question about planners

[savannahjean85]

I posted this on the college board but wonder if you guys know anything about this?

I am going to school to get my Hospitality degree. Recently for one of my classes I had to shadow someone in the field I want to work in, which is wedding planning. Well I spoke with two women who both work as event planners for local hotels (marriott and auburn university hotel). I am now question my career choice because they work 7 days a week, all holidays and never see family. Neither were married (mid-20s) so they said they were fine with this now but that when they did want to start a family that they would switch fields. I want to work for Disney when I graduate and my dream would be to work as a dream team wedding planner. I understand in the Hospitality field "we work when everyone is off", but I still would like to have a personal life.
Now my question is does anyone know if Disney's Wedding department do just solely weddings or are they also event planners?
Do they have days off?
Does anyone know what would be the best way going about trying to contact someone to find out more about this job position?

 

[Lynn5700]

I have no clue but that would be an awesome job! I would love it.

Good luck!

 

[IndyBride]

Wedding planners are the first ones there and the last ones to leave. It's a very demanding job and while you get to be apart of everyone's special day it does take a lot of dedication. I do know that the wedding planners are not there the entire time but most of it.

I'm sure there is an event planning group at Disney. I have a feeling there are different people in each department that work in different aspects. Like floral has a few people for escape weddings, wishes weddings, coutour weddings, events done by disney such as PPP and MNSSHP, and other events. Good luck! It sounds like it's pretty hard to get into the wedding department at disney.

 

[B2B-2008]

I wouldn't be put off of your dream job because of how demanding it is. I work in a trade that men normally do, I am one of two women in my office. We have to do a minimum of ten hours a day when we are quiet and in our peak times we do about twelve hours a day plus weekends. I'm 29 next year and we want to start thinking about a family and I know that my job will have to change in some way but this to me is a new challenge.

I would love to do wedding planning, please don't be put off just because of the hours.

 

[caryndisneydiva]

call casting or the college program and see what they have to say about dftw jobs. when i was on my cp, that department was extremely hard to get into. the wedding planners only plan weddings, the convention people do conventions etc.

 

[DisneyLover1234]

Yay for another hospitality major!! I graduated last December in hospitality and loved every minute of it. Now, however, not so much. With the economy being so bad, I cannot find a job in hospitality so I have to look elsewhere. (thank god I also have a degree in business) I am in the same boat as you, I love hotels, expecially wedding planning, but I also want to have a life, I don't want to spend 70+ hours a week working, for me, even if I loved it that much, it would become work instead of something I loved doing. There are hospitality jobs out there that are 40 hours a week, during the regular work week, but they are VERY limited.

About the only place in a hotel that has normal work hours is in HR, but I also had a job as a sales manager of a hotel that also had a senior sales manager and she worked during the week as well as the weekend, but I didn't have to. Only problem with that field is that if you move up, you will have to work the parties and functions that are mostly nights and weekends. And you have to be careful, because most of the jobs are salary and are lower paying right off, but you do not get paid for working over 40 hours a week. One job I was offered was 36K, but I was required to work at least 65 hours a week, but everyone there said 80 was realistic. So basically my salary would have been 18,000 for the hours that I would have worked. That was not a trade off that I was willing to take. But if you truly do love it and that is what to do, then go for it, just prepare yourself for the hours.

If you are interested there are also travel departments within larger corporations that set up all the travel for employees and things like that, which might be neat.

I would suggest doing internships. I was going to do one with Disney, but I wasn't able to take a semester off of school and the way my classes were set up, it would have put me back an entire year and it would have messed with my scholarships so I choose a summer Marriott internship in Orlando instead. That was wonderful because my manager was able to get me to meet with some friends who let me shadow them at the JW and Ritz which was awesome. It also made me see that if that is what I wanted to do, that would be my life and I didn't want that.

Like I said before, now is a bad time, yes people are still having weddings, but budgets are smaller and costs are hiring and companies are cutting back. A huge resort in my area just cut back 10% of their employees last month.

Finally to answer your question, to get into the wedding department, I was told that it is a requirement to have done the internship program with disney and then you can apply for the wedding assistants or to be in that department. There may be other ways to get in, but I'm not sure. Let us know how everything works out!