Ten years ago, Nikki Begg was working in the investments division of Bank of Bermuda when she decided she wanted a change and went looking for a part-time job. She was looking for flexiblity, freedom to travel, time with her two dogs and a job she could enjoy and do from home. She decided to try her hand at wedding planning.

She admits that for the first wedding, which she organised at the request of a friend who had a friend coming to Bermuda to get married: "I had no idea what I was doing". What she did have, however, were very strong organisational and administrative skills, a creative zeal and, she soon found, a passion for the work. "I absolutely loved it," she said.

Ms Begg then undertook six months of online training for wedding planners via the Association of Bridal Consultants and launched her company, Bermuda Bride, complete with a website. That first year, working on her own, she did 67 weddings. "It was anything but part-time," she laughed.

A decade later, the company has now done over 800 weddings - with budgets ranging from a jaw-droppingly economical $1,500 to an eye-poppingly extravagant $500,000. Ms Begg is the managing director and senior wedding planner at the company and also runs the flower company Petals, cruise ship wedding coordinators My Bermuda Wedding, and is a partner in the design firm, Elements. Across the four companies, she employees a staff of nine.

Suffice to say, she still doesn't work part-time, although she does share duties at Bermuda Bride with two other full-time wedding planners. As senior planner, Ms Begg still directly handles the larger weddings, generally delineated by having over 75 guests or those having the biggest budgets.

A good wedding planner should be efficient, detail-oriented, organised, flexible and have a sense of humour and a vital sense of tact, she said. Confidence is also crucial.

"This is a job that regardless of what's going on, you have to know that your role and the skills you bring will make the event work," she said.

The month of August saw the company overseeing 27 weddings, four which had to be hastily rearranged to accommodate Hurricane Bill's Island drive-by. They all took place, some had to be moved to Tuesday after the storm and others went early on the Thursday before it. "We just got on with it," Ms Begg said.

One the first things she discusses when she meets with clients is the need for a back up plan. "You cannot control the weather," she said. "And, it's better to address that right from the start. We ensure they are just as happy with the revised plan if they need it."

While most think of summer as wedding season, it's really evolved into a year-round business, Ms Begg said. In 2008, her busiest month was November and this year she has her last wedding booked, at the moment, for late December and her first of 2010 on January 2. So much for those extended holidays.

While she was reluctant to share any tales of Bridezillas with outrageous demands - saying only "you'll have to wait for the book" - Ms Begg said her skills have developed in terms of dealing with difficult clients.

"Sometimes, we do get requests and we say, 'good grief, what are they thinking'," she said. "But, what I have found is that what sounds unusual to you or me, is not necessarily unusual to them. At the end, this is their special day, so I try to look at it from the perspective of 'what is it that they are really asking for'. Is it an overall effect? What can we do to achieve it?"

Bermuda Bride offers two services - full wedding planning and wedding day management. With the recession and financial insecurity of the past year, Ms Begg said the more economical wedding day management was more popular as couples scaled down budgets.

Every wedding they handle, however, is tailor made, she stressed: "We don't sell packages."

For 2010, however, she's already seen that trend turning around, with a return to bigger budgets and more extravagant planning. "The economy has picked up," she said. "And many people are finding they are too busy to organise their own weddings. So it's swung back to more planning."

As the bulk of her clients are overseas-based - "99 percent," she said - Ms Begg travels to New York a couple of times a year to meet with clients. Weddings handled by Bermuda Bride can be planned in under a week or upwards of an 18-month lead up time.

"It all depends what the client wants," Ms Begg said. "If it's just a minister and a few people it can be done very quickly. I have done weddings where I held the ring, the flowers and served as the best man."

On a few occasions, she has also had to deal with the aftermath of a runaway bride or groom. "In a situation like that, where it's not right, it's probably best that they don't go through with it," she said.

"And we will do everything we can to try and get as much money back for them as possible because what they are going though is difficult enough."

The job has other challenges as well and Ms Begg admits she has struggled with the staff management side of the work. "I need to learn not to micromanage," she said. She's found when she lets her staff run with ideas the results are often magnificent.

"The hours we work are really crazy. We often don't leave to 2 or 3 a.m. as we have to deal with the clean-up too," she added, "and I need to remember that the staff have lives too."

She would also like to build more personal time into her schedule. "This year, that a priority for me," she said. With a business that sells wonderful wedding days and memorable celebrations, Ms Begg and her team work 60-80 hour weeks to ensure those results.

The letters of appreciation she receives, sometimes even years later, are some of the greatest rewards of the job, she said: "I get ultrasound pictures and anniversary cards." And sometimes she even gets cake. "A lot of people don't take their cakes, they give them to me and I bring them into the office. I love it," she said.