Wedding studios now singing the blues

The honeymoon is over for Thailand's successful wedding business, according to an administrator at the Wedding Business Association. Pairs are turning less romantic and more cautious about spending money as the uncertain economic and political outlook erodes their self-confidence in the future, deputy managing director of the upscale wedding studio, said yesterday.

People in the wedding business were just targeting to accomplish last year's revenue and had little desire of growth.

Overall, the connection is hoping the sector keeps its average yearly revenue of up to Bt30 billion this year.

Facing standing revenues, wedding studios are competing versus each other by racing into niches. More and more studios are specialising in a exclusive style of wedding ceremony, such as Thai, western, or teen, and many are offering integrated services.

With about Bt200,000 spent on the moderate wedding ceremony, including about 300 invitees, studios are focusing on getting their clients to spend more rather than on growing their amount.

Many are desiring that the nine-day "All About Love" Wedding Festival at Impact Arena will give them a shot in the arm when it begins on Saturday.

About Bt20 million is being spent to draw up to 200,000 visitors and the association hopes they will spend about Bt200 million at the festival.

He described the festival as a "bold" move, saying it would provide more promotions than any other issue in the past few years, including a favorable draw.

The festival will be spread over 25,000 square metres and will have booths from more than 100 agencies, consisting wedding studios, designers, cosmetics companies, beauty centres, spas, souvenir makers, jewellers and furniture manufacturers.

Lots of wedding planners are also likely to be on hand. A new breed of wedding planners was shaking up the sector. In the past, wedding planners were seen as budget busters but the new ones are selling themselves as cost-cutters and time-savers.

Furthermore, new technologies have importantly cut the price of a wedding ceremony, Attapol said.

As a result, tech-savvy wedding planners are playing a bigger role in the business, and many studios are following suit by providing the same services.

The new cost-cutting wedding planners work on ceremonies that cost as little as Bt100,000. Many years ago it would have been unheard of to hire a wedding planner for a ceremony that cost less than Bt10 million.

About 30 per cent of the weddings that happen in four and five-star hotels nowadays use wedding planners.

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