My wife wants to start her own business as a wedding coordinator. Any ideas or suggestions on what to do? I was thinking she should incorporate so we can get those benefits, but i wanted some input from anyone with experience on the boards. Any other helpwould be great too.

thanks
Dave

 

make sure she files as an L.L.C. if she incorporates. Also, if she is going to become self-employed, it is better to list herself as an employee such as a president rathe than owner. Make her give herself a W-2 instead of a 1099 for taxes. Applying for credit with 1099's for income is really difficult.

 

Does she have any applicable experience?

 

ooh yay me me me! starting a business can be cake if you dont need money. if you need to borrow like more than 300k, it can be reallllly hard! Its a great time to start a business now. look in the phone book for other services like your own. you can gauge the size of your advertisement from how large the section is and how large other ads are too! you have at least til late october before the yellow pages starts not letting more ads get set up. (as you can see, i think of advertisement first)

 

Dave,

Research the need for your wedding coordinator service.
Do lots of networking, especially with churches and wedding affliated services and products (photograpers, videographers, florists, caterers, vocalists, bridal gown retailers, etc.)
Be sure to make a "pro & con" list. Are you willing to give up several summertime weekends?

I would think you should do some type incorporation to protect yourselves.

Best of luck.....

 

Dave as a wedding coordinator, who would've thought?

 

If you incorporate you'll want to file as an 'S' corp. I suggest though that a Limited Liability Company (LLC) will give you better asset protection.

The best thing you can do is get a good accountant who can advise you on setting up your bookkeeping and form of business.

Jay has some great advise on networking. Your wife will have to become best friends with a lot of preachers, florists and gown makers.

A membership in the local Chamber of Commerce is a must so she can attend the "meet and greets".

A web site is a must with a savy designer/host that can get her site in the number one position when searching for "wedding planner."

 

thanks for the tips, she has alot of experience in event planning (thats how we met in vegas) and she also did alot of research for our wedding that was heralded as the best wedding that most people have gone to (I know they say that, but these are genuine responses). she designed and made all of our invitations, programs, gift baskets, etc. She is very talented and would be a great coordinator, especially after two of my friends were married (one 2 weeks before, one 2 weeks after) and their coordinators were absolutely HORRIBLE, one is going to be taken to court as she didnt even show up to the wedding.
we were thinking of the LLC, and an accountant was my though as to how to get setup. There is also a NC Commerce site that is supposed to help, so we will be checking that out. I will keep you updated.

I will be posting pics of our wedding as soon as we get them back.

Dave

 

Good luck getting the #1 position in search engines....SEO is a big pain in the butt. Hey, i know a good web designer though....

 

Dave,
My mother in law is a wedding coordinator. Holy crap that job is a lot of work. She pretty much has every weekend full doing weddings and works all week meeting with brides and just driving around all day. The sort of things and people she has to deal with on a daily basis would drive me absolutely insane. She seems to like it though....Best of luck. Here's her website:
http://www.inaweweddings.com/
I'll try to ask her about the business side. My dad owns his own business and did the LLC thing. It seems like a good idea since it protects your assets in case someone sues her saying their wedding got ruined or something. For my dad it was a really easy process and didn't cost hardly anything.
JASON