by Caitlin Kenney

Inspired by Friday's indicator from architect Celeste Lewis, Jon from Southern California sends one of his own:

My wife runs a small wedding and event coordinating business in Southern California. We would annually spend about $5-10K for marketing efforts, including last year and we would typically do 4-6 weddings at least a year, with a budget range of $35-85k.

For us, it started to slow down last summer, we went from 2-4 inquiries a month, to maybe one legitimate inquiry or referral by September. (an average year would see 25-35 inquiries, and 4-6 bookings). Since the first of October, her company has not had a single inquiry for full wedding coordination (where she works on the project for 6 months to a year doing pretty much everything for the client), which is really what her business specializes in.

 

We've seen a 25% drop in web traffic, and as stated above, a virtual 100% drop in clients. We're definitely one of the businesses that are looking at wrapping our (now last) client in May, and shutting down the business. What was once a market (for better or worse...haha) that seemed largely fueled by people taking out home equity lines of credit for their extravagant weddings, is for all intensive purposes, gone. My wife and I started talking about this in late 2007, and kind of saw it coming, but it's still... well, just another indicator, I suppose.