Last June, Liene Stevens of Splendid Communications kindly allowed me to publish some of the hugely insightful findings of her annual wedding & lifestyle market research. Each year she interviews thousands of engaged and newly-married couples to find out exactly what matters when it comes to their weddings, how much they’re really spending and which factors actually determine how they select their suppliers. The results went down a storm, with many of you commenting that after reading the findings that you had plans to make some serious improvements on certain areas of your businesses.

So, as soon as Liene published the results of her 2012 survey, which can be purchased in full via her website, I was keen to ask if I could share some of the highlights with you again. There is a report available which covers the overall global results, but she’s also carried out country-specific surveys (US, Canada, UK & Australia). Being a wedding blogger based in the UK, I found the answers from the UK responders particularly interesting. Below are some of the findings from that report. The survey was taken by heterosexual and same-sex brides and grooms from the UK who were married in 2012.

Budgets

The majority of couples in the UK are spending between $11,000 – $30,000 (published in USD to keep results consistent with the global findings) which is approximately £7200 – £20,000.

They are mostly paying for the wedding themselves (88%) but for many couples it’s still the parents who foot the majority of the bill.

Supplier hiring decisions

The majority of UK couples find their wedding suppliers via internet searches (65%). Second up is recommendations from either family & friends (42%) or other suppliers (36%) and thirdly from wedding blogs (29%).

53% of UK couples said the personality of their wedding suppliers was ‘very important’. 0% said it didn’t matter at all.

Communication is key! A whopping 50% of UK couples said speediness of email response was a ‘very important’ deciding factor when booking someone. A further 42% said ‘it matters’.

Awards don’t really mean anything when booking clients. Only 1% said that awards were ‘very important’ whereas 38% said they weren’t of any importance at all.

Being up to date with your website and on social media also really matters…

Priorities

The overarching theme here is that couples want to plan a wedding that is reflective of them but they also really care what their friends & family think!

Wedding media

Wedding blogs still rule when it comes to finding inspiration for their weddings. 50% of couples getting marred in UK read wedding blogs every day and 33% dip in weekly.

… and they’re using them to get inspired (86%), to find new ideas (77%), to daydream or procrastinate (44%) and to find wedding planning advice (43%). My opinion is that reason wedding blogs are so popular is that maybe unlike wedding magazines, they don’t feel like they’re being ‘sold to’. They can use them in a way they find useful and helpful and if they find their wedding suppliers on them that’s almost a bit of an unexpected bonus.

Take from these results what you will, but I hope sharing them may help some of you with your plans for your wedding business moving forward. Again, thank you Liene for letting me share just this small snippet of the information packed into the 2012 report. If you’d like to buy the full report, then you can do so right here (and you should – it’s amazing!)

Thoughts everybody?