How celebrants and other wedding vendors can get couples to the booking stage
There’s one small frustration that almost all wedding vendors experience: ghosting. No longer just a part of swipe-heavy date culture, in the world of wedding planning, it seems like the norm has become “response optional”.
We’ve all been there: you responded to that couple’s enquiry promptly. You were enthusiastic, charming, couldn’t wait to work with them, and then… crickets.
Before you write it off as rudeness, it’s worth considering whether the way you’re responding to enquiries might be playing a role. The good news? A few simple tweaks to your process can make a real difference to how many couples actually write back, and ultimately book.
Here are 5 simple tips to help you get there.
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1. Respond quickly to the initial wedding enquiry
I don’t mean you need to drop everything to tap out an email within minutes of an enquiry, but don’t leave a potential client hanging for days, or there’ll be a good chance they will move on with someone else.
As a rule of thumb, try to respond within 24 hours. It’s ok – in fact, it’s recommended – to have boundaries on your work hours to maintain a work/life balance. No reasonable bride or groom would expect an instant reply to their 9pm email. But if you want to increase your chances of getting to the meet-and-greet stage, spare a few minutes to get back to them as soon as you are back at your desk.
If replying within a day isn’t going to work (maybe you’re on holidays, slammed during wedding season, or simply have a strict Mondays-off policy), set up an autoresponder to let couples know that you’ve received their enquiry and when they can expect to hear from you.
Bonus tip: if you consistently respond to clients and potential clients quickly, they’re also more likely to respond promptly.
2. Answer ALL the questions in the enquiry
Planning a wedding is a huge job and can often be overwhelming. Couples often aren’t sure what they should be doing, so they might have a lot of questions as they try to navigate this new territory. You can immediately begin to build trust from the first email by answering all their questions in their enquiry.
Yes, I hear you saying, “Yeah, no duh! Of course, you should answer their questions!” I agree, it seems obvious, but a surprising number of vendor responses miss this crucial detail.
It might be because you send automated responses, or it could be because you can’t answer their questions until you have more information from them. But if you ignore any questions completely, then you could be wasting both the couple’s time and yours.
Common questions couples will ask in the first wedding enquiry are around availability, cost, services offered, locations serviced, or equipment used. In some cases, you may prefer to speak with the couple further before committing to an answer, but at a minimum, you should at least acknowledge the question, explain what further details you may need to answer it, and perhaps give a ballpark response, e.g., “The cost can range from $500 to $2000 depending on what kind of service you require – I’d love to speak with you so I can better understand your needs to give you an accurate quote.”
3. Have a single clear call to action (and make the next step as easy as possible)
You’ve answered their questions, you’ve been warm and engaging, now tell the couple exactly what you want them to do next. And I mean exactly. Don’t bury your call to action at the end of a long paragraph or leave couples guessing about what happens from here. Make what you need them to do next impossible to miss: bold it, put it on its own line, make it the thing their eye goes straight to when they’re skimming your email.
Just as importantly, make it easy for them. For example, if you want to hop on a video call, don’t ask them to email you back with their availability so you can go back and forth for three days trying to land on a time. Instead, use a scheduling tool like Calendly or the appointment booking feature for Google Calendar and simply send them a link so they can pick a time that suits everyone.
The less effort required on the couple’s end to move to the next step, the more likely they are to actually do it.
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4. Keep it brief
No one wants to read an essay from their inbox. It’s absolutely fine to let a little of your personality shine through in your response, but there’s a big difference between being personable and leaving couples feeling like you’ve written the next War and Peace.
A good response to an initial enquiry should be scannable and easy to read and reply to from a smartphone. Answer their questions, include your call to action, give it a little of your signature brand style, then hit send.
There are two good reasons to keep it short. First, couples in the early stages of wedding planning are almost certainly emailing a bunch of vendors at once, so their inbox is probably pretty full already. If they can’t read and respond in less than 2 minutes, then they may decide they have to look at it again later (and “later” may never come).
Second, you’re busy, too. Your time is valuable, and there’s no point pouring loads of detail into an initial response when you don’t even know yet if you’re the right fit for each other. Save the in-depth conversation for later, and prioritise getting them to that next stage first.
5. Send a follow-up
If you haven’t heard back within three days, it’s absolutely worth sending a follow-up. Don’t overthink it – a short, friendly nudge with a clear call to action is all it needs to be.
Follow up on whichever platform they originally reached out on, whether that’s email or social media. If you have their phone number, a quick text isn’t out of place either – emails sometimes end up in spam folders and social media messages can get buried in mysterious filter tabs that nobody ever checks, so it doesn’t hurt to use a back-up method of contact.
Some people swear that making a phone call is the most effective way to ensure a response (and it can be particularly helpful for celebrants, where your voice and personality are big selling points), though it’s worth knowing your audience here. Research has found that nearly 70% of 18 to 34-year-olds prefer a text over a phone call, so if you’re working with Gen Z or younger millennial couples, a message is often the safer bet.
If you still don’t receive a response from the initial wedding enquiry, don’t take it personally
Couples are juggling a lot. Their wedding is likely the biggest event they’ve ever had to plan, and they are doing it on top of all their other work, family and life commitments. Sometimes enquiries genuinely fall through the cracks, or they just don’t have the mental bandwidth to get back to everyone. It’s nothing to do with you.
You’re never going to achieve a 100% response rate, and that’s okay. But even implementing small changes to how you respond to that initial enquiry can make a real difference to how many couples make it to the next stage of the booking process. And more bookings means more couples whose love story you get to be part of. That’s worth a bit of inbox tinkering.
