Impostors Keep Coming to the Wedding Business for Refuge

By Paul Pannone

Since 2008 wedding spending has slowly rebounded as the economy stabilizes, yet the loss of jobs remains a concern to most economists. As more people chase after fewer jobs many are starting their own business and a portion are looking to the wedding industry as their golden goose.

According to an article by the Fiscal Times written earlier this year, “Right now more than 9.8 percent of all workers are self-employed, and more than a quarter of people laid off in the first six months of 2010 who hadn’t found jobs considered starting their own businesses, according to a CareerBuilder survey.”

There is an overage of wedding businesses to service a shrinking market.

Most entrepreneurs believe the wedding business is resilient and recession proof, supported by happy, free-spending couples. Many never bother to check the facts that say formal weddings are falling out of favor among young couples or there is an overage of businesses serving the declining numbers.

Wedding analyst, Christine Boulton, just wrote a story about one case where a hot dog marketer looks to build her future in the wedding business:

“More and more people get displaced from the corporate world and as a traditionally non-corporate industry made of primarily mom & pop businesses bridal looks like a great place to land. ~sigh~ I am sorry, but if you haven’t been in the trenches, you just don’t understand it.”

Boulton told eWedNewz she’s concerned at the sudden disappearance of companies that on the outside, look very healthy and are frontrunners in their category. Boulton mentions the Encore Studio failure and worries about the long-term ramifications to the rest of the industry. But Boulton’s main concern is and has always been for the consumer.

Boulton recently commented on the most recent information regarding the Encore failure saying:

“I have to question how far down the list are the numerous brides that lost money by choosing Encore Invitations? What do you want to bet that by the time they get to the brides (the REAL consumers) the money has run out.

Boulton told eWedNewz, “This was a company that was well-established, well-funded and knew what they were doing. I would caution every bride to vet each vendor and ask a lot of questions before signing on the bottom line.”

In our own experience we’ve interviewed countless wedding business upstarts and websites deemed unsustainable businesses by experts that departed the business. eWNz found most of the decision makers of the failures never worked directly with wedding couples or stressing brides. Our interviews with CEOs of wedding websites found they’re well-educated but again, have little or no interaction, experience or desire to deal directly with brides.

eWedNewz is contacted by new businesses weekly to review web sites or to give our opinion of how to get into the wedding business. From now on, we will simply refer them to this story.

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