Do you need to earn extra money in your spare time? Or would you love to start your own wedding business side hustle?
Whether you just need to earn extra cash or have a passion you would love to pursue – a wedding business side hustle could be perfect for you.
Whether you would love to start a business as a DJ, equipment hirer, a photographer, photobooth operator, wedding stationary designer or cake maker – the wedding industry offers a wealth of opportunities to earn extra money in your spare time.
Stuck on the fence?
Here are some reasons why a wedding business could be a great side hustle to earn extra money in your spare time:
- Many weddings are on evenings and weekends so you can fit your wedding business around another job or responsibilities.
- The wedding industry offers a wealth of business opportunities catering for different budgets, interests and skillsets.
- You choose the hours you want to work and get paid handsomely for what you do.
- You go to gorgeous venues and work with happy, excited people.
- The perfect business to start as a side hustle in your spare time and develop into a full time business if it’s successful.
Sound good?
If you are resourceful, organised and have the other skills that would help make a great wedding supplier – a wedding business could be a great way to earn extra money in your spare time.
Here are the steps you need to get started:
1 – Ask yourself if there are any types of wedding business that already interest you
Think about the last wedding you attended and all the small details that came together to create the day.
Most weddings will include at a minimum:
- Dresses and suits
- Jewellery
- Makeup and hair styling
- A photographer
- Florist
- A wedding car
- A venue
- Catering
- Entertainment
But that’s just the beginning, most weddings involve far more services.
From fun food and drink services, to décor, entertainment, specialty services (such as fireworks or glamping), wedding planning services and equipment hire.
Consider what interests or excites you and make a shortlist.
2 – Assess your skills, income and resources?
Think about what skills you have, startup budget and resources such as a car or large vehicle and storage space.
Some of the business ideas mentioned above will be highly skilled and require significant upfront investment. Whereas others are low skilled and can be started from as little as a few hundred pounds.
Identify what resources and budget you have available and compare these to your shortlist to see what could be viable, or how you could put measures in place to overcome any challenges.
3 – Market research
To get an idea of the local opportunities available to you, research local venues around you.
How many are there within an hour?
Attend local wedding fairs to see what’s popular and what you think you could do better or differently.
Hone in on your idea and look at competitors websites to get an idea of packages, prices and how they present their services.https://theweddingman.co.uk/10-alternative-wedding-catering-ideas-for-the-big-day/
This will give you a good idea of local demand and opportunities to help you identify where you can fit in to the local market, and start earning extra money in your spare time.
4 – Identify what you need to get started
To ensure you launch successfully, list the essential components needed for your business.
This includes:
- Equipment
- Insurance, qualifications, and regulatory requirements (e.g., registering as a food business, obtaining necessary licenses, etc.)
- Other essentials (such as transport, storage, and staffing needs.)
Once you have a checklist of what you need to get started, research and identify equipment costs.
Contact insurance companies and assemble the necessary paperwork. It’s important that you have all legal requirements ready so that you are fully compliant and professional when the bookings start coming in.
5 – Prepare your business offer
From researching competitors and the local market, you should have an idea of what you want to offer.
Consider your service offering – will you offer multiple packages for different price points or just one main package or service to start with?
How much will your service cost? How many hours will this be for? What’s included in the package? Are there any variations according to times, guest numbers etc? What will your payment terms be?
Once you have answers to all of these and a clear idea of what the service you will be offering in your wedding side hustle will be, you are almost ready to launch and start earning extra money in your spare time from your new wedding business side hustle.
6 – Set up your brand and marketing channels
When you are ready to launch your new wedding business – you will need to let people know about what you have to offer.
The first step is deciding your business name, you will then need to get a logo created. You can do this quickly and cheaply on outsourcing websites such as Fiverr.
You can then setup the 5 marketing materials every wedding business needs.
Once you have these in place, you can start promoting your services and booking into local wedding fairs or events to promote your offering.
7 – Grow and assess what works
Once you have started taking bookings, your wedding side hustle will be well on the way to helping you earn extra money in your spare time.
At this stage, you may wish to add extra packages to cater for different audiences or budgets, diversify your offering with other equipment, add bundle packages or upsells to help you earn more from your business.
You can also apply the 80/20 principle (Pareto’s Law) to determine what works and generates the best returns (or what causes the most problems).
Using this process, you can then get rid of any challenging areas and double down on the areas of the business that are most productive and work best. This is a sure fire way to build your brand successfully and earn extra money in your spare time or even grow your wedding business side hustle into a full time business.
If you would like more information, I have created the Wedding Business Success Formula which goes into much more depth to help you start and launch your wedding business to earn lots of extra money in your spare time.
Buy your copy to get started, or check out our other wedding supplier resources and free weekly newsletter here.
