Especially if you’ve been here a minute.
Photo by Cameron Clark
“Engagement season” refers to the period of time each year when the most wedding proposals happen. In the United States, it runs from Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November) until Valentine’s Day. For many other locations, it starts just a few weeks later, going from around Christmas to Valentine’s Day.
The most popular days for engagements are currently Christmas day, Valentine’s day, New Year’s Eve, Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s day – in that order.
Just like most good publicists will start prepping and pitching their clients’ Christmas campaigns in early Summer, wedding pros’ prep for engagement and proposal season should ideally already be underway. However, if you, like almost every wedding business owner, have been juggling a zillion things, the next best time to start is now.
For the month of October, I’m going to be mostly discussing the things you can do get your business ready so that yours can be the company they most love once the ring is on their finger.
Your business is your baby. It is not everyone else’s baby.
This means that not everyone loves it the way you do. It does not consume their mind the way it consumes yours.
We get so wrapped up in our own wedding business bubble that we assume everyone else saw our work or heard us say something the first time.
We assume that the people who follow us looked at every post we put on Instagram, Stories, or Facebook.
We assume they opened every newsletter or read every wedding blog post.
We assume they clicked on every link we excitedly shared when we were published in a wedding magazine or made an appearance on morning TV.
Although we intellectually know this isn't true because of algorithms and email open rates, we behave as though it is.
We get annoyed if someone asks a question we’ve already answered. We feel hurt if someone doesn’t know we landed the destination wedding of our dreams. We feel snubbed if we aren’t included in a feature on a wedding trend we invented.
Sure, maybe they are just bad at paying attention. The reality, though, is that even your biggest fan has likely missed an update from you at some point. They’re busy, you’re busy, we’re all busy. We all tend to our own babies first.
When it comes to sharing your work and expertise, it's okay to repeat yourself.
That photo from one of your favorite weddings that you already posted two years ago? You can post it again.
The wedding blog post from five years ago that really resonated with people? It will probably still resonate, both with new followers and people who will benefit from the reminder.
The advice you dished out on the top 10 things to look for when choosing a wedding venue? That is helpful information that each year's "new class" of engaged brides and grooms needs to know.
As we get ready for Engagement Season, it's okay to bump up your best work to the top of your feed.
Don't let anyone make you feel guilty or like you have an ego if you choose to do so. We all have movies or TV shows that we'll stop and watch every time they're on. We buy books we love to read over and over. We have favorite vacation spots and restaurants that we know like the back of our hand yet find something new-to-us every time we visit.
Keep flexing your creative muscle and sharing new wedding work, but don't forget that you have a deep archive that shows you've been here a minute and are good at what you do.
Tell people. Again.
Written by
LIENE STEVENS
Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 94 countries
