04/04/2025
The world is always changing, and the wedding industry inevitably must change with it.
As most Americans are now aware, much of what we consume relies heavily upon imports. The wedding industry isn’t much different.
I’m not an economist, but as a wedding planner, it is my job to have at least a base-level understanding of how recent events may impact my clients. So here’s what’s up:
1. US Weddings are largely reliant upon importing. Whether we’re choosing out-of-season or rare florals that are shipped in from Colombia, making an Amazon purchase for trinkets made in Indonesia, picking out Mezcal imported straight from Mexico, or ordering our dream wedding gown crafted from fabric brought in from China….we (the US) are sure as hell not doing this whole thing on our own.
2. Your vendors are going to have to make adjustments, but they WANT your business and they WANT to make it fair. They’re often small business owners who already fought to do it their own way in life, a little perceived adversity likely isn’t going to make them fold now.
Yes, florists will have provisions in their contracts to protect themselves in case of rising costs, but the good ones already had those clauses in there, anyways. Your dress might be a bit more expensive, but shop owners are going to get creative with payment installments and things of that nature to make it manageable for their customer.
Now, it’s important to remember that these tariffs are added to the cost of the goods themselves, not simply slapped on top of the sales price. Which again, no expert here, but I’ve seen some bad math in comments and videos, and I think it’s important to just keep that little tidbit of info in the back of our minds.
Will there be some changes? Probably. Will we go through inevitable growing pains? Sure. Will we get through it? Yes.
And, as always, now might just be the time to stop going the way of convenience and start researching how to *truly* shop local.
