DOES EXPERIENCE MATTER?
I began my wedding industry career in my early 20s. I’m not sure what year it was, but it was right after I returned home to Hawaii, from California. I was fighting to create a “glamourous” screenwriting career in LA, decided to throw in the towel, and decided to give it a go at home. I started a production company here in Hawaii called Canoe Girl Productions, and I hit the ground running. In a few short years, we produced three TV shows in Japan, promoted concerts, and produced about 50% of all those cheesy in-room hotel commercials. At the same time, we started offering photography and video services to wedding couples.
Then 9-11 happened, and everything changed overnight. Suddenly, all of the advertising revenue my company relied on dried up, and the only thing paying the bills was the wedding industry. And wedding couples really weren’t spending as much money as they were before, so I decided to focus on small weddings. Months passed, and business didn’t get better for Canoe Girl Productions. 9-11 was pretty much like COVID for Hawaii. The hotels were closed for a bit, and the tourists were gone. And when tourists did come back, they did so – slowly. So eventually, I decided to break apart the wedding portion of Canoe Girl Productions, and focus on small weddings. And thus – Dream Weddings Hawaii was born.
As I tap out this article, I’m 46 and have been knee-deep in the wedding industry for over 20 years. I’ve planned over 10,000 weddings, both large and small. And for most of those weddings, I have also functioned as both the photographer and videographer.
I have a lot of experience in this industry. And that can be a double-edged sword.
On the positive side, I can plan a wedding, photograph, and video it, with no hitch in my step. And the quality and service that I deliver, is top-notch. No matter how small or large a project is, every client always gets 1000% of my attention. And I’m very careful on everything I do, because I’m scared of screwing up.
The negative side to having a lot of experience – well, one’s mind can start getting lazy, and it can start getting too comfortable, and stop fearing weddings.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – fear weddings? That’s a kinda strange term. But it is 100% true.
See, for weddings, I fear screwing up. There’s a bunch of things to be fearful of, and too many to list. It can be as simple as not having a vendor show up on time, rain, or not having my batteries charged, to rush hour traffic, etc..etc… So when I have all of these fears, which almost teeters right to the edge of paranoia, I make sure these fears don’t manifest themselves into something real by double, sometimes triple-checking that everything is right. And my mind is always racing with these fears, or concerns, all the time. Even during the wedding, while I’m smiling, joking, and laughing with couples.
There’s a lot of fears when it comes to weddings, such as “Don’t get too close to the edge!”
I’m sorry to report that for most of my competitors, that fear has left them. And what’s left is a shell of a company that simply doesn’t care. And that is one of the biggest downfalls of experience. Companies just get too overconfident in themselves and think that everything just falls into line, and a customer is just a customer.
Biggest fear here. Making sure family members show up on time!
Experience, overall, is more of a blessing than a curse. I just have to make sure to always keep my head on a swivel, because things are always bound to wrong, one way or another.
I do have one pet peeve when it comes to experience, though. It’s when companies get cute with the term experience, and use it as major marketing tool. I know several wedding companies that brag about their”combined experience.” What the hell does that mean? Well, it means that if I have 10 vendors with each having 2 years in the wedding industry, I suddenly have 20 years of combined experience. WTF? It’s technically correct, but really – WTF?
Then there are companies that brag, that they were founded in the 1970s. Again, it’s technically correct, but that company has changed ownership 3 or 4 times, and the people performing weddings for them usually have 2 years of experience. So, the only thing that has 50-plus years of experience is their name. It’s like McDonald’s bragging about their experience, when the kid making your burger is too young to know that Michael Jackson was black.
What it really comes down to, is that while experience gets gold stars – experience – is the last thing you should be worried about when it comes to picking your vendor, or wedding company, or any business that you choose to spend your money on. There are two ingredients you need to look for: quality of customer service, and quality of product, and weigh that against price.
Hope this helps :)
Steve Young
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