If you’ve planned a wedding for yourself and your partner, you know that it’s something you’re glad will only (hopefully) happen once. Kate (my incredible wife) and I planned our wedding with relative ease. I say “relative” ease in both senses of the word — meaning, our families were luckily not a pain in our butts (something not every newlywed couple can claim). By sheer luck, we also happened to come across a great venue and vendors without having to shop around a bunch. Phew!
In the end, it was the best day of our lives, and we wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Our priorities were making sure our guests had an amazing time, and that WE did, too — but in that order. If you think of a wedding as a service as much as it was a celebration(and it was), then the guests would certainly be the customers.
And we did our best to delight them.
Why focus on the guest?
Throughout your wedding planning process, you’ll have friends, family, and even the local 7-11 cashier all giving you conflicting advice:
“Remember, this wedding isn’t for you, it’s for your families.”
“Screw what everyone else thinks, do what makes YOU happy.”
“Sir.. I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.”
And these can get confusing. Like, if no one should be eating that hotdog, why is it still spinning there?
At the end of the day, you have to listen to everyone’s advice (and I mean everyone), but ultimately make your own decision on what’s important to you, and who you should focus on. You’ll make sacrifices to appease one side, and gain ground in another — kind of like running a business.
For the record, we had a churro cart — untraditional, yet highly recommended.
You might think, “Why should you really care what the guests think? They’re not paying for the wedding; the majority of them aren’t even family!”
Except, they are family. And they will continue to be, from that point on.
Every guest that was there on our big night (including +1's we’d never met!) gave us their love, undivided attention, and best dance moves. I mean, what more can you ask for, honestly?
And that’s not including everything that preceded — the time, forethought, and money that every person sacrificed to be at our San Diego wedding for a weekend. A whole weekend! For millennials in their late-20s, that’s worth more than you’d think. And on TOP of that, they give us a gift??
To be honest, we felt indebted to every one of our guests.
A lackluster customer experience
Our guests were our customers. They paid in time, money, and their love to take part in the service we provided (a presumably great event). And at the end of it all, we profited from the memories and experience more than anyone else. We profited big time.
After the big night, our customers woke up, we put some pastries and mimosas in their mouths, and they started their long, hungover journey home as we skedaddled off to our honeymoon — rich with our shiny new memories.
3 weeks later, our customers would receive a thank you card from us — one of the many churned out from our tag-team kitchen table assembly line.
Another few weeks, and they’d be invited to see really nice photos… of us.
That’s how it currently goes, right? For our wedding, that’s how it went.
Improving the customer journey
I’m not proposing that newlyweds need to be bending over backwards for months afterwards thanking their guests. I just think there’s an oddly absent number of customer touch points along their journey. Clearly, the time to provide more value to your customers is beforehand.
Save the date.
Printed invitation.
Wedding website.
The Holy Trinity. These are the three ubiquitous touch points leading up to a wedding. Two of them spend most of their time under a magnet on the refrigerator, and the third requires either of the first two (or a good memory of the URL).
The wedding website typically has adequate information — schedule, location, gift registry, and (if you’re lucky) hotel recommendations and local attractions for out-of-towners. Personal opinion: they tend to be focused more on style and photos rather than content.
Many times, everyone is left to plan amongst themselves in small groups. And if they have questions, they’re going to try to figure out who else is going to ask them. Or wing it. Or call you.
But why try to fix what’s not seemingly broken? It’s a one-time event, right?
Elephant in the room: 50% of marriages end in divorce, and of that, 50% will go on to get remarried. So there’s a 1 in 4 chance you MIGHT be inviting these people to a round 2. Just sayin’.
But even if it IS just a one-time service, any company worth their salt would want to make sure they’re addressing pain points and providing the best service possible. And that happens with better communication. And currently, the communication is very one-sided.
But you, as the engaged couple, have enough on your plate, right? Of course you do.
Capitalizing on shared intent
Your customers, your guests, your family is all migrating to the same place, at the same time, to watch the same two people they love (you) tie the knot. They’re going to be clinking wine glasses, sharing a meal, and sloppily dancing the night away with their shirts untucked with ALL of your other guests. They’re going to become the closest of friends for a night — possibly longer.
For a better customer experience, we should be allowing wedding guests to interact beforehand. Give them a head start on their night of fun and conversation, but also provide an opportunity to plan their journey (literally) with other guests by sharing hotel/flight deals and coordinating shared rides to and from airports and venues.
Your wedding guests are your customers. Keep your customers happy, and you will come out on top.
Planning your big day?
We’re excited to be building Guestboard.co, a simple wedding communication platform to let guests interact and take pressure off the engaged couple during their planning process. If you’re engaged and want to make sure your customers have the best experience leading up to your big day, sign up for the waitlist.
And a final piece of advice — practice your first dance beforehand
This had me laughing.... “Sir.. I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.” Good read!