People often think that those in the wedding industry get to take the winters off.  Not so!  While we do indeed have fewer weddings and events to work on during the winter months, we’re still busy, but with a different kind of work.  We’re busy with consultations, networking, marketing, and budgeting.  So what have I been doing in the off season?

With many couples getting engaged between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day, these months are busy for wedding professionals.  “Booking season” is full of tasks like responding to inquiries, meeting for consultations, and writing proposals.  I expand my meeting hours during these months to accommodate the influx of inquiries, so just like during the wedding season, I’m still working into the evenings.  I’m doing something right–I’ve been meeting with awesome couples, and happy to report that we’re working with many of them, too!

Knowing how wedding peeps’ schedules work, those planning networking events for the wedding industry often schedule those events for January through March.  Thursday Therapy has become a popular year-round opportunity for wedding vendors to hang out in a relaxed atmosphere, and we were happy to participate in February’s Wild West themed event at the colorful and quirky Catalyst Ranch.  Pollen provided the flowers, while fellow members of the Chicago Green Wedding Alliance provided food, drinks, photography, bakery items, etc.  Other participating vendors included Cage + Aquarium, Goose Island Catering, Heather DeCamp Photography, Luscious Layers, Nimble Well, and Spilled Ink Press.

This is also a popular time for wedding shows, to connect wedding vendors with the recently engaged.  We keep our wedding show participation pretty streamlined.  We were excited to participate in Indie Wed and Committed this winter.  The usual wedding shows aren’t our thing, but these two shows attract a little more nontraditional crowd, which we love!

Here’s our display at Indie Wed.  Thanks to Amanda Megan Miller Photography for including us in her Indie Wed recap!

Members of the Chicago Green Wedding Alliance gathered at the end of February to display at Committed at Greenhouse Loft.  Check out the recap here.  That’s right, I’m wearing the same dress.  And if I do your wedding flowers, you’ll get to see me in it again on your wedding day!  (It’s my uniform.)

And then there are the less-photogenic tasks of the off season.  Bookkeeping catch-up.  Budgeting.  Organizing.  Taxes.  Catching up on all of the things that during wedding season, I tell myself, “I’ll do that in winter.”  Like blogging…