P. Johnson (@OkayJoJay) March 19, 2020

Splendid Q+A on Coronavirus and Your Wedding Business

Managing Your Clients’ Emotions

My advice today is not in response to a specific question, but rather to something wedding industry pros everywhere have been dealing with and will be dealing with even more in the coming weeks: managing the emotions of their brides and grooms who want to stay reassured that they haven’t been forgotten about or bumped to the bottom of your priority list.

Even if you typically work solo from home, you may also now have your spouse working from home plus kids that you’re now trying to homeschool while maintaining some semblance of normalcy and calm. Add to that the clients you’re rearranging and moving weddings for as well as those whose weddings don’t need to be postponed but who still want to talk about table linens or cake flavor combinations and it can feel like you became a full-time therapist overnight.

When it comes to your clients, remember that everyone is just grasping for anything that makes them feel in control of something right now. Discussing table linens, cake flavors, lighting design ideas, must-have dance mix songs, or flower girl hairpieces is a way for your couples to focus on something positive. It is a way for them to insert some sense of calm into their lives.

Here’s what destination wedding planner Beth Helmstetter is doing to keep her clients feeling taken care of right now:

I am keeping my routine as is my entire team, just from home. We’re having daily video meetings at 8:30 and pushing as much work through as we can on all of those projects we've been wanting to start if we only had the time.
Also, it's been nice to have a window where we can totally pamper our upcoming couples who are also feeling a bit nervous overall.
This looks like being super available for them. We’ve been contacting all vendors and venues BEFORE the clients have the chance to even ask “what happens if.”
We are almost done with all of our designs for clients going up until November which would usually be delivered much later and overall just delivering everything much earlier in the process than we’d traditionally have time for.
This probably doesn’t sound like much but our clients seem to just want to feel like we’re on top of it and are thinking through everything right now. It helps them to know they don’t have to.

Taking an Authentically Optimistic Approach

Over the next 2-4 weeks, you are going to need to manage your clients’ emotions even more than you have been so far.

Here’s why: because of the increase in testing that the UK and the United States are starting to do, more people will be confirmed positive for COVID-19. It will look like numbers are ticking up, up, up. What’s really happening is these cases were already here, we just didn’t have the tests to officially confirm them.

It’s important to stay calm when you see these big numbers growing even bigger over the next few weeks:

The numbers mean testing is being done.
Testing means we are proactively working to solve the problem.

Print out these two points and stick them next to your desk. You’ll need to remember them because it is very likely the numbers are going to scare your couples.

Our society often assigns value to big numbers – for better or for worse. This means we are going to see more people freaking out over the next few weeks in reaction to the growing numbers in the headlines.

Your clients, now more than ever, need to be able to turn to you as a source of rational guidance. They need you to focus on the splendid.

Remember, focusing on the splendid means operating from a place of authentic optimism and not the false promises of toxic positivity. Toxic positivity (“It’s just the flu.” “Keep traveling.” “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will just disappear.”) is what allowed this mess to grow in the first place.

For example, if a client calls worried about the story on 35 people contracting Coronavirus at a wedding in Australia and needs reassurance, here’s what a response might look like based on each approach:

Toxic positivity: “That will NEVER happen to you!”

Authentic optimism: “These stories are why we are taking social distancing seriously. We will never compromise the safety of you or your guests nor will we compromise the safety of our employees. We are monitoring all updates to the WHO guidelines and are in constant touch with the venue and your other wedding suppliers to move your wedding to a date where this should no longer be an issue. We are doing everything we can to ensure you have a wedding you remember for all the right reasons.”

Don’t make promises on things outside of your control in an attempt to “look on the bright side.” Looking on the bright side doesn't mean ignoring reality. Looking on the bright side means insisting that what is happening right now is not the end and moving forward in a realistic and responsible way.

#CommunityOverCompetition

If you’re working with a bride or groom who didn’t hire a wedding planner and is trying to navigate every piece of this impact on their wedding by themselves, it’s even more important that you show you not only value them as your client but that you understand they do not have years of professional expertise guiding their postponement decisions.

If possible, connect them with a planner you trust who may be offering free advice or guidance on wedding planning issues specifically for engaged couples. Even if the advice is not 100% personalized to them, the couple-focused resources several wedding planners are offering online via social media and blogs can go a long way in reassuring your clients that they are not alone and that there is a community that cares about them.

My friend Sarah Haywood, a luxury wedding planner based in the UK and star of the new TV program “The Wedding Fixer,” is opening her virtual doors beginning on Monday to offer free guidance to couples facing Coronavirus-related wedding challenges. The sessions are free and open to anyone anywhere in the world, no matter their wedding budget. If your clients need advice from a level-headed wedding planner who has seen it all, Sarah’s “Wedding Planning Sessions” on Instagram Live will be a reliable resource to send them to.