Romancing a $30 billion market - wedding services and supplies industry - includes related articles on wedding-related businesses

Nation's Business, June, 1990 by Roger Thompson, Bradford A. McKee, Sharon Nelton

Romancing A $30 Billion Market

Don Penven, a former corporate graphics director, launched his business with a video camera he had charged at a J.C. Penney store.

Meribeth Ratterree, an award-winning pastry chef, runs her cake-baking business out of her townhouse kitchen.

Mary Greiner, a symphony oboist, remodeled her basement to set up an office to run her booking service for musicians.

Jean Massengill's interest in flower arranging blossomed into a flower-retailing business.

Liddy Waling, an accomplished designer and seamstress, quit her full-time job and rented studio space to go it alone.

Sandra Burnett and her sister Betsy sold their highly rated restaurant, and Sandra has gone full time into catering.

What all these people have in common--apart from the fact that they live in Raleigh, N.C.--is that they have tapped into one of America's booming service occupations: the multibillion-dollar wedding business.

For $365, Penven provides the bride and groom with a one-hour edited video of their special day. Ratterree will deliver a memorable wedding confection at $1.50 to $3 a slice. Greiner supplies musicians who can include a classical guitarist for $175 or a string quartet for $395. Massengill designs floral arrangements to meet any budget; for a small to average wedding, the bill ranges between $400 and $1,000 (her rule of thumb for making a profit is $200 per bridal attendant). A reception catered by Sandra Burnett costs an average $20 to $35 per person. Waling will design and make an original wedding gown for about $2,500, depending on the amount of hand beading and lace work--more than three times the price of most gowns.

All this amounts to only a partial accounting of what is spent on a typical formal wedding today. Don't forget the rings, invitations, gifts for attendants, groom's tuxedo, attendants' dresses, bride's veil and shoes, limo, and the reception. All that tallies up to an average wedding tab of $13,310, according to Modern Bride magazine. (See the chart on Page 21.) It's no wonder that Cele Goldsmith Lalli, the magazine's editor in chief, regards weddings as "a business project as well as an emotional and spiritual event."

Indeed, weddings are business on a grand scale. More than 2.4 million couples stepped up to the altar last year. Bride's, the largest bridal magazine, estimates that first-marriage couples--64 percent of the total--spent $28 billion in 1988 on weddings, gifts, honeymoons, household furnishings--everything associated with getting married. Modern Bride, the No. 2 bridal magazine, estimates that the total wedding market, including first marriages and remarriages, generated $31 billion in retail sales in 1989. Of that amount, $534 million went to wedding gowns, $5.9 billion to receptions, and $2.7 billion to honeymoon travel. (See "What She Does For Love," on Page 26.)

Demographics propelled the market in the 1980s as the postwar baby-boom generation--those born between 1946 and 1964--reached prime marrying age. The number of weddings peaked at just under 2.5 million in 1982 and has remained at around 2.4 million a year ever since. That figure will recede through the 1990s as the pool of young people in their prime marriage years--their mid-20s--shrinks dramatically from the peak baby-boom years. The youngest baby boomers now are 26.

Lifestyle changes also have altered the wedding market and will continue to do so. Young men and women are now delaying first marriages to complete their education and establish careers. Among women who are 20 to 24, 61 percent had not yet married in 1988, compared with 36 percent in 1970, says the Census Bureau. Among men in this age group, 78 percent had not married in 1988, compared with 58 percent in 1970. The median age for first marriages among women in 1988 was 23.6 years, compared with 25.9 for men--the highest levels ever recorded.

The wedding business has lots of repeat customers, too. Roughly half of all first marriages end in divorce, and the remarriage business is booming. In 36 percent of all weddings, the bride, groom, or both are remarrying, according to the Census Bureau.

Even if the number of weddings declines in the 1990s, there is no sign of diminished interest in lavish, traditional weddings. If anything, interest in elegant big bashes is stronger than ever. The price tag for a formal wedding has tripled since the early 1980s.

Today's couples spend more because the trend toward later marriage means they are earning more when they wed. A Bride's survey of readers found that the average combined income of newlyweds was 35 percent above the average U.S. household income.

These older, two-income couples, moreover, have given rise to a fast-growing new business venture--wedding consulting. Established couples know what they want and can afford to pay for it, but often they don't have time to plan it. That's where consultants come in.

Although weddings are big business, the enterprises that supply the goods and services to this lucrative market often are quite small. The florist, the bridal shop, the caterer, the photographer, and the bridal consultant are sole proprietorships or family concerns with just one to a few employees.