Wedding planning is a specialized event sector where professionals join the bride and groom to design their wedding in a completely personalized way. At a glance, its function is to direct the customer to the appropriate market suppliers, preparing a work plan according to the wedding style chosen to save time and stress by systematically planning the preparations, elements, and details to take into account, so that nothing fails, and all events are lined perfectly.
A wedding planning service’s core function is to devise and implement a fully-functional wedding agenda without neglecting a single detail, adjusting as much as possible to their budget, so that the customer’s utmost satisfaction is achieved.
For this, it is essential to actively attend and listen to the customer’s requirements and preferences, intending to find out what they want and their wishes and expectations to propose the most suitable options for them.
It is necessary to prepare thoroughly and train to carry out this work, so that the customer has the assurance that they are before a wedding professional and that they know exactly what they are doing. We are joined by Samit Garg, the Founder and CEO of E-Factor, the biggest wedding planning company in India.
E-Factor has organized and supervised blockbuster weddings in India starring Bollywood celebrities and notable families, including The Mittals, The Goenkas, The Modis, and The Jindals. Some of the weddings that made international headlines included Shilpa Sheet and Raj Kundra wedding and the wedding of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachan.
Garg takes us through the challenges of managing high-profile celebrity weddings and what makes them the best in India.
How have weddings today evolved from the past?
“Today weddings are much more complex. For starters, there has been a more than a notable increase in civil weddings held in different and special spaces rather than in courthouses, which makes the organization different for the contracting couple.”
How does the factor of diversity play in your business?
“Each couple desires a wedding to their liking, personified, different, and original. The contracted services are not the basic ones that a restaurant offers, but they become numerous and different. We must not also forget the cultural diversity with which we currently live, where there are couples of different religions, countries, cultures, sexes, and where labor mobility is increasingly frequent, couples who marry in their hometown, but it is not their city of residence, or vice versa, which complicates the organization of the event.”
What makes you the best in the business?
“We have always tried to be very attentive to what the market demanded in its entirety, bride and groom, and bridal sector. We have been training in those disciplines that were not our specialty and consolidating knowledge that we already had. In this sense, you must keep your eyes wide open and develop proactive listening. Faced with a new project to develop or a new market to target, we have always planned our strategy very well, and we have taken things with calm, seriousness, and rigor that they deserve. We can say that E-Factor is a brand that has assumed the lead in the wedding planning sector.”
Before getting to where you are today, what have been the biggest challenges, you have faced?
“Maybe it’s the feeling of sacrifice. In our case, we sacrifice for E-Factor with other priorities of life, and the fact that it tends to clash with other things in is sometimes very difficult. The sense of responsibility is also very present, since the work of wedding planner is, sometimes, 24/7 and without schedules. The demands are very high, and our performance can never decrease. Keeping the team motivated, united, and organized has also been a challenge. Without a strong and coordinated team, E-Factor would never have been where it is today.”
What do you consider that makes you different as a wedding planner?
“The job. We are tireless and very demanding. This is demonstrated by the wonderful opinions and feedback we receive from our customers. Also, the involvement. With us, there is no middle ground. We feel the wedding or the project as if it were our own, we get involved to the maximum, and we give the best of ourselves. I think that attitude makes the difference, or that is what our clients transmit to us.”
What do you consider to be the most important thing in the organization of a wedding?
“The pre-production tasks are essential. The wedding day has to be a day to perform or review, but not to improvise. Having a good, standardized method, minimizing any type of risk at the wedding, is frankly vital. And along with this, the most personal and emotional part: having the trust of the couple is essential. That there is transparency and that you work in teams and other professionals involved are very important.”
How do you manage to make each one a different and personal event?
“To make a different wedding, you have to be in constant contact with new trends. In this sense, we spend many hours on social networks, filtering chunks of data and information, and discover the latest news in the world of weddings. You also have to be very creative and sometimes design without any reference in your head. For the theme of personalization, the key is to listen carefully to the bride and groom. Communication with the client is very important: knowing their preferences, tastes, and needs.”
What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a wedding planner or dedicate themselves to this world?
“It is a long-distance race. In 2020, the number of event management companies in India has increased fivefold since we started. It is difficult to start, but even more so, due to the great offer that exists in a sector where demand has not yet fully recognized the value of our services. I would tell them to work hard and with great effort, because nothing can be achieved without it.
“A good professional must have a passion for this world, a good methodology, and a lot of empathy. Also, it must be in constant learning and not only from weddings, but other sources like from SEO, marketing, social networks, etc. The wedding planners are 90% self-employed professionals, which implies that our business self-management is very high.”
