Course Overview

A leading employment consultancy described the marketplace for Wedding and Event Planners in the UK as “probably the best career opportunity in the last 20 years,” before Covid hit

Why?

Because young hopefuls, graduates and upwardly mobile entrepreneurs were planning and executing more parties and events than ever before.

The economy is now opening as the pandemic claims fewer lives, the vaccination helps create greater freedom, and the government eases its prescriptive draconian stance.

Keen to exercise its new-found freedoms and ‘make up for lost time’, the increasingly more sophisticated (and less frustrated) public expects parties, gatherings, celebrations and weddings to be more polished, better organised and more exciting.

They want more “bang for their buck”.

The Wedding industry alone is worth over £4 billion per year to the UK economy. Weddings are seriously big business. Couples typically take around 250 hours to plan their dream day, and the average wedding in the UK costs between £15,000 and £20,000. More and more couples are turning to wedding planners to help them put together their dream day, relying on professionals to manage such a large spend, and freeing up the diminishing amounts of free time people find they have. The increasing geographical spread of families also make it more difficult for “mum and dad” to take it on.

Professional Wedding Planners are hugely popular in the USA, and as with most things American, the trend is rapidly making its way across the Atlantic to UK shores. The time to get involved in this lucrative business at ground level is now, before it really takes off and competition becomes fierce.

Have you ever considered planning weddings or managing events? They’re not as difficult as you might at first think. If you’re a “Party Animal” and a good organiser who can keep their head while all around are losing theirs, then this course may be ideal for you. If you love working with people and enjoy the adrenaline-rush of seeing a plan you’ve devised successfully carried out, it could even set you on the path to a new career…

Imagine spending your days in smart hotels and business centres. You’ll mix with high-powered executives to help organise their latest sales conference to recognise and celebrate their winners. And you’ll give expert advice and instructions to the TV or sports celebrity you’ve booked to speak at their event.

How would you feel about strolling gently through the grounds of an historic building in the sunshine to suggest a suitable spot for the marquee you’ve booked for next week’s society wedding? You look at your watch; just time to enjoy a freshly ground coffee in the venue restaurant with your client before heading back to the office. There you’ll make a few phone calls to check up on progress with this weekend’s Charity Fundraising Ball.  You need to make sure they have enough canapés and waiters for the cocktail reception.

Does this sound like fun?  It certainly doesn’t sound much like work does it? Although the hectic life of a Wedding Planner and Events Manager can be stressful at times, it also has its perks. No boss looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re not surfing the net when you should be working on that production spreadsheet. No “clocking in” every morning and “clocking out” just to get a cup of coffee. When the weather is fantastic outside, you can move your laptop into the garden to do your planning, and nobody is going to hassle you for it.

There’s also the “buzz” you get from making your couple’s “big day” truly unforgettable; many wedding planners say they get as much out of that as they do from picking up the cheque.

This stimulating course is an inspired choice if you want to plan your own special event or celebration, or that of a friend. It’s absolutely ideal if you want to pursue a new or second career in the sector.

Planning weddings and events is certainly not for the faint-hearted, but it’s not difficult. It’s fantastic for seasoned or developing project managers. If you also have an entrepreneurial flair, it’s perfect. Our course teaches you how to coordinate complex projects and programmes without working for a large organisation and experience the “buzz” of successful delivery.

The course covers large corporate events and conferences, as well as the smaller and more intimate celebrations. It also has a substantial section on Wedding Planning. You even carry out a “dry run” of a couple of typical projects in real time before you graduate. These rehearsals, together with a series of practical assignments completed throughout the course, give you the confidence to tackle the job “for real”.

Show me the money…

Maybe it’s time you took a “slice of the action”.  There are more than 250,000 weddings planned each year in the UK. According to a poll in “You and Your Wedding” magazine, around 11% of brides interviewed would consider using a Wedding Planner. That’s growing exponentially – right now – so there are at least 25,000 weddings for you to pick from!

In today’s economy, all businesses must proactively market and promote themselves. The best way to influence potential clients and investors is to get “face-to-face” with them. Conference planning, large-scale training seminars and corporate hospitality events are ideal vehicles for company growth.

At the domestic end of the market, graduation celebrations, engagement parties, anniversaries and welcome home events give you lots of business opportunities as an Events Planner, limited only by your imagination.

Entry-Level Course

Our brand-new Wedding Planning and Events Management Course has been written by an experienced event coordinator who has been planning and running events for over 30 years. He tutors you personally for the duration of your course.

Studying the course gives you a real insight into project management (a valuable skill in itself) as it applies to planning and delivering complex celebrations and corporate events. It provides you with the skills and knowledge to be able to effectively plan and coordinate a wide range of events and weddings.

We live amongst an increasingly more diverse range of ethnic backgrounds in the UK, so we’ve written a section on planning weddings for some of the more popular cultures represented today, including Jewish, Muslim and Hindu.

Course Structure

The course examines the multiple planning functions and considerations needed to deliver a successful event or wedding through several Units dealing with the individual aspects peculiar to each, plus the many combined processes and skills that apply to both.

Entry Requirements

Perhaps surprisingly, the Wedding Planning and Events Management Course has no entry requirements, other than personal motivation, desire and a genuine interest in the subject matter. As long as you also have a good general standard of education, you gain immense benefit from it, even if you are only studying the course to plan your own wedding or that of a friend.

Course Materials

One of the key benefits of studying with Cambridge Open College is that, unlike other distance learning providers, we deliver the entire package of course materials in a single dispatch. This enables you to get a real feel for the overall structure and content of the course from the start and chart your progress much more effectively. The modular method of delivery favoured by other providers fragments the learning process and actively prevents you from moving faster through sections with which you’re are more confident or taking more time over the deeper concepts that need more thought.

Included within the course materials is access to a fully licensed copy of specialist planning software regarded as the “industry standard” for Wedding Planners and Events Managers. This superb planning tool almost runs your business for you. It’s designed to guide you through planning your event from start to finish, record all aspects of finance and budget, contact details for clients, suppliers and venues, and much more. It even generates a profit and loss account for each of your events, or your entire business if that’s what you want! The programme normally retails at £94.99, but we’ve included it in the package FREE to give you the best possible start to your new business!

Accredited at Level 4 by Focus Awards

The course is accredited and endorsed by Focus Awards, an awarding body regulated by the Office of the Qualifications and Examinations Regulator (Ofqual) in England.

No Final Exam…

If the prospect of exams frightens the life out of you, there is more good news. There is no final exam!

The low price of the course includes dedicated tutor support, regular critique and feedback, and all assignments are marked by one of our professional tutors. You can even pay by instalments if funds are tight.

What are you waiting for? Book your course today and start building up your knowledge and confidence to embark on this truly unique and rewarding career!