This course covers the following areas:

• Budgeting
• Project Management
• Vendors & Contracts
• Wedding Etiquette
• Wedding Customs and Traditions from over 15 different cultures worldwide
• Wedding Gown Styles & Veils including the seasons top designers and videos of the most recent Truck (Fashion) Shows
• Wedding Event Planning
• Writing your Business Plan
• Signature Wedding Design Invitations
• Public Relations
• Wedding Music Selections
• Sales & Marketing
• Pre and Post Wedding Parties
• How to expand your business
• Relationship Education
• Production and Operations Managment

To address the demands of the industry, this program creates real-world application by including experiential learning; role-playing, vignettes and other ways to practice for actual business objectives or work settings in the day-to-day of wedding planning.

Certified Wedding Planner students can e-mail instructors as often as they need to during the course and schedule phone meetings to discuss assignments. Online students also have access to other students in the course through the course online message boards. Here, students can find additional resources, support and networking with others in their area and throughout the WORLD. Many online students utilize this network even after graduation.

Career Overview
A certified wedding planner is trained in all aspects of the wedding and social event industry. From conception, contracts and ceremony details to industry formulas for wedding design and delivery. A Certified Professional Wedding Planner can make any wedding budget seem endless.

The wedding planner plays an integral role in the planning of a couple's most important day. There is much to learn in the way of planning, budgeting, working with vendors, contracts, revenue channels, and keeping up with the latest trends in bridal fashion, color choices and wedding design.

Some typical tasks for a Certified Wedding Planner include:

1. Receiving, making and documenting telephone calls to clients and vendors.
2. Scheduling appointments with vendors for clients.
3. Helping a client to unveil her personal style or wedding day vision.
4. Designing inspiration boards for new client meetings.
5. Assist a client with her wedding gown/attire selection.
6. Budget tracking and project planning.
7. Site visits with clients for venue selection.
8. Troubleshooting and solution solving.
9. Managing and delegating task as well as tracking progress.
10. Collecting payments and performing collection activities.

Wedding planners are in demand as more and more sophisticated brides discover they can not be the bride and the wedding planner on the day of their wedding. With popular shows like Whose Wedding is it Anyway?, Race to the Alter, Married Away, Big Day and Bridezilla, the profession is growing at an increased rate year after year. Many professional planners run their own company while many others work for wedding businesses offering wedding planning services.

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This comprehensive course has been streamlined into online and classroom videos to enhance the learning experience, and help our students to move through the course more quickly.

1. Introduction - Video Library
   1. Wedding Industry Overview
   2. Wedding history
   3. Engagement purpose
   4. Current statistics
   5. Engagement Process as it leads to the wedding day


2. Your role as a wedding planner
   1. Setting expectations for all involved
   2. Budget Management
   3. Wedding Etiquette
   4. Planning, Coordinating and Directing


3. Business Structure
   1. Fee for services, Pricing, Packages, Proposals, Project Plan Budgeting
   2. Market place evaluation
   3. Small business start-up cost
   4. Business Location set-up
   5. Home Office
   6. SOHO Solutions
   7. Office Set-up


4. Documentation
   1. Training materials
   2. Design boards
   3. Fabric boards
   4. Manuals
   5. Design Project


5. Templates -over 40 editable documents for your business
   1. Pricing Packages, Contracts
   2. Client hand-outs
   3. Ceremony Structure, Customs, Traditions
   4. Many, many more


6. Vendor Selection
   1. Vendor Interviews
   2. Vendor contracts
   3. Vendor partnerships and negotiation
   4. Vendor marketing
   5. Vendor booking


7. Contracts
   1. Contract Law
   2. Creating Your Contracts
   3. Contract Templates
   4. Bridal Client Contracts
   5. Vendor partnership
   6. Traditional Wedding Planner packages


8. How to work with a prospective bride
   1. Profiling
   2. Training
   3. Role playing
   4. Making the sale
   5. Educating the bridal client
   1. bridal registry
   2. setting expectations
   3. wedding day vision vs. reality
   6. Traditional vs. non-traditional wedding ceremonies
   7. Wedding party delegation


9. Over 15 different Ethnic Wedding Customs & Traditions Worldwide


10. The Wedding Gown
    1. Gown styles
    2. Veil styles
    3. Body Types do's & don'ts
    4. Top 50 wedding dress designers


11. Destination Weddings


12. Music - How to write a musical score
1. Popular Wedding Ceremony Music Selections
   1. Processional
   2. Recessional


13. Signature Weddings - How to create a signature wedding each and every time
    1. Rehearsal Procedures
    2. D4 Analysis - Wedding Design
    3. A6 Production - Event Experience
    4. Event Project Management


14. Business marketing practices, industry associations, networking


15. Bridal Shows
    1. Research
    2. Checklist
    3. Booking the bride
    4. How to work a booth
    5. Post show activities


16. Online Marketing strategies
    1. Designing Your Website
    2. Marketing Your Website


17. Industry terms
    1. Traditional
    2. Trendy


18. Public Relations
    1. Becoming an expert in your field in your local market
    2. Writing a Press Release
    3. Writing Your Bio
    4. Negotiating promotions


19. Organization
    1. CRM (Client Relations Management)
    2. Industry Software
    3. Expanding your business offerings and adding additional revenue streams


20. Certification - what it means and how it sets you apart.


21. How relationship education can be incorporated into your business


22. Philanthropy


23. Final Exam

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Upon successful completion of the Certified Wedding Planner program, students will:

• Understand the role of a professional wedding planner
• Gain a basic understanding of the wedding industry
• Create business contracts, pricing, packages and presentation tools
• Identify the formula/method to structure and set-up a wedding planning business and operations
• Be proficient in skills such as budget planning, vendor selection and wedding design
• Be familiar with industry specific terminology, communication, telephone techniques, organization and project management
• Have knowledge of vendor contracts and what to look for
• Be familiar with wedding design elements, fabrics and styles
• Understand how to market as an expert in the industry to gain PR attention
• Understand online marketing and how it applies to a wedding planners business
• Have knowledge of different wedding traditions and cultures and how to implement a couple's ethnic background into the celebration
• Have knowledge of traditional and non-traditional etiquette
• Understand the Event Planning Process necessary to design and deliver a successful wedding/social event
• Understand the Six Stages of Event Experience and ways to implement them
• Be fully prepared to take on his/her first bridal client

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PDF BROCHURE

Please click here to download the PDF brochure for the online courses offered by OCPE.

This brochure and the registration form for this course require Adobe Reader. Click here to download the latest version of Adobe Reader.

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND

The intended audience is anybody who is interested in becoming a full- or part-time wedding planner.

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INSTRUCTOR

The Wedding Planning Institute was founded with the sole purpose of providing aspiring wedding planners with the best possible education. For over ten years, the Institute has been dedicated to the highest standards, offering wedding planning certification, business fundamentals, continuing education classes and seminars.

WPI's career counselors work closely with students to understand their needs, and to design educational career paths that provide the experience, engagement and competency needed to achieve the student's objectives. WPI's core online instructors hold a master's degree in education and have combined experience of over 150 years in the wedding industry from various specialties and backgrounds.

The Wedding Planning Institute is available to students who are interested in receiving the industry's premier education in the business of planning weddings and social events. WPI's program has been accepted by many colleges and universities around the United States as the appropriate curriculum and business training for wedding professionals.

Graduates of The Wedding Planning Institute are the top performers in the industry.

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PC REQUIREMENTS

Students will require a computer with Internet access.

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