Muna Memo: How Couples Are Finding You Now

Hey ,

Welcome to the first edition of The Muna Memo, a weekly email providing insight into the wedding and events industry. 

Over the past several months I've been in conversation with photographers, planners, venues, DJs, florists, destination partners, and creatives across this industry.  What struck me wasn't that everyone has the same challenge. It's that everyone is asking the same question:  what exactly is happening right now?  Bookings feel different. Couples are deciding differently.  Strategies that worked two years ago aren't landing the same way.

There's no shortage of advice online. What's harder to find is perspective.  That's what this is.  Every Monday, I'll provide you with one signal worth interpreting, one shift worth making, and a few things we're hearing that no one else is positioned to tell you.  A quick and highly curated look at where the wedding and events industry is headed, and shifts you can make to stay ahead. 

Let's begin.

This Week's Signal 

Discovery has evolved.  Couples aren't just deciding slower.  They're discovering you somewhere you're not looking. 

The booking window is compressing, but the bigger shift is where couples find vendors now:  TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and increasingly AI, not so much the first page of Google.  Here's the stat that should reframe your whole strategy:  only about 30% of what ChatGPT recommends comes from first page Google results.  A couple can ask AI for a planner in your city and never see you, even if you rank, because the AI machine pulls from questions, reviews, and structured context, not just your homepage.  Visibility is two games now, where humans look and where machines look, and they don't necessarily overlap as much as you think.  

What We're Hearing

A few themes keep surfacing across MunaCoterie Office Hours and strategy calls:

The middle of the market has gotten harder.  Luxury is holding and having a moment, mid-tier is squeezed, and a lot of you are wondering if it's you.  It's largely the economy.  Name it so you stop blaming your marketing.

Personality is now a deciding factor, not a nice-to-have.  Most couples say it matters in who they hire, and the ones converting well let couples see who they actually are before the first call. 

And nearly everyone is exhausted trying to be everywhere at once, with no system and no idea what's working. 

More on each in the coming weeks. 

One Shift I'd Make

Inject personality into your search footprint. Gen Z and Millennial couples are planning "by committee" with their Gen X parents, and around 71% of them say vendor personality is a make-or-break factor in who they hire, according to the 2026 Global Wedding Market Report by Think Splendid.   

Because AI search tools like ChatGPT are pulling data from highly conversational spaces, your website can't read like a dry corporate brochure anymore. 

Action item for this week:  Add a robust, highly conversational FAQ section to your website and directory profile.  Answer those hyper-specific questions couples actually ask you during your consultations and in the DMs.  AI search tools scrape these looking for direct, human answers.  Write them the way you'd actually talk.  That's where your personality lives, and it's what both couples and the algorithms are looking for. 

Member Spotlight

This week, I'm shining the spotlight on Kawania Wooten of Howerton Wooten Events.  She was recently featured on the Planner's Suite Podcast, where she made a point worth sitting with:  the value of being in the room.  Getting ahead in this industry is not about algorithms or funnels.  Showing up IRL is where relationships, referrals, and reputation are actually built.  It's the exact counterweight to this week's Signal.  Search and AI can get you discovered, but it is presence, the conferences, the partnerships, the face-to-face trust that turns discovery into booked business.  Kawania has built a career on showing up where it counts, and it's worth watching how she does it. 

Resource of the Week

Open a blank note and write down every question a couple has ever asked you in an inquiry or consult.  Don't filter, just list them out.  Most of you will hit 15 in five minutes.  Those questions, answered in your own voice, are the highest converting content you can put on your site.  They can also serve as good insight into the type of content you can create for social. The material is already in your inbox. 

One Question

What's one shift you're seeing in your business right now that you can't quite explain?  Hit reply and tell me.  I read every one, and the patterns help shape next week's Signal. 

See you next Monday, and have a great week.

- Jackie