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In the past, typically, couples planned their wedding with lots of help from family and friends. But now, technology has made it easier for couples to research and plan every part of their wedding online, wherever they are and, importantly, at whatever time suits them.

One crucial factor of this technological breakthrough is that couples now have more control over their wedding planning, as they no longer have to please anyone other than themselves. 

Technology is, therefore, rapidly changing the Wedding Industry.

The benefits of using technology for engaged couples

There are so many benefits for couples using technology when planning their wedding. The most obvious benefit is that it enables couples to create a curated list of wedding suppliers, including big-ticket items. Their big-ticket items include – their wedding venue, and when booking a dry hire venue, their caterer, and the ancillary things like a wedding cake.

Today, more than ever, more tools, apps and resources are available online to help couples plan their weddings. As a result, tech-savvy couples now look at wedding inspiration and suppliers around the globe, choosing from traditional to more modern locations anywhere in the world, all online from the comfort of their armchairs.

On the other hand, these tools make it a more competitive marketplace for wedding venues and suppliers. Consequently, for example, wedding venues no longer compete with the local church or another local venue but now compete globally with destination venues.

How are engaged couples finding their wedding venue online?

Couples are now more likely to find their wedding venue through:

• Paid (by the venue) platforms such as Bridebook Business or Hitched. These listings tend to be ‘flat’, with only a few images and videos, making it hard for a wedding venue to stand out.
• Social media, as couples like the venue vibe
• Wedding venue websites, where couples are deep diving, perhaps having found the venue initially through a platform or social media. As a result, websites need to be more in-depth, including virtual reality tours, to enable couples to explore the venue before committing to visit in person.

Therefore, technology must be at the forefront of managing couples’ weddings. If couples are all over their weddings, embracing technology, you must be too!

What changed during the lockdown for the Wedding Industry?

During the Covid-19 lockdown, an evolution and modernisation of the wedding industry began. Lockdown forced many wedding professionals, venue owners and suppliers to rethink how they traditionally marketed and managed their wedding business. Instead of meeting face-to-face, conducting showarounds in person and handing over a wedding brochure, the wedding industry started to harness the power of software and technology, conducting Zoom calls and scaling their brands online to reach their audiences.

For the first time during the pandemic, whilst a great deal of time and energy went into rescheduling postponed weddings, the wedding industry woke up to the fact that there is the potential to conduct more business through the use of technology online.

Some wedding business owners rethought their marketing proposition. Wedding venue owners simplified their headline information, adding digital assets that include video and virtual tours, adding more reviews (to give couples additional confidence), creating downloadable wedding brochures and moving to using digital documents and payment packages, leading to a surge in E-commerce wedding bookings.

For wedding businesses with an eye on the future, they embraced couple-facing technology, enabling some to scale their businesses, leaving those with a ‘business as usual attitude’ a smaller and smaller slice of the wedding cake!

Are wedding venue owners letting couples down?

Having embraced outward-facing technology, most wedding venue owners are yet to invest to the same extent in back-of-office technology. Having embraced technology to grab couples’ attention, venue owners now need to give couples an experience more akin to how they use technology. Back-of-office technology now needs to catch up with the couple-facing technology, which includes giving couples greater access to information more quickly to enable them to plan their wedding in a way they have come to expect when they want it.

Wedding owners who embrace technology more and more will be able to serve their tech-savvy couples better, manage and grow their business more profitably and scale-up, if that’s the long-term plan.

Understanding the wedding business

Before selecting a back-of-office system, the first thing to consider is that couples don’t buy a wedding. Couples hire elements from handpicked wedding industry experts that they are now finding online. 

In most cases, couples start by hiring a venue at a fixed fee, depending on the time of the year, the month and the day of the year. The only variables when hiring a wedding venue relate to the number of guests, food and drink and, how many rooms they will occupy, where there is onsite accommodation. 

Other hire items can include an external caterer and bar if the owner operates as a dry hire venue, the linen and flatware, a photographer, a videographer, and entertainment – the list can be extensive. 

Each element of a wedding is, on the whole, hired at a fraction of the owner’s price, but once all the items are tallied up results in a big-ticket item to the couple. Due to the large budget, every element must be well managed by the wedding coordinator/ planner on the wedding day. The Wedding Coordinator must ensure they create a flawless celebration when all the hired details come together. Back-of-office technology can help venue owners, the wedding team, and the caterers deliver against the client’s expectations.

Why do wedding businesses employ the hiring model?

Wedding venue owners invest in buildings (venues) and equipment and then charge a daily percentage fee (a fraction of the original cost of their investment). The more venue owners can hire out the venue at a given price, the more this becomes a profitable business model. As the asset is eventually depreciated and expenses such as labour used to provide the wedding services are covered, the business becomes more profitable.

Supposing you are a venue owner that has purchased or converted a space, a building or an estate, the more you hire it out, the quicker you can generate a profit. However, generating profit comes with the caveat that the more you hire out the wedding venue, the greater the need for technology to help you manage your hire company and keep your couples happy.

Wedding venue owners: You need technology now to help you to manage your hire business better

When it comes to wedding venues, technology is critical to helping wedding venue owners better manage their business. While technology can be an excellent asset for wedding venue owners, choosing the right technology for the venue is essential.

Technology can help simplify the wedding planning process for venue owners and booked couples. When it comes to managing a venue, there are now software programs available that can help with booking appointments, managing timelines, managing seating plans etc. After extensive independent research, one of the most popular software programs I recommend to venue owners is Sonas Venue Management.

Why do I recommend Sonas Weddings Venue Management?

Sonas Wedding Venue Management offers you, as a venue owner, a comprehensive suite of tools to manage every aspect of your wedding hire business, even on the go. With Sonas Wedding Venue Management, you can keep track of every detail, manage your calendar, couples bookings, build contracts, take online payments, plan events and more.

With the help of Sonas Venue Management software, you can streamline your operations, eliminate potential mistakes, and free up time to focus on other aspects of your business, such as marketing. And in turn, Sonas Venue Management allows you to provide a better client-facing experience, further helping to generate better reviews, ultimately driving new wedding bookings and leading to greater profits.

Sonas Venue Management software offers a tiered approach to managing clients and bookings with features that include –

• Calendar management: This can be a great way to keep track of bookings, food tastings, final details meetings, events, and an open day at your wedding venue
• Contract management: Having a central, secure place to store contract information of clients can be a huge time-saver.
• Improved communication with couples: Sonas includes a customer relationship management (CRM) system. The CRM system helps to manage contact information, track interactions with clients, and keep couple’s data safe
• Couple-facing tools that enable couples, for example, to upload their menu choices, organise their seating plans and their timeline
• Payment automation, accepting and tracking online payments, critical to any successful wedding venue.
• Event management that saves your catering and events team time and enables them to deliver to a consistent standard.

So how does Sonas Wedding Venue Management help you to hire out your asset more frequently?

With the knowledge that technology will increasingly play a pivotal role in the Wedding Industry, now is the time to consider investing in a new system that helps couples with their wedding planning online and helps venue owners hire out the wedding venue more seamlessly. 

Wedding business owners must facilitate couples’ needs and provide value for money, be innovative and embrace technology to give a better experience of the hired products or services. Using the right tools, such as Sonas Venue Management, venue owners can streamline operations and improve communications ensuring the venue operates more efficiently and is scalable.

To survive, wedding venue owners must be couple-technology-friendly, which equals reviews and the venue achieving a better return on investment quicker.

Final words

It’s no secret that the Wedding Industry is in for a more challenging time, but tech-savvy couples still want to celebrate their love and commitment. Given that weddings are events with deep meaning and lasting significance, what price are you putting on keeping couples in love with your wedding venue?

images with kind thanks to

E-Lope

Fleur Challis Photography

Cobi & Coco

House of Mimi Fleur

The Castle Westenhanger

If you would like to know more about how I can support you and your wedding venue and your team, take a look at my Wedding Venue page