Brainstorms Issue #12: Virtual Weddings

Brainstorms Issue #12

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Virtual Weddings are Hard to Pull Off

“The pandemic has ruined my wedding plans. When looking for alternatives, I found out people were hosting virtual weddings. I think it could be a unique experience, but it seems really challenging to pull off. ”

- Bride-To-Be

Market Background & Opportunity Size

Your wedding day is a special one. It’s a time for family and friends to celebrate the unification of two people. But, it comes with a pretty hefty price tag. The money poured into weddings has created a huge market for service providers ensuring your special day is perfect.

Here are some stats:

• There are roughly 2.5M weddings in the US alone–– which breaks down to 6,500 weddings per day.

• The total market size is $73.3B

• The average cost of a wedding is ~$25K

• On average, 19 different vendors service each wedding

Because of the pandemic, the wedding industry has turned on its head. A source from Zola, a leading online registry website, says that 80% of weddings are now done virtually and roughly 37% are considering going virtual in the future.

The driving factors for most couples to go virtual is accessibility and cost. Virtual weddings cost somewhere between $2-5K, which is a fraction of the cost of traditional weddings.

It’s worth mentioning that virtual weddings were gaining popularity before the pandemic hit, although in small numbers - destination weddings being the main driver. I believe that Covid didn’t create the market, but it is acting as an accelerant to a trend that was already emerging.  

Pain Points

Virtual weddings are attractive for many reasons: cost savings, keeping loved ones safe, accessibility to the event, and it creates a unique experience. That said, they don’t come without their challenges:

• Logistics: Weddings have A LOT of moving pieces - this is why being a wedding planner is a full-time job. Adapting all those moving pieces to an online format is seen as impossible without hiring someone to help.

• Platform Challenges: Finding a platform to host your virtual wedding isn’t easy. Currently, there are no platforms optimized for making your virtual wedding a success.

• Impersonal: Part of the fun of having a wedding is celebrating with friends and family. Taking the virtual route can make your event feel impersonal or less special.

The Opportunites

With the shift to virtual, there are tons of opportunities in the wedding space ranging from small to big. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Zoom Apps: Build Zoom apps that create a better experience for those hosting virtual weddings. I’m thinking about things like interactive DJ apps, Zoom photo booths, apps to facilitate mingling etc...

• Productized-Service: Create a productized-service that manages all the pieces of organizing a virtual wedding. Wedfuly (I’ll talk about them later) would be a direct competitor, but the market is big enough for more than one player

• Create Zoom for Weddings: Right now, there isn’t a good platform for streaming weddings that has all the unique bells and whistles to make it perfect. Things like virtual photo booths, interactive DJ apps, virtual mingling apps, are all ways to make the wedding feel less virtual. This would be similar to what Hopin did for virtual events.

Current Competitors

• Wedfuly: Wedfuly is a productized-service offering a turnkey solution for virtual weddings. Their product costs $1,200 and includes a coordinator, tech support, rehearsals, and footage from the event. They don’t offer any tech to help facilitate the event. They are essentially just a wedding planner specializing in virtual.

• LoveStream: LoveStream is a platform built to stream your wedding. It appears to be a one-way stream where the audience can view but they can’t be seen. Additionally, the viewers can’t communicate, they just watch.

• Virtual Wedding Planners: If you do a quick Google search, you will see dozens of virtual wedding planners ready to help you plan your event. But, most aren’t offering productized-services or any new tech to help ease the event.

How to Execute

• Find Your Early Adopters: Finding your early adopters for this idea should be pretty easy. There are a few niche communities like this, filled with people looking for help with their virtual wedding. There are also many people on Reddit seeking advice.

• Build an MVP: This idea is perfect for someone without a tech background. To start, an easy MVP would be to create a digital guide for planning and executing virtual weddings. From there, you could expand your offerings to a productized-service that helps people run their virtual weddings. All this can be done with little to no tech.

• Start Small: To start, use your digital guide as a lead magnet and then upsell 5 couples on a digital wedding package. From there, learn the ins and outs of what makes a great virtual wedding.

• Build Zoom for Weddings: This is the big idea. Once you’ve got your bearings and understand the dos and don’ts of virtual weddings, build the platform that hosts all the virtual weddings.

Challenges

• Will Virtual Weddings be a Thing? I’d only pursue this idea if you believe the trend of virtual weddings will continue to grow. This either means the pandemic forces us to continue leading a virtual life, or the aftermath of the pandemic will shift the way we gather permanently.

• It’s a Big Day: As many wedding planners know, this is the most important day of many people’s lives. This means your execution needs to be on point. Any small kink in the system can leave you with unhappy customers, which is really bad for business.

• Competition: While there aren’t many tech solutions, there’s a lot of competition in the virtual wedding planner space. If you plan on cash-flowing the business by acting as a virtual wedding planner, you’ll need to figure out a strong distribution channel to break through the noise.

• Educating The Market: Until more people experience a virtual wedding, they won’t know what’s possible. This creates a barrier between you and the customer. You’ll need to work on educating the market about why virtual weddings are as good, or better than in-person weddings.

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Thanks for reading - now get out there and build it! 

Catch ya next week, 

Keevin ✌