Unconventional Career Idea 💡 Become a Mobile Wedding Writer

Earn $130,000 - $260,000 writing about weddings 💍

I hate weddings.

I hate the poses, hate the dresses, hate the cliche-ness of it all. AND YET, this job might be the one that would convince me to actually go to them. 😉

You’ve got your typical suspects at a wedding, right? You’ve got the photographer, the videographer, the planner, the DJ. Maybe the DJ is making out with the planner. Maybe the photographer is screwing the groom. See what I mean? Weddings are rose-colored cesspools of false hopes and dreams.

SO WHAT I’M SAYING IS MAYBE I SHOULDN’T DO THIS JOB.

But, someone should *totally* do this job.

Okay, so hear me out: lately, I’ve seen a new trend emerging called “live wedding painting.”

Exhibit A:

liveweddingpainting

A post shared by @liveweddingpainting

bloomblissart

A post shared by @bloomblissart

eventpaintingbyjulie

A post shared by @eventpaintingbyjulie

(Search for “live wedding painter” on Instagram and you’ll find a little enclave of artists hopping on this career trend!)

And so recently, when I went to get my hair done, a young girl in the next chair was talking about her wedding, and then that forced me to picture her wedding, and then that forced me to think about what in the living fark I would do if I had to get married, and that’s when the thought occurred to me:

I’d want a book.

Photographs are great, videos are great, but they’re also incredibly one-note. You see the outfits, you see the cake, you see seventeen people doing the macarena.

Even with video, you might capture the best man’s speech—which will inevitably include a drunken story nobody wanted to hear—but it all still feels so very generic, flat, expected, hackneyed.

Enter: the live wedding writer.

Here’s what I’m picturing:

• Writer shows up live at wedding

• Writer documents what they see, experience, hear, smell, taste, feel, think, witness.

• Writer collects supplemental material on site at event: interviewing guests, jotting down songs played, taking notes about real conversations happening around them, documenting tiny, fascinating details: like the fact that the mother-in-law was wearing MAC lipstick in Retro Red, or that the best friend ran around asking everyone if they wanted a tequila, or that the drunk uncle spilled a vase of roses. You know, the little details that actually make things interesting.

• Writer goes home and drafts a “micro novel”—a novel that takes place over the course of one day. (I’m calling it a “novel” because “wedding book” sounds too much like a wedding photography book or scrapbook.)

• Writer delivers leather-bound micro novel to couple as a totally unique keepsake; one that their children and grandchildren and great-great grandchildren can read and re-read forevermore. It’s one thing to see a picture of your great-grandma, but another thing to read a book about who she was and the people she knew and the world she lived in, suspended in a moment of time.

WHY AREN’T MORE PEOPLE DOING THIS?!

The wedding industry is incredibly lucrative, given that in some markets, people plan on spending tens of thousands of dollars—or more. It’s the one time when people can justify a big expense. (“I deserve it.”) Normally, if you’d try to do this—say, write micro novels of people’s everyday family lives—it would be considered a “nice to have,” not a “need to have.” (And that’s way harder to sell.) But, people go crazy about their weddings, and that turns things that are normally “nice to have” into “MUST HAVE, CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT, DID I EVEN REALLY MARRY IF I DON’T HAVE A BOOK ABOUT IT?!?!”

If you’ve always wanted to be a writer, this is a great way to marry your love of writing with a legitimate commercial need—especially if you love weddings! (I know you freaks are out there. 🤣)

Next Up: The Wedding Writer Career Plan (Advanced)