Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Franklin.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I ran a political communications and advertising firm for 17 years, and while we were successful, a lot of the fun has been taken out of political campaigning. For the last six years, I had been experimenting with different ideas that would be more scalable and interesting to me – and in 2021, I started experimenting with the idea of writing wedding speeches. (I had been asked by friends and family for help with theirs, as speechwriting was part of my professional role.)
At that point in time, towards the end of the pandemic, a number of wedding professionals were still congregating on an application called Clubhouse. In a discussion room, I floated the idea for a service that helped with wedding speeches, and it was suggested that we add custom vows and ceremony scripts. By the end of the day, Vows & Speeches was born; I had a fully fleshed-out website, and a logo, and I put an ad up. I got a client the next day.
While it wasn’t that simple – I had to learn a whole new industry – we’ve since grown Vows & Speeches into a leader in this kind of services for the weddings industry.
As part of our service, we don’t just help people with the writing – we also help coach the delivery of their parts.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
To succeed in the wedding service industry, you have to understand how people make decisions about their vendors. For example: Who do they trust? When do they make certain kinds of calls? How do the wedding planners and venues vet their recommended vendors?
We knew none of this.
For the first year or two, we were trying to learn the answers to these questions and more – while still working in political advertising and communications to pay the bills. In the meantime, there was a decent amount of fumbling around (and mistakes) in how we allocated our small marketing budget.
In late 2022, my wife and Vows & Speeches’ Co-Founder was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer (which she thankfully beat), and in mid-2022, we lost our best friend to a heart attack. As such, the transition into this full-time while dealing with health challenges and loss was a real struggle, but our love of this business has helped carry us through and made the journey that much more rewarding.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Vows & Speeches?
Vows & Speeches helps people write and practice the delivery of custom wedding vows, wedding speeches, and ceremony scripts (usually for friends or family members that have been asked to officiate).
These parts of the wedding have long been without formal professional guidance – and as a result, weddings commonly have parts that are generic, boring, or downright inappropriate for the setting. By contrast, our service keeps things fun, engaging, personal, and emotionally impactful.
Everything we do is remote, and we do not use AI for the writing. That way, every wedding is unique to the story being told. Our writing is based on interviews, without questionnaires or work on the part of the clients.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
I was initially inspired to look into this idea by my friend Jon Macks, who has been the head writer for various award shows, a writer for the Tonight Show, and a ghostwriter for many comics and politicians. It was my interview of him for a podcast I was doing during COVID that truly started us on this journey.
Overall, though, I had three key people in my life who taught me how to write effectively: my mother, Ricki, who was an English teacher; my own high school English teacher, Marybeth Mitchel; and one of my earliest bosses, Christian Boswell, who hired me as a copywriter for his ad agency.
Pricing:
- Custom Vows (includes one practice session): $600/both, $400 for one
- Wedding Speeches (includes one practice session): $500
- Ceremony Scripts (includes one practice session): $950
- Additional practice sessions: $150 each
Contact Info:
- Website: Vowsandspeeches.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vowsandspeeches/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vowsandspeeches/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@vowsandspeeches
Image Credits
Dennis Kwan
Mike Garnica
Filda Konec Photography
