Unboring!Wedding: Bringing Ceremonies To Life And Pivoting To Digital With Mark Allan Groleau

 

No one wants their wedding to be remembered as unremarkable and boring. A special day such as this warrants an equally special ceremony with memorable moments that last a lifetime. Delivering this kind of experience to others, Mark Allan Groleau of Unboring!Wedding joins Jamie Wolfer and Heather Loree Fier for a chat about fun, story-based wedding ceremonies. He also spills all the details on developing his online program called Unboring!Officiant—from why he made that pivot to how impactful it has been for his business. Learn from Mark’s experience about launching a virtual resource to help the masses officiate weddings in a more entertaining and engaging way. Say goodbye to boring in this episode and say hello to an amazing wedding ceremony that tells the magic of a couple’s love story.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Important Links:

• Unboring!Officiant
• Brides.com
• http://www.UnboringOfficiant.com/union
• https://www.UnboringWedding.com
• https://www.Instagram.com/unboringwedding/

About Mark Allan Groleau

Mark Allan Groleau is a full-time professional wedding officiant and the founder of Unboring!Wedding. Through his online course Unboring!Officiant, he also teaches new and first-time wedding officiants all over the world how to craft riveting wedding ceremonies centered around the wedding couple’s love story. Mark recently moved out of Toronto to New Brunswick with his wife and two young kids to enjoy life and officiate weddings by the sea.

Unboring!Wedding: Bringing Ceremonies To Life And Pivoting To Digital With Mark Allan Groleau

Jamie: In this episode, we are interviewing Mark Allan Groleau and asking him all about the Unboring!Officiant. This man has put together an online course, much like Heather and I have. He is spilling all the details on why he made that pivot and how impactful it has been for his business. Trust me, this is a good one. My cheeks hurt from laughing so hard. You are not going to want to miss out.

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Jamie: Mark, thank you so much for joining us. We’re so excited to have you.

Mark: I am so thrilled to be on The Union Podcast.

Jamie: To kick things off, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you do?

Mark: I am a professional full-time wedding officiant and I love crafting a personal moving ceremony. A lot of officiants, I think that’s where we’re all going for. I love to focus on the couples’ story, make it all about them, and offer guests as well the kind of experience that makes them laugh and cry. I feel like a wedding ceremony should reflect the couple, not just the gravity of the day but the way people met and got together. It’s usually ridiculous, hilarious, embarrassing. There are lots of ups and downs. I should reflect the emotional journey of the two people standing there. That is what I strive for. I do that mostly by telling a couple, making sure that everybody is relaxed, the guests feel great and it is such a fun time.

Jamie: Your goal is to hit everybody with the feels in every department.

Mark: All of the feels except the horror movie feels. That’s one we try to leave out I suppose.

Jamie: We can avoid that one.

Mark: I don’t know how you got with your significant other but there are some horrific moments that come up in the story. If the couple is good with sharing that with me, then I’m sure I’m going to share it with all their friends and family in their wedding. Sometimes we do cover all the feels.

Heather: It seems you angle your ceremonies towards a story. You bring people into it as an experience.

Mark: I started doing weddings as a minister and I couldn’t stand doing weddings because it was the only way I’d ever seen weddings done. It was from the can. I even went to seminary. In order to pass one of our assignments, we had to write a wedding and it had to be the most horrifically boring wedding you’ve ever seen. I got an A. I started doing weddings that way and I hated it. I caught wind of making it more personal about the couple. I tried that. I started to like it more, floundered a little bit in trying that. When I hit the magic of telling their love story, turning it into a system and formula, that’s when I quit the ministry and then became a full-time professional wedding officiant and I haven’t looked back.

Heather: We love your mission about helping couples have unboring weddings. Who wants their wedding be boring? No one. That old canned example of a ceremony, I love that you toss it out and you’re doing something that brings the story and that ceremony to life. As wedding planners, photographers and all these different types of wedding pros we have reading, how can they help their clients plan a more meaningful and memorable wedding? 

Mark: I have so much respect for planners like you. I get to work with planners and I see what you do. I can’t even wrap my head around how you do that. I would have a hard time at all presuming to speak into how a planner or a photographer could do better. These people are ninjas at what they do. One thing that I come up against with officiant, maybe you guys can speak to this with planners, is in a nutshell, I would say be as personable as possible. Every Officiant says, “I’m going to offer you a personal ceremony or experience.” You can customize the ceremony the way any wedding pro can customize anything about the service they provide but that personability is a whole different thing. The way that I achieve that is when a couple reaches out and inquires to me, I try to connect with them deeply and in a meaningful way quickly. A lot of officiants will get an inquiry and then they’ll literally say, “I’m available. Here’s a script. Tweak it, change some things, send it back to me and I’ll see you on your wedding day.” That is shocking to me because the wedding day is so emotional and personal. You want to connect with your vendors. Is that true as planners?

Heather: That sounds good to me. I love to offer my couples as much personability as possible. It is such an intimate experience to be a part of someone’s day in the way we are industry. Making sure that they’re super comfortable with me and that I’m there in a way that’s very positive and adding a good energy to the room, that’s all stuff you’re sorting out as you’re in that research mode and looking at vendors. That is a big suggestion for vendors out there who are trying to get more clients and grow their business. Putting that effort in upfront to get to know the couple and make them comfortable will help them decide to work with you and win those clients for you. 

Mark: It’s very expedient. We don’t want every couple to take hours and hours. The good news is couples also don’t want us to take up hours and hours of their time as well. You’re always striking that balance of we want to get to know each other, but every time we get together, we want it to be concise and meaningful. Out in New Brunswick where I officiate weddings, you get to know the vendors, see the same vendors all the time and it turns into this awesome little cross-community of vendors. The best photographers will always meet their prospective couples over coffee first. They’ll always try to build in an engagement shoot, for example, and a lot of chemistry gets struck up in the engagement shoot, lots of laughing, lots of intimate. On the wedding day, you know each other. For me, I always make sure to have a chemistry check with every couple that inquire as I say, “Let’s grab a coffee or jump on Zoom video. Get to know each other.”

I always do the wedding planning session in person. I have a spreadsheet, I sit down with them and I say, “Let’s talk together through every element.” We laugh and we chitchat. By the time I get to the rehearsal, which I do insist on having, they have a lot of confidence in me. I’ve met with them a couple of times then I very competently direct their loved ones. We laugh and have a good time. By the time I get into the ceremony, all the reviews always say their guests in the reception think that I was a friend of theirs but I’m a paid vendor. It’s because we’ve had those three high touch moments: chemistry check, wedding planning session and rehearsal. When you do all that in person and work with somebody, it’s amazing how fast you can develop a rapport and chemistry with a couple.

Jamie: There’s something that I always tell clients and on my channel too, and that’s the personality of your vendors that really matter. Many times people are like, “How do I decide between a photographer and videographer?” I say, “It’s the personality. You want to make sure that you enjoy the sound of their voice and their presence and they bring out the best in you.” I say that because there was a vendor on my wedding day who was like a cheese grater on my nerves. I know firsthand what that feels when you’re like, “I don’t want to be around you. It’s my wedding day. This is distracting. This is frustrating.”

Mark: How did you end up working with that? Did you ignore red flags? Did you not meet them before?

Jamie: I ignored red flags. We had met before a couple of times. There were a couple of flags, but I was like, “It’s okay.” My guess is it was a high-stress situation that highlighted some of those personality traits that I had seen snippets of before. At the end of my wedding day, I was like, “I saw portions of this but under stress this person doesn’t perform the same way.” That was more me ignoring flags because we had plant spent plenty of time together and a little bit of not knowing what I was doing and not knowing that personality was important. 

Heather: I’ve seen couples get themselves in that situation many times, and then as someone who’s called in to help support them later in the process have to help backtrack them out. That’s also part of the problem for couples is if they hire a vendor, they got a good recommendation, their halfway through planning and then they’re getting those red flags that they don’t know how to maneuver out of that situation gracefully. That’s tricky too.

The key for every first-time officiant is confidence. Click To Tweet

Jamie: It’s important to give that permission upfront to say, “Like the person.” It’s one thing to pay attention to package pricing, compare and contrast. When it comes down to it, I would rather see my clients spend $200 more on someone because they like them more than try to save that $200. What budget they have is the budget they have. I’m not going to push them out of their price range, but to focus on, “Who made you feel good? Who are you excited to spend time with?” Who are you like, “I can be friends with this person?” If you can’t say yes to all of those things, there is a chance, I’m not saying it will, that it could impact your wedding day in a negative light. It is important to keep that in mind.

Mark: That’s where your marketing is important as well. You had a great podcast episode with Max. It was episode two and it was between marketing and advertising. I have used that myself to say, “I want somebody to land UnboringWedding.com and immediately know if I’m for them or not because we’re not for everybody.” That key is I don’t want a couple that is straight-laced and stodgy and doesn’t want their story. That’s why there are big splash pictures of Unboring!Wedding first, then couples laughing when you go to the next page. My friends make fun of me for this. It’s a thing that they make fun of but it’s because I want couples to either identify like, “That’s the ceremony I want.” Another couple that’s like, “This is not for me.” Back out and they go. That’s important. They can see themselves working with you or even more importantly not working with you.

Heather: They’re seeing those pictures of smiling faces and going, “That is far too much fun for me. I’m out.” If anyone’s to say that, it would be me but I do like fun now. Mark, this sounds a great plan. 

Mark: Did you guys have serious weddings? Would you say or more on that?

Heather: My wedding was the fastest wedding ceremony of all time. This is even embarrassing to admit on here with us coming in and exiting of the procession, reception, everything is five minutes. Is that not the most ridiculous thing? 

Mark: It didn’t even have time to be boring. That’s the one silver lining.

Heather: The issue was that it was very cold and we did not have a good backup plan. The errors you make when you’re DIY-ing this stuff and you don’t have a professional helping you. We planned a wedding in November. It was very cold and as soon as the officiant showed up, I was like, “Whatever you have planned, cut it to a third of what you were going to say.” He’s like, “Excuse me? It was only going to be 15 to 20 minutes.” I’m like, “A third, a hard stop.” People are going to freeze. It was also torrential downpours on the day of my wedding. Cars flipped over on the freeway on the way there. It was chaos. I can’t even explain because this never happens in San Diego.

Mark: This is crazy because it’s the total opposite situation. I had the same situation. It was the worst torrential rain day. Everybody’s teeth were chattering. It was outside at the covered part of a hotel. Everybody was freezing. They’re arriving. They’ve got those blanket throw things but everybody’s turning blue. I went to the bridal suite and I was like, “Everybody’s cold. Do you want me to cut out the story?” She was like, “We are not cutting the story. I’ve been looking forward to the story for months and that’s what we paid you for. I want everyone to hear our story.” In the back of my mind, I was flattered but in another way, I was like, “Crap.” It takes a good 10 to 12 minutes and sure enough, everybody was freezing but everyone was still laughing. It’s hard when people are uncomfortable. She would not have it without the story.

 

Heather: I see the point in that. Had we done that, we literally would have been under a day lush of rain. It was a good call because we got to the reception after and the skies opened and no one could walk outside the rest of the night. It was insane. At that point, we hadn’t had rain in San Diego from 270-some days and that was the first day of rain. Given that, I made the call and we had a micro wedding ceremony during our normal wedding. Everyone focused on the party and it worked out.

Jamie: You’re spilling some secrets that the world needs to hear. 

Heather: It’s ridiculous how short our wedding was. I didn’t even know that until I saw the footage my uncle had recorded because we were too broke to afford a videographer. I saw that video and I was like, “It was that short?” In the moment, you have no idea about the length of time.

Mark: You know everyone was thankful at the same time. Every guest was like, “Thank, God.”

Heather: They were like, “This is an awesome wedding. We get to go do the fun party part. We didn’t have to sit here and do any of the stuff,” some people didn’t want to do prayers or something. They were like, “Let’s get out of here.” 

Mark: Jamie, any confessions from you?

Jamie: Honestly, I already confessed hating a vendor. I’ve filled my confession quota for the day. 

Mark: You did it so well.

Jamie: Our ceremony was great. It was about twenty minutes. It went by like a blur. Our officiant did a phenomenal job. He was a pastor friend of ours who had known us for the majority of our relationship. He did a great job of weaving in the funny, with the silly. My husband’s vows brought everyone to their knees and everyone was sobbing. I was like, “That was supposed to be me that did that.” He outdid. I’m not bitter. It’s fine. I would say a relatively normal ceremony by all standards.

Heather: We have some people who were running late who didn’t make it from their car to the chairs in time. They saw us walking in and it was that quick. They were like, “How was it already over?” I’m like, “It’s cold.” We’re from San Diego. We can’t be outside this long in the cold. We’ll die. Mark, part of what we wanted to talk to you about because Jamie and I have our own online programs, we know you have that aspect to the Unboring!Wedding. Many pros out there are pivoting or considering a pivot towards some virtual offerings given this whole pandemic situation. They should have a virtual offer regardless. This is something we had before and it happens to be at the moment something that a lot of people are realizing they should have. Can you share a little bit about what you do with your training online and your experience of building that out?

Mark: I was getting booked up and I was the solo vendor by myself and it came to that point where I had a choice. The typical thing when you get to that point is to start recruiting other officiants under you, build a company of local officiants. I was faced with that choice. Is it time to bring some people on because people were asking me, “How do you do that? How do you do that so consistently? How do you tell your story?” and word gets out. People start asking, “What’s your method?” I thought, “Do I bring people on and create this little army of Unboring!Officiants Incorporated or can I teach my style and my system?” That is one thing I emphasize about the course is it’s a style and a system. “Is there a way that I can get this out and open-source this to the world?” That is exactly what has happened. That is what I love about this. I’m not training people and cracking down on my team. It’s not a group of freelances and standards that we have to uphold. I take a cut of their wedding work. That doesn’t sit very with me taking 20%.

You're not going to be the person who sticks that landing on that joke when everybody has failed before you. Click To Tweet

I’ve worked for a company for a little while, 50% of every wedding I did went to the company. I understand they were marketing and stuff but I thought I can go out on my own. I put this package together and it has been such a rewarding, wonderful feeling to have somebody come in the course. Sometimes it’s a dad who wants to totally nail it. He’s been asked by his daughter to officiate or something. Sometimes it’s somebody who’s been curious about officiating and they’re thinking of going pro, but it’s somebody who has a wedding coming up. They don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. They buy the course for $297 discounted, it’s $597 typically, I teach them from start to finish how to create this system and then let them go and follow up with them on Monday. It’s always out of the park and there are people all over the world doing this. That is such a rewarding feeling that I’ve sent people out. People all over the world from Africa, Ireland and Australia are grabbing this course telling love stories and getting back to me on Monday and saying, “That was the most incredible experience of my life. I want to do it again as soon as I can.” It’s a great thing to give them a taste of that.

Heather: You’re giving people the tools to do this themselves, whether they’re wanting to go into it professionally or for a relative or friend. 

Mark: I have a lot of planners too and this is a bummer. In Canada, it’s very strict. I worked with them and they’d observe me officiate a wedding from the back. I had many planners say like, “It will be a great lateral move for me to also become an officiant.” In Canada, it’s almost impossible. You have to either be a minister or a justice of some sort. I often had to say, “Unless you want to go to school for four years, it’s not possible.” In the States, a lot of planners go on and get their universal life church in five minutes online, then they’re a minister. That’s what’s incredible is this idea that I’ve seen colleagues of mine have as wedding planners, they can’t do it but in the States, Heather and Jamie, you could do this.

Jamie: I can officiate. I got my certificate. 

Mark: Have you officiated?

Jamie: I have not officiated. I’ve done public speaking gigs but no, I haven’t yet.

Heather: That’s a good ace in the hole to have in case things go crazy on a wedding day and something goes way off track and you’re someone that knows the couple. Jamie, particularly, is great at public speaking. You can get up there. You’re on a great show for this ceremony I think.

Mark: That’s what I always tell my couple is write the story. Write the whole ceremony on Google Docs and it’s 100% there. I tell them I could get hit by a bus on the way to the ceremony. I know it’s a grizzly image, but somebody could, especially if somebody like Jamie with public speaking, it’s sitting there on Google Drive. A lot of the time, I’ll get to the ceremony and the planner will have printed it out because I share it with the couple and make it shareable for them to share with all their vendors. Jamie could step in, read the story, bring the house down, drop the mic, walk away and start her new career as a wedding officiant.

Jamie: That feels a lot of pressure. 

Heather: With that in mind, in the US, couples are opting often to have relatives or friends. 

Mark: It’s growing year over year, more and more.

Heather: What’s your experience with training people like that? Do you find that since they have a relationship with the couple already, that developing this unboring wedding can work out well for them? 

Mark: That’s a personable thing, but I spoke at Wedding MBA to a room full of professional officiants. That’s what I said is these cutting-edge professional officiants have all the experience. They know how to do a personal ceremony. Unfortunately, friends and family are way more personable. As weddings evolve, couples are choosing their buddy, the bride’s sister, dad or Aunt Macy, who is awesome. They choose people who they know and are more comfortable with and they say, “I know they have no experience,” but they choose that personable side over experience, customizing and the personal, all the things that wedding officiants put on their website as features and value. Every time Brides.com or The Knot or whatever does a survey, every year more and more couples are choosing friends and family. With a little bit of training and help, unfortunately for professional wedding officiants, friends and family crush it on their first try. They deliver the most incredible ceremony with the know-how.

My favorite thing is to follow up on Monday morning and say, “Dad, how did it go when you officiated your daughter’s wedding?” He talks about how he was the hero at the reception. People had never seen anything like it. I don’t doubt that at all because if you’re tasteful and you bring command and poise and what you’re doing, you can’t help but not crush it. Heather and Jamie, you must see the full gamut of incredible ceremonies to cringe-worthy ceremonies. That’s where somebody like me who’s done hundreds of weddings and done this over years and years, I can coach people. They said, “I have this idea to say this or do this.” I’m always like, “That never works.” You’re not going to be the person who sticks that landing on that joke when everybody has failed before you. A lot of the time, it’s talking to them out of doing things that are going to embarrass them or even in terms of the flow of the ceremony, “That won’t work there.”

 

That’s a long way to answer your question. First time wedding officiants do absolutely amazing. That’s where I want more couples and planners to find that out. A lot of the resources out there are either business classes for wedding, officiants trying to get a professional business off the ground or they are these planning, you’re not universal life church or whatever. They don’t teach you though give you a script or something and say, “Stand up straight, project your voice, rehearse your script.” Something like that. It’s not the specific of this works, “That works, this doesn’t work,” that kind of thing. Once somebody knows that, they can ace it on their first try. That’s what I’m finding.

Heather: I’d say about 50% of my Wedding Hacker Club members are planning weddings with friends or family being neat because I work with couples on tighter budgets. With the current situation going on, a lot more couples are going to have to drop their budget a little bit. This is an area where when they think about it and they’re like, “I want this personal feeling. I’m not attached to a specific church affiliation where I need to go through a certain route,” that this opportunity is there. With courses like yours that support, it makes it even easier and a little bit more affordable than what it would be for a lot of the professionals. I see this as something that’s a great resource, especially for those budget couples.

Mark: What your couples don’t know is that the side that I see is I am on the internet. I’m on YouTube. I’m the person when somebody googles how to officiate a wedding. I’ve worked hard on my SEO and stuff to be the face that pops up on page one or on YouTube. I get emails from the lovely handpicked officiants of couples like the ones in your club. “I’m honored that my friends or my daughter chose me. I would never bother them with this and I would never admit it to them but I’m terrified. I’m overwhelmed, lost and panicking.” Those are the words that they use. That’s where I step in and I can assure them like, “You’re going to do great. Just watch all my YouTube videos, grab some of my guides on my website, take the course or get my quick coaching package.” They need to be assured that they can do this. A lot of the time they don’t tell their couple how panicked and overwhelmed they are. They say, “I’m honored and thank you so much.” They go into a dark hole all night researching and grabbing snippets on the internet and finding canned scripts and things like that.

Heather: I’m looking through your Medium page, that’s where I first saw what you were doing and I was like, “I love this guy. He has got fantastic information.” I can see how you are helping not only these couples, you’re also helping those friends of the couples who are panicking and crying into a pillow.

Jamie: It’s like robots versus heroes because when you see an officiant who’s clearly never done this before or not comfortable doing it, they almost have robotic delivery or their nerves will consume them. They’re reading straight from a piece of paper. It goes fast, so you can’t understand what they’re saying. I’ve had an officiant forget to do the vows. I’ve had an officiant forget to do the exchanging of rings. I’ve had an officiant almost forget to pronounce them until I’m waving like a wild person in the background because they’re a robot trying to get through this. What you said, Mark, is that you’ll hear so often from the people who go through your course, they were the hero at the reception because they were able to break out of that robot coping mechanism that so many people will slide into because they’re scared if they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re honored but that doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing because they’re excited.

It's always the wedding season somewhere. Click To Tweet

Mark: They don’t know if it works. That’s the thing. The person you’re describing there being robotic because an officiant does read. I read my script because I craft the story. Every word is delivered and every pause. You read a ceremony but you read it in the way that a public speaker would read their script on the lectern in front of them. You pause, look up, wait for the laughter and you know when there’s emotion. The key for every first-time officiant is that confidence piece. If they’re confident with their script and it’s been vetted, they know it works and had somebody look it over and say, “This kills, this is incredible,” then they don’t walk up there with all those feelings. It’s not necessarily the reading that’s the problem. It’s getting up there and being like, “Is this brutal? Maybe this is terrible.” As they’re reading and all those feelings are crashing in on them, especially if they look up and see some quizzical faces, the couple is sweating or uncomfortable. All those feelings start happening up there. You’ve got to walk in saying, “I know this script is incredible.” The only way to get there is to have somebody who knows what they’re doing, having looked at it, read it and assure you that this does work. There are some tricky, awkward transition things about a wedding ceremony and about a script that sometimes don’t work.

Heather: Crafting something to build the emotions in the right way and take people on a journey, it’s quite a craft to do that well. It’s amazing you’re able to help people through that remotely. Did you have any challenges or any things that surprised you about taking this turn to the virtual format of doing this?

Mark: It’s been incredibly rewarding but all the pivoting, you don’t create this thing and shove it out in the world and say, “There it is, everyone. Feast your eyes upon it.” Some people started buying my course, but then I started finding out that I was missing a whole segment because in my automated email sequence, if people didn’t buy, I asked, “Why didn’t you buy?” if they passed on it. I know you are all in the email lists and sequencing and things like that. I started getting responses like, “I wish I could have taken your course but I only found you four days before the wedding and I don’t have time for a course.” That went on for a few weeks and it was bugging me. First of all, I was shocked that people procrastinated that much. They’re literally googling how to write the ceremony four days before the wedding. That speaks to a lot of the experiences you’re talking about but then I realized I can catch this group of people with a very quick coaching program.

I invented something and shoved it in my email sequence where I said, “Is the wedding coming up in three days? Let me call you.” People would click on that and then they would see my message, which says, “I’ll send you my own professional wedding script that you can adapt and use. I’ll jump on the phone with you for 30 minutes the day before your wedding ceremony.” That way you’ll have a script adapted that you know works. I’ll jump on the phone with you and walk you through all the tricky parts and make sure you’re ready. That started to almost outsell my course because there are so many procrastinators out there. That’s an example of if I hadn’t added that little, “Why didn’t you buy the course?” I wouldn’t have discovered that. When I discovered that, I was bothered by it for a little while but then it was like, “What can I offer? What can I invent? What would they need?” Anybody creating a course, definitely put it out there. Put out the thing that you think people want.

A wedding ceremony should really reflect the couple and not just the gravity of the day. Click To Tweet

Hopefully, you do it with the proper amount of market research and knowing what people want. You might have to pivot and you might have to pivot again. For example, what I’ve done here now with the COVID-19 thing, weddings have completely evaporated. My YouTube views plummeted. That’s my main driver of leads. People are not googling how to officiate a wedding the way they were. I literally watched everything evaporate, courses stopped selling but I had this email list of 5,500 people that I’ve gathered over the years and who have survived all the various purges of my list. I sat and I thought, “I wonder if I steeply discounted the course.” Insultingly low for $149 right now. It’s a group rate and I jumped on Zoom. I’ve never done this before and offered live. Let’s do it as a group and I’ll teach them the course, which I know very well but I’ll do it live one hour Wednesday, one hour Thursday, one hour Friday for six weeks because it’s a six-module course.

I throw that out to my list, “Would you be interested in $149? It’s never been that low but we’re all facing dire circumstances. If he can’t pay that, let me know what you can pay. If you can’t pay anything, I’ll let you in for free.” Fifty people signed up, and so that was $6,000 of immediate income that I never thought I’d see as couples are all postponing and all that stuff. It has been incredible. It’s such a forgiving time to jump on Zoom and try something because everybody knows everybody’s trying stuff. It has been an amazing pivot and I’m learning and I’m serving this email list, these people that never bought anything from me before and they’re ready to try something new as well. It’s all about pivoting and riding the waves, reading the times, figuring out what you can offer and how you can offer it to the people who might need it.

Heather: Initially as I rolled out my program, I thought one thing was what people needed and what I realized is it was in one niche aspect for me. For the majority of the people I work with in my club, I’m helping them with their wedding timeline creation. That’s where they’re willing to pay a little bit more, get the guidance and develop something where the front-end course like that’s great and that’s helpful for people. I’ve been doing similar things to you, especially with this whole situation unfolding or even as things are a little bit slow. I’m giving some away, I’ll open up twenty spots for deep discount, for free or all different things because building that audience and also helping people, I do want to help these couples who are on $1,000 budget. I feel bad to take any portion of that because you’re going to need every dollar to do anything that you’re going to be happy with. You do that, be in this program for free. A big portion of them are going to need the handholding in that specific module where that’s the part that I can cover my bills and keep the business going. It’s interesting as you develop an online course, sometimes you think it’s one thing and then you’re going to be doing one specific part of that and the rest of it, not as much.

Mark: There’s a whole segment that is useless for which something else would be useful for. That’s why staying in touch with your list or trying to, elicit responses from that. How did you find out that the timeline thing was more valuable than perhaps something else? Was it organically coming from them?

Heather: It was because I do calls every month with everyone in my club. They have the option to call on us and I take attendance or something, but they can come on there and we talk about what’s going on with them. I was finding so many people who would join early in their planning process. I had a huge segment of people who were also on my email list, but they weren’t joining the program. It was the same way that those people I invited a few times onto calls. I was like, “We’re opening the doors. Everyone can join in who has questions.” They hopped on and as we discuss things, it was them saying, “I’m 90% done planning my wedding. I have my major vendors booked. I don’t have anything that’s going to be difficult for me to figure out at this point.” I’m like, “What about your timeline?” That’s one of the main deliverables from a wedding planner. It’s essential to keeping that amazing team of vendors you put together all on the same plan and making sure the day runs smoothly without you getting a bunch of phone calls and texts. They’re like, “Really? It’s that important?” I’m like, “It’s really important.” 

Mark: I’ve officiated many wedding where there’s no planner and it’s exactly what you’re talking about. I’m watching it happen an hour before the ceremony. It’s like, “I wish you’d gotten a planner.”

Heather: If you’re going to be working on a budget and you can’t afford to have a coordinator there, you need the plan to be pristine and super organized. You know Aunt Sally is in charge of picking up some flowers over here and your cousins bring in the AV system, especially when you’re doling out jobs like that to keep things on that limited budget. Working with couples on that I’ve found is where almost every single couple that I’m in touch with needs help. It’s something that it’s second nature at this point, similar to you with what you’re doing because I have a system for it and I’ve done it many times. That’s how it goes with an online course. It’s an ever-developing project. For those of you reading who don’t have an online anything, if you’re going to build it, be prepared. It’s going to be a process and layers to it. In the future, I might find that parts of it that I’m not necessarily thinking are the big moneymakers now. It’s continuing to keep a pulse on it, building it out and adjusting as needed.

 

Jamie: I’m panicking because I’m like, “I haven’t changed anything.” I haven’t heard feedback that anything needs to be changed. Apparently, I wrote desert instead of desserts on one of the PDFs. You’re not telling me right now, what’s happening?

Mark: If it’s selling and you’re not getting refunds, then that’s a good sign.

Jamie: We’ve had a few refunds but for the most part, I would think we did make a pivot because of everything that’s going on. We’re offering 50% off of our six-month access because like you, Mark, my views on YouTube have dropped. I don’t know if you’re monetized or not but my monetization has gone down $2,500, $2,600 a month which is our income with no weddings being booked right now. I was like, “I want to be able to help people. What are we going to do?” I made a small pivot. I made a small change.

Heather: It’s something also coming together with other people who have these programs. There’s so much ability for us to collaborate and good to come from it because people who are interested in what I’m doing or what Jamie’s doing are definitely interested in what Mark’s doing. There are people who like tapping into online resources. They have the ability to get things done at their computer at home a little more easily and they’re not wanting to go out and do things in the normal, traditional way. That’s cool. It’s a very shared group of potential clients. That’s a huge part of what we got to be doing to. Mark, did you have any benefits of offering this online course that were surprising to you? 

Mark: I’ve wanted to do a wedding officiating with couples like officiating weddings full-time. In Canada especially, there’s that six months we call winter. It gets pretty lean in December, January, February, March in terms of weddings here. You get the odd Christmas wedding or such but November and February are awful. Everyone’s depressed and eating chips in those months. Australia came through in a huge way. When I launched this course, it got us through the spring, the summer, sales were increasing, and then I thought, “That’s it. There’s going to be a downturn.” It’s wedding season in Australia when it’s winter here. That’s another example. If you’ve got a successful course, it’s always 5:00 somewhere. It’s always wedding season somewhere as they say, and so that has been huge. It allowed me to focus 100% on doing weddings, which is rare especially in Canada for somebody to be a full-time wedding officiant.

A lot of times, they need to do something else, general contracting during the day, they’re a minister, lawyer or something like that. I am 100% eat, breathe, sleep, wedding ceremonies all day long. As I say, the biggest reward, not in terms of income which has been totally life-changing for our family, also being able to serve and empower people all over the globe, that is so incredible. I know you guys have the same thing inside your course and your club. You’re dealing with people that you could never otherwise reach. I’ve got officiants in New Zealand, Australia, Africa and UK. When we get all together inside the Facebook Group and start chatting, some of them connect and then work together. It’s such an amazing feeling saying like, “I facilitated all that because I had this crazy idea and put together this course.”

I don’t want to leave anybody feeling they need to totally know 100% all the ins and outs about how to do an amazing course. You’ve got to get started on the journey as we talk about like fellow vendors, put something together. It is a significant amount of work. I had no idea how to do anything course-related when I started this. You might think, “Did you have some wedding production background, some editing, sound editing video.” I knew how to do nothing. I’m an English Lit major with a Theology Master’s Degree. I was like, “I want to officiate weddings. That’s so fun.” I had to teach myself all how to put together everything in the course and it has been an amazing ride. I would highly recommend it.

Heather: Where can people find your course? Where can they find more of what you’ve got going on? 

Mark: If you live in New Brunswick and you want to get married, UnboringWedding.com. The course that we’ve been talking about is called UnboringOfficiant.com. When planners hear that their couple is choosing the groom’s buddy, Ben, or Aunt Macy or something, sometimes planners cringe a little bit and they’re like, “No,” because you don’t know what they’re going to be like. I would love to take that uncertainty off of your audience’s hands and say, “If you point them to UnboringOfficiant.com/Union,” because we’re on The Union Podcast air, “You can get access to the course.” If somebody finds their way to my list, they get a seven-day clicking ticking deadline thing to take advantage of a 50% discount. The course is $597 but for seven days, they can decide to come in or not and it’s $297 if they get it. I want to make that a standing offer for Union Podcast readers. It’s $297 all the time for anybody reading this blog if you go to UnboringOfficiant.com/Union. You can get the chorus at that price and I’d love to work with if you’re a planner, a couple you’re working with. If you’re a couple, get that officiant of yours through the course and you’re going to have an incredible ceremony.

 

Jamie: You’re such a kind soul. Thanks for that. Honestly, I’m pumped. I’m like, “What of my couples can share this with right now?” Lord knows, some of the officiants are definitely going to need it. Thank you so much for making that offer available to all of our readers. 

Mark: I look forward to meeting them. Thank you.

Heather: We’re glad you got to explore a little bit about what we were doing before.

Mark: It’s cool that you have a podcast for wedding vendors. I’ve appeared on podcasts before that are more planners like yourselves aimed at couples specifically. You guys are all about collaboration and that’s what I love. You are constantly about collaboration. That is what I’m all about as an officiant. I didn’t want to start a team of officiants that had to compete. Learn how to do an unboring wedding and then go off into the world and do your thing. I love that you’re all about that. I’m sure you get this where you’re at, there’s nothing more fun than you start working with the same vendors. It starts to feel like a little home team.

Heather: Thank you so much and we’re excited for you to be at our next event for sure. Everyone will be looking for you. 

Heather: Thank you so much, Mark. We have had such a fun time chatting with you and it’s an amazing resource for people. A lot more unboring weddings coming for all the people out there. It’s going to be awesome. 

Mark: Thanks for what you do. Thanks for giving us wedding vendors so much good stuff.

 

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