Diversify Your Notary Business with Wedding Officiating
We're back at it this week, discussing ways to diversify your Notary business and create multiple income streams. We’ve talked about field inspections. If you missed that blog post, you can check it out here. Today I want to share another way to diversify your commission with Wedding Officiating.
First, there are some states where your Notary commission automatically allows you to marry people and others where it does not. The following states do allow you to use your commission to perform weddings:
Florida
Maine
Nevada
South Carolina
Tennessee
Montana
These are currently the only states that give that power to your commission. For the rest of us, it's almost as easy as already being commissioned to get ordained to perform weddings. You have probably heard it said as a joke, “That guy got ordained from weddings.com.” Well, it's true! You can get ordained online, and it takes about 5 minutes, and most of the time, it's free. There are two major online platforms you could choose from to get ordained:
The Universal Life Church
Both of these sites have state-specific ordination plans. You can do it in a few minutes, and bam!!! You're ordained to perform weddings. That's when it gets fun.
Wedding Officiants are part of a 21.43 BILLION dollar global wedding market. There is a piece of the pie for you. The average fees you can charge as a wedding officiant range from $300-$400, more or less, depending on your service offerings. Exciting? Let's talk about how to get started.
Decide what kind of officiating services you want to provide. Do you want the big church wedding? Do you want small weddings or eloping ceremonies only? That will change the price.
Decide on the extra services you will offer. Will you train and be equipped to perform a variety of religious types of services? Will you offer coordination of the wedding? How about directing and organizing the ceremony? All of those can come with extra fees, and how much depends on you and what your market can bear.
Get ordained, or if you are in one of the states where this isn’t required, skip this step and go on to step 4.
Do some research and seek out training or help to ensure you can provide an excellent service. If you do this right, your business will be built on referrals for years.
Get your marketing set and ready to go.
Like any other business, adding officiant services to your business will require some leg work to get it off the ground. But where do you market? There are lots of options there.
Google Business Page- Update your Google business page to reflect your new services and perhaps run a low-budget ad on that new service.
Reach out to wedding industry service providers:
Wedding venues (not churches but maybe outdoor venues, halls, and the like). Do a Google search on the most popular wedding venues in your area.
Wedding Coordinators
Network with wedding industry service providers:
Industry events
Wedding festivals and Bridal Shows. Spend some money and pay for a booth or spend more money to be a sponsor.
Get Seen- Revamp or renew your online presence to include this new service option.
Create a one-page web page or add a service page to your website with its own link.
Create wedding officiant business cards.
Finally, reach out to other Notaries who are doing business as Wedding Officiants. You can find them on Google, but I have two contacts for you here—one in California and one in Florida.
You can also check out my interview with Selecia here!
I realize this isn’t comprehensive, but I hope it has given you enough to start your journey in discovering if Wedding Officiating is for you. Please check out the video above with Selecia Young-Jones, a successful Florida Notary who has had her Wedding Services explode with success.
Let me know if you have any questions or if there are any other diversities you would like featured in my blog series.
I would be remiss if I didn’t encourage you to purchase Laura Biewer and Bill Soroka’s book, “Beyond Loan Signings,” to get a very comprehensive and exciting look at seven different ways to expand and diversify your business. Purchase today! Click here for the book.
Until next week- think outside of the Notary box and get your income flowing.
Jennifer K. Cooper- JKC Mobile Notary