As we try to do most weeks, we have searched high and low to compile current events and news from the wedding world to help today’s Certified Wedding Planner keep an eye on our ever evolving industry. If you have a wedding-related news item you want to share, leave a quick headline or summary and a link in the comments section.

For those of you considering whether you want to become a wedding planner, encouragement is just a web click away. Not only is the overall wedding industry holding strong in the face of unprecedented economic turmoil, but wedding planning is enjoying resurgence as a wise budget decision for the bride and groom as well as an excellent career choice for the planner. For many of the millions of workers displaced by layoffs and outsourcing, the decision to become a wedding planner will come from a personal inspiration or the simple fact that marriage rates are rising during the recession.

Of course, there have been challenges to our industry due to financial concerns. Many businesses are struggling as the market is dialing back spending. As weddings no longer adhere strictly to set traditions or trends, successful industry vendors are adapting the meet the needs of cost conscious clientele.

 

 

Today’s brides are considering secondhand wedding gowns, scrutinizing which wedding elements can be downscaled, and eliminating unnecessary extras in order to maintain a tighter wedding budget. Successful wedding planners understand that while no wedding is perfect, our job is to create a wedding experience that is perfect for the client.

Across the spectrum, weddings continue to be a hot topic for contests and giveaways. This week, Essence Magazine wraps up their ‘Will You Marry Me?” contest. Five grooms-to-be from around the country are finalists to win a $50,000 dream wedding. The winning couple will be chosen by readers deciding which of their video proposals most deserves the grand prize.

An Ohio newspaper is running a ‘Once Upon a Wedding’ contest in which essays written by its three finalists will be judged to determine who wins $9,000 in wedding goods and services. The Get In Touch Foundation is sponsoring a bridal event where they will give away brand-new wedding gowns as door prizes. After sharing with a radio audience how she was saving money for her wedding by moving in with her parents, a Tennessee woman received numerous offers of free goods and services from wedding vendors, venues, and a Certified Wedding Planner.

Other businesses are using innovation and creativity to improve their wedding market performance. Upscale hotels are seeking to stand out as the perfect wedding venue through in-house planners, customized packages, and room discounts. The Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto is hosting a ‘Wedding University’, a day-long interactive educational affair that focuses on how to cut wedding costs in a shaky economy.

Supermarket chain Safeway partnered with WedNet to launch an online window shopping and budgeting tool that allows brides to make design, cost, and portion decisions on wedding cakes, flowers, and wines. Pronuptia, a United Kingdom wedding shop, is gaining market share by establishing a reputation as the place to go for plus-size wedding gowns. A Virginia town is enticing couples to enjoy a destination wedding at an exotic locale without leaving their home town.

 

 

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, wedding promotions are naturally in the air. The Florida Botanical Gardens will team up with a local barbershop quartet and a county court clerk to host a free group wedding on February 14^th. At the Detroit Science Center, any couple who becomes engaged at the opening of their new Star Trek exhibit will have their photo taken on the Starship Enterprise and be entered into a contest to win a ’Star Trek: The Exhibition’ Ultimate Wedding Package.

In wedding venue news, as Las Vegas’ fortunes falter, New York’s newlyweds celebrate in record numbers. Elsewhere, couples struggled to relocate their celebrations as venues were shuttered through bankruptcy and disaster. At one end of the venue spectrum, an Illinois couple exchanged vows in a Wal-Mart garden center. At the other end, Hawaiian wedding planners are in court fighting to keep their state’s legendary beaches accessible to newlyweds from around the world.

Regardless of budget level or geographic location, brides and grooms everywhere are embracing the environment along with their wedding dreams and choosing eco-friendly alternatives to traditional wedding planning solutions. 

 

 

 

The celebrity world continues to give and take when it comes to nuptial news. Singer, songwriter Lisa Loeb married Conan O’Brien’s music coordinator, Roey Hershkovitz, last weekend at a restaurant in New York City. After a covert courtship on the set of the Fox Television series ‘Fringe’, costars Anna Torv and Mark Valley revealed that they had secretly celebrated a holiday wedding.

 

 

Keeping true to the engagement season, Mark Wahlberg is reportedly planning a Catholic wedding and Clare Danes and Hugh Dancy will follow the standard ‘costars to newlyweds’ script. The music world heard rumors of Jennifer Hudson’s plans to marry Davie ‘Punk’ Otunga and Eddie Van Halen’s engagement to stuntwoman-turned-publicist Janie Liszewski. Meanwhile, Sarah Jessica Parker may either fear divorce-induced poverty or deny anything is wrong with her marriage to Matthew Broderick, but she definitely regrets the black wedding dress she wore at their 1997 wedding.

On the television, the CBS Network is diving headfirst into wedding programming with the drama pilot ‘Marriage’, a matrimonial dissection, and the reality-documentary ‘Arranged Marriage’, a controversial series exploring the Eastern tradition of selected mating among Western couples. The show is already drawing comparisons to the 2003 Fox Television show ‘Married by America’, in which viewers voted on which contestants got hitched.

 

 

In a storyline seen by many to be a step forward in the marriage equality debate, the ABC soap opera ‘All My Children’ will stage daytime television’s first gay wedding next week. In reality, two famous lesbian couples seem to confirm the conventional wisdom that any marriage has a fifty percent chance of surviving. Julie and Hillary Goodridge, lead plaintiffs in the landmark Massachusetts lawsuit that lead to legalized same-sex marriage, are reportedly heading for divorce. Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi, however, are reminding people of the loving way Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn used to look at each other.

 

 

In California, on March 5, the state Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on whether to allow the gay marriage ban approved by voters last fall. In that record setting ballot battle, the Mormon Church has acknowledged that while its financial support for Proposition 8 was more than previously disclosed, its contribution was an insignificant portion of the $83 million total spent for and against the proposed constitutional amendment.

In New Hampshire, the state legislature is debating three separate and opposing bills on same-sex marriage. A same-sex civil unions bill in Hawaii has reignited the battle over marriage equality rights in the Aloha State. And just as Vermont lawmakers introduced a same-sex marriage bill, their counterparts in Wyoming voted down a similar measure.  

 

A city judge in Manhattan ruled that under New York law, same-sex marriages that are valid elsewhere should be recognized in the Empire State. Across the Hudson River, a state judge in New Jersey agreed, but only for the purpose of divorce. In Maine, supporters and opponents are lining up for an anticipated bill proposing legalized gay marriage.

The ongoing fight between marriage equality and traditional marriage values appears to have no end in sight. States are debating, experts are weighing in, countries are deciding, television networks are advocating, and everyone involved seems confident in the certainty of their beliefs. History suggests we, as a society, will find a solution. It just may take several decades.

 

In other wedding news, an Arizona couple, who will form their own marital team in April, was on separate sides for last Sunday’s Super Bowl. When the Pittsburgh Steelers captured their record-setting sixth championship, the groom-to-be won a bet that means his future wife will pay for their upcoming wedding. A Georgia couple, five decades after their first no-frills wedding ceremony, renewed their vows with three generations of their family on their fiftieth wedding anniversary and finally enjoyed their first piece of wedding cake.

The Reverend Ed Taylor, the ‘Marrying Minister’ of the Smoky Mountains, has performed an estimated 85,000 weddings over the last three decades. His retirement after Valentine’s Day will not help the four Whitaker sisters of Annapolis, Maryland, who each have weddings scheduled in 2009. Congratulations and good luck to the entire Whitaker family!

We told you it was a great year for weddings.

 

Tags: Certified Wedding Planner, Wedding Industry News, Wedding Industry Trends, Wedding Planning News, Wedding Planning Trends

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