Atlanta Duo Gets Paid to Help Engaged Couples Elope

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey there, hello, what's up? Welcome back to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, I'm your host. I have the privilege of bringing you a different story every day of someone who's creating a bit more freedom for themselves. And they're doing this in the form of a side hustle, an income-generating project.

Something that brings them economic empowerment so that they have more choice. And often in a lot of these projects, they're also making the world a better place. They're also doing something good that helps people. In today's project, I think you'll agree is really interesting. It's about a couple in Atlanta who gets paid to help engaged couples elope.

The reason why I think this is so interesting is because so many apps and crowdsourced platforms have come along to disrupt all kinds of industries. Like the hotel industry is so different now than it was five years ago. The car rental industry, the taxi industry for sure. Even things like lawn care. We had an episode early in the year of these guys who were doing Uber for lawn care, essentially connecting homeowners who needed landscaping services with local landscapers.

And there's lots of other examples, but there's also at least one huge industry that hasn't been greatly challenged, at least not by some market leader, at least not by some huge cultural trend. That is the wedding industry. The thing is not everyone who wants to get married wants to have a traditional wedding. And not everyone who wants to get married has a ton of money to spend on the ceremony. Or maybe they just don't want to spend a ton of money on the ceremony.

So this couple that you'll hear about today, they have a project that is one part side hustle and one part mission. They want to provide an unconventional wedding option. They call it fancy elopement for unconventional couples. I'll bring you that story and tell you all about how it works in just a moment. [Music]

When she's not on the hunt for the best vegan restaurant in Atlanta, or watching endless amounts of videos on YouTube, Starbucks barista, Lindsay Delgado Harris, is working with her wife, Sean, to revolutionize the way millennials are getting hitched.

When it came time for them to plan their own wedding, Lindsay and Sean found themselves completely overwhelmed with all of the fluff of conventional ceremonies. Being an unconventional couple themselves, they thought it would only be fitting that they choose to have an unconventional wedding. They cast aside the wedding planning magazines that didn't represent them or their ideals in the pursuit of something a bit different. And not to mention more affordable. They eventually landed on a small intimate brunch with family and friends.

It was a delicious success. And in the afternoon haze of bubbly and good company, it occurred to Lindsay and Sean, there really should be more options available to this generation of the newly engaged. One of the biggest considerations for revamping the wedding market is cost. The average salary for an American between the ages of 25 and 34 runs just shy of $40,000. So the $35,000 price tag for your average traditional American wedding, which doesn't include the honeymoon, has left many millennials looking for something less traditional.

And while the classic courthouse elopement may have a certain appeal to some, it doesn't work for many of the selfie generation who like to visually document each aspect of their lives on Instagram. Lindsay and Sean put their heads together to find a way to combine the desire for good visuals and a meaningful experience with the emptiness of one's pocketbook, and they created the fancy elopement. For around $1,200, they can provide you with a licensed officiant and a tailor-made ceremony with your choice of backdrop. You'll also get seasonal flowers, some sparkling wine, a 30-minute portrait session with a photographer, an online gallery and digital rights for sharing your photos. The best part is that they do all of this for you.

All you need to do is show up and pledge your life away or get married, depending on how you look at it. Getting this side hustle up and running cost very little. They put together a Squarespace site. They got a photographer friend to take photos and used friends as models. And they also got licenses online so that they could officiate the ceremonies themselves.

And by the way, on the show notes page, we'll link up a site that will allow you to get licensed too, just in case you want that. You never know. Within the first week of launching their side hustle, which they called Life and Art Events, they received their very first fancy elopement request. And it was one they are not likely to ever forget. As with many love stories, it was a whirlwind experience, with Sean meeting them on a Tuesday and setting up their ceremony for that Sunday.

The experience was even more personal and meaningful to Lindsay and Sean because it was a lesbian couple like them. Living in Texas, same-sex marriage was not legally recognized until the Supreme Court passed its historic ruling in June of 2015. Sean wanted their special day to go above and beyond their expectations. So she went the extra step of baking them a homemade wedding cake. The couple was thrilled.

They were grateful to have somebody there for them who understood what they went through in order to get to that place in their lives. Okay, so let's talk about the business side of this. I mentioned that the cost of a fancy elopement is around $1,200. Since planning and orchestrating fancy elopements are a pretty involved and customized process, Lindsay and Sean have also found success in offering day of wedding coordination services for $1,800. This involves them flawlessly handling all aspects of the wedding you've planned so that when the day comes, you can hand off the reins to them and focus on walking down the aisle, not tripping on your train.

With these two services combined, they've been able to plan and help out 15 couples and so far they've made more than $8,000. Lindsay admits that marketing has been their biggest struggle since most people don't know where to look for elopement providers. Plus, it can be a challenge to find clients who are on board with bucking tradition. She feels like they're up against decades of preconditioning that's led women in particular to believe they have to have a big, expensive fairytale day. Still, it's working, especially as they make more connections and get the word out.

This side hustle began in Austin, Texas, but has since moved to Atlanta, Georgia. With the change of scenery to a bigger city, Lindsay and Sean are hoping to grow. They've already scoped out some amazing venues in anticipation of the 2018 wedding season. They also have a couple of new services that they'd like to test out in the new year. In light of the rise of the sharing economy, where we share rides, cars, and even houses, why shouldn't we also share a wedding day?

Hey, it could happen. Or how about a pop-up wedding, which is like a more subtle, less attention-drawing flash mob? The idea is that Lindsay and Sean would find a location, which is usually free, and of course, eye-appealing, and they'd show up with a couple along with a photographer and the couple gets married right there. Family attendance is optional. Beyond that, their bigger goal is to open a wedding venue that does things a bit differently.

Ultimately, they want to overhaul the mindset around weddings for their generation, making the celebration less wasteful, less gendered, and less stressful, because maybe less is more. Well, I am almost always in support of the unconventional, both in terms of life in general and work, side hustling, entrepreneurship. So I think this is a pretty interesting idea. I actually think it could grow a lot. I also think there's room for lots of extensions, like they're already thinking about, in terms of the pop-up wedding, the sharing economy wedding.

I feel like there are opportunities everywhere for people to do all kinds of stuff with this. So good for them. Congratulations, Lindsay and Sean. If you're out there in Atlanta and you're looking to plan a wedding, or maybe you know somebody who's planning a wedding and doesn't want something that's super traditional, maybe you should take a look at their website, which of course we will link up for you in the show notes, along with that opportunity for you to get licensed as a wedding efficient, 'cause you never know where your next side hustle is gonna come from. And also ask yourself, as you go through life, what other industries need to be disrupted like this?

What other traditional expectations deserve to be challenged? This is not to say that traditional wedding ceremonies or anything else traditional is necessarily bad. It's just not for everyone. That's the point. So pay attention, 'cause there are opportunities all around you.

That's what I've been trying to teach this entire year of side hustle school. We're gonna be talking about it more and more in 2018. As always, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. And those show notes with all the links I mentioned will be online at sidehustleschool.com/357. We're almost at the end of the year, but the show will continue.

I'll be back tomorrow with another story. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.