Working from home meant we could vary snack and coffee breaks, change our desks or view, goof off, drink on the job, even spend the day in pyjamas, and often meet to gossip or share ideas.

On the other hand, we bossed ourselves around, set impossible goals, and demanded longer hours than office jobs usually entail. It was the ultimate “flextime,” in that it depended on how flexible we felt each day, given deadlines, distractions, and workaholic crescendos.

Aristotle made several efforts to explain how moral conduct contributes to the good life for human agents. Shola from Designer Wedding Planner says “it helps our sanity to be roductive and ensure our business goals are met in a timely manner”.

The coronavirus and how the wedding industry is going to stay afloat is quite a hot topic right now.

Working from home and during the Covid19, we will have emails coming thick and fast with panicking brides and grooms not sure what is going to happen to their special day. It all seems so unreal and confusing.

Having been in business with the Wedding Academy for 10 years and a further 9 running my own unrelated business in child care, business in addition to that, it’s safe to say I’ve weathered a few business storms, and I understand just how to get through them.

But nothing really compares to the coronavirus and the way it’s affecting the industry which I have such a lot of respect for- the wedding industry.

Like you, I’m a small business person and whether I like it or not the coronavirus is having an impact on everyone I know in business, myself included.

As a wedding and event consultant, I feel I need to be able to support those newer business owners who are coming up in the ranks of wedding professionals. I want to help and offer whatever advice I can to hopefully let people see how they can survive this.

There’s no getting away from the fact that coronavirus is changing things – changing lives and the impact is still not being fully felt as yet.

In the UK we are already on partial lockdown with only permission to go outside of the house for 4 reasons. – To exercise for a short time, to get essential provisions of food, to go to work only if it is not possible to work from home, and to go to help someone who is in need of support.  all non-essential shops have been closed for the past 3 weeks, along with restaurants, cafes, cinemas, sporting centres and anywhere with gatherings of over 2 people. We have all learnt how to work from home and adapt our creative thing to be just as productive.

Weddings are being cancelled, flights are being stopped and any type of travel has been fully stopped.

So how do we deal with the coronavirus in the wedding industry?

How can we weather this storm as wedding professionals?

Well, first of all, don’t overreact. Although that is easier said than done! Take a long deep breath and think about how you’d want to be treated if you were affected.

As wedding pros, we’re in a service-based industry and now more than ever we need to remember that. The couples you are working with are going to be extremely nervous, worried and looking for immediate answers from you.

Remember to be empathetic and sympatthetic.…this is their wedding as well as your business. Think about how you can help them and what you can offer them through this time. Put your own feelings about your business aside for a short while and show the couple that you totally understand their plight and their distress.

You may well get cancellation requests but is that really the best thing to do? Would it be better to postpone rather than cancel? Before you blindly hand out advice to your clients make sure you take some advice of your own.

Here’s are two links to some great legal advice and content from the experts:

1. Contractual Facts Not Social Media Fictions For Wedding Suppliers
2. Coronavirus Best Practices And Clauses To Have In Your Contracts

The way you handle your business in times of crisis says a lot about you as a business owner and about the longevity you can have.

Challenges in business will always be thrown at you and like anything in business you need to learn from these challenges and make sure you are ready for them if and when they rear their ugly heads again.

Be prepared – get ready.

This is a good mantra to have. It’s always better to be proactive than reactive.

Right now one of the best things you can do is read up on how best to prepare and protect your business both now and in the future.

These three resources will definitely help so take the time to read them:

1. Webinar hosted by Honeybook: Coronavirus & Your Business
2. Coronavirus (COVID-19) and your Event Business from Sage Wedding Pros
3. Covid-19 – A Practical Guide for the Wedding Industry

There’s no easy or quick fix here and nobody can really predict what’s going to happen or how long it will take before things go back to some form of normality. What you can do though is get rid of anything that you don’t need or haven’t used for over 1 year and see what else you can do till things even out again.

Here are a couple of ideas to help your wedding businesses bottom line:

Put it through the membership test

How many unneeded or unused memberships do you have right now? And that includes unused gym memberships, software memberships, and anything else you’re paying for.

Do an audit on them now and get rid of anything that’s not essential to the running of your wedding business.

Get your creative juices flowing

Are there any other things you can offer right now to see you through?

As a wedding planner you have great organisational skills so could those be put to use in other ways? Are there any services you can add to your offerings?

Can you do anything online that will help bring in revenue?

The wedding industry is packed full of amazingly talented and insightful professionals, and I know we’ll get through this as we have got through many other stresses in our business life.

This too shall pass. – Be prepared and ready to be focused on your business progress as the renewed demands for wedding planners when this has all passed.