5 Keys to Success in the Wedding Venue Business
If you've found this article you likely are considering or are actively building a wedding venue business. It's obvious that opening a wedding venue has become a huge trend in North America. Nearly every market in the United States is experiencing explosive growth in the last two years in terms of wedding location options for couples.
This is driven by several factors, one being that this looks like a fun, rewarding cash cow kind of business to get into. It’s a business that appeals to many different types of potential business owners. Combine that with the sexiness of the wedding industry, and you have a clear opportunity for the boom in wedding venues.
A wedding venue business may seem like a fun cash cow, but it’s a lot more work than that
So if you're reading this, you may already be a working industry professional in the wedding industry wanting to expand your business. You may be a construction or landscaping company looking to diversify or for a tax write off. You may be a parent or a bride who just planned a wedding, and realized that you think you can do this too. You may be a barn owner or a property owner on a beautiful piece of land somewhere in North America. Or you may be someone who's looking for a business for retirement or to exit Corporate America journey into entrepreneurship.
The list is long for the types of individuals looking to get into this business. And every single year competition is getting more and more steep.
Gone are the days of “build it and they will come” in the vast majority of markets around North America. You need to be your best advocate and understand the wedding venue business model inside out to make an informed decision before you dive in.
So let's talk about my five keys to success if you want to do this well.
Keys to Success in the Wedding Venue Business
A viable, realistic wedding venue business plan
You absolutely need a viable, realistic business plan. What I mean by that is not the business plan that makes you sleep well at night, or the business plan that feels like you might've done something like this in college, or the business plan to satisfy a banker (truthfully, bankers don't understand this industry).
You need a viable, realistic business plan to really paint the picture whether success is possible in your city or county or state.
There are markets within North America, especially within the US, that do not need another venue. That is absolutely the case.
What I would encourage you to start with is market demand. If you're considering the wedding venue business because you “like the idea of it”, that is not the same thing as:
I recognize that there is a missing opportunity in the marketplace that others are not yet capitalizing on
I know that I have a unique skillset suited for this business
I have access to some competitive advantage such as location or the ability to build for less
Any of those advantages combined with a legitimate market need will start you on the right path.
So when I say a viable, realistic business plan, I'm not saying this fluffy “I really want to do it” kind of thing. If you're putting your hard earned dollars, years of hard work, and your lifestyle on the line, how sure is that business plan?
An exceptional understanding of your extremely local market
You also need to have an exceptionally thorough understanding of your local market.
I've spoken with hundreds of venue owners. I'm a venue owner myself. I’ve learned it’s not smart for venue owners to rely on data from big name wedding industry publications that talk about the general market.
What is not valuable is how much somebody spends on average in your state to get married.
What is valuable is real information from your extremely local market. What is incredibly valuable is knowing what couples are spending who would be a match for your venue in your exact city.
Unfortunately, research studies on weddings in your exact city or county probably don’t exist, and even if they do it’s aggregate data across the whole city - not specific to your ideal couples and their needs. You have to be your best advocate and have an exceptional understanding of your extremely local market before getting into this business.
Access to more capital than you think you will need
Truthfully, a wedding venue is going to cost more than you think.
After hundreds of conversations with venue owners, I don’t think that I've ever spoken with a venue owner that didn't go over budget. And when we're talking about going over budget in the wedding venue business, we're usually not talking about $5,000. In many cases, going over budget is $50,000 or $100,000 or $250,000.
This can be because of some change to the permit, or the code, or something that you were unaware of, or some major mishap when it comes to building, or having to fire a contractor. There are so many elements that go into starting a wedding venue that you probably aren’t going to anticipate.
You need access to more capital than you think both for the build and for building the business. So many people who get into this industry are concerned only about building the building. They completely ignore the cost to build the business, which is even more important.
Acceptance that you only get one shot at a wedding, every time
You need to know within your heart of hearts that couples only get one shot at their wedding day and you don't get a do-over.
We talk about this on my team at my venue a lot. It doesn't matter if we do a great job on Friday and a great job on Sunday. If we drop the ball on Saturday's wedding, they don't get a do-over, and neither do we.
There is no such thing as a test wedding. And learning on the job in this industry is not okay. Couples are trusting you with the most important day of their life and often paying you thousands of dollars to do it.
You will not have a great handle on this business after three or five or 25 weddings. Of course some wedding days will be easier than others and many things will go right, but it’s easy to feel like “I’ve got it” a few weddings in - especially when they went pretty smoothly.
Exceptional understanding, confidence, and capability comes in this business after hundreds of weddings. Truthfully, hundreds of weddings into this business we still are learning. The more respect that you have for that upfront, the more successful you will be.
Make connections with other venue owners, shadow a couple weddings if you can, and never lose respect for the fact that you don’t know what you don’t know. It will keep you on your toes and ever improving.
The right coach
The final key to success in the wedding venue business is to hire the right coach.
In this business, you'll likely spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. You may have a big loan to be paying back. And to be clear, it's an industry built on trend.
It’s a real stretch to think that you'll be wildly successful and have a full calendar 20 or 25 years from now when your bank note is paid back (or when you're done paying yourself back from the money you borrowed from your retirement).
Think about all of the venues that were popular 20 years ago. They're not the venues that are popular today. Back then, couples got married in a church and had a cake and punch reception at a banquet hall. Now couples get married in all-in-one locations.
One thing is an absolute given: The market will continue to change. Set yourself up so that you can be exceptional out of the gates and proficient in your knowledge of this business and this industry from the get-go. Take advantage of the opportunities that exist in the market now, and don’t fall into the trap that so many venue owners do assuming next year will be better. Make hay while the sun shines my friend.
Hire the right coach so that you don't have to waste years learning this business the slow way and missing revenue available to capture today before the market saturates even further. With the level of competition that exists in the marketplace now, learning slowly and guessing your way through this business are things of the past. There's too much at risk.
Unfortunately, the saturation of the wedding venue business will not slow until many venues fail. This may be hard for you to take in because venue owners are exceptionally optimistic people. (We have to be! Who builds a million dollar building hoping couples will rent your Friday’s, Saturday’s and Sunday’s?) But that optimism is the biggest business killer because it creates inaction instead of intelligent action towards the right goals.
Find the right coach and shorten that learning curve by years.
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