At Splendid Insights, our wedding market research firm, we present wedding budgets in six categories in order to get a better look at how brides and grooms from around the world plan their big day at the differing spending levels. The budget segments are Intimate: $1,000 or less (think elopements, city hall weddings, etc); Economical: $1,100 - 10,000; Standard: $11,000 - $30,000; Premium: $31,000 - $95,000; Luxury: $96,000 - $500,000; and Ultra Luxury: $500,000 or higher.
As noted above, brides and grooms in the Ultra Luxury Wedding segment spend more than $500,000 on their wedding and almost half (47%) pay for part or all of their wedding themselves. Nearly 1 in 4 Ultra Luxe couples spend more than $1 million on their wedding, not including the honeymoon, and 1 in 10 spend more than $3 million.
Since the ultra luxe royal wedding has more people setting goals of working with high-end couples, today I want to highlight a few ways that brides and grooms in this budget segment use online media in their wedding planning:
- More than a third of couples in this budget range (35%) find at least one of the wedding pros they hire via social media.
It's important to note that these aren't ads they're finding them through, but organic social media posts. Whether you advertise or not, make sure that you're using social media in a way that shows off not only the type of work you do, but your personality as well, as that is another factor they consider important when hiring (no one wants to spend their wedding day around someone they don't click with).
- 3 in 4 of ultra luxe engaged couples (77%) read wedding blogs at least once a week, and about a quarter of them (27%) hire wedding pros after seeing them featured on the blog. Over a third of this group (40%) started reading wedding blogs before they were even engaged.
These refer to professional wedding blogs (such as Ruffled, Colher de Chá Noivas, Love My Dress, Style Me Pretty, etc), not your own blog as a wedding pro (though they look at these too, again to get an idea of both your work style and personality).
While ultra luxe couples do use print magazines in planning their wedding, they use them less so than the other budget groups.
- While Pinterest generally comes in first place as the most used social media platform in most of the wedding budget categories, for the ultra luxe clients, Instagram takes the spot of the most used social app for wedding planning.
Even Meghan Markle used Pinterest and Instagram in her wedding planning, saving photos from the apps to show the wedding professionals she worked with.
I often hear wedding pros say that they want to move up to a higher budget level so that they can finally work with clients who will stop using social media. It's a common myth that clients who spend more on their wedding will delegate all creative control to the people they hire and won’t look at social media for inspiration, but it is just that – a myth.
Online marketing, beyond just advertising, will always be a necessity for wedding pros who want to stay relevant, no matter how much their clients spend. While it can feel tedious, boring, and sometimes instill bouts of FOMO, make sure that you continue to make it a priority. Your dream clients are paying attention, even if they don't show up in your follow list or tap the "like" button as they scroll past.
The wedding market research reports from Splendid Insights can be downloaded here.
Photo by Nancy Ray, the official photography partner of Splendid Insights.
Originally published May 2018
