During the week, Shar Aguilar works in tech marketing. Her weekend gig is often much louder and a lot wilder. But for now, it sits and waits for her in the garage.

From nine-to-five on the weekdays, Aguilar joins many in Southern California at an office job, which she recently began working in again after getting laid off last year. But once she’s logged off, her to-do list doesn’t end.

She’s sending quotes to clients, designing photo templates, closing bookings and coordinating with wedding planners. That’s because she’s also running a wedding photo booth company with her husband.

Aguilar spends most of her weekends manning her wooden, minimalist photo booths – a rustic aesthetic the blends in with Southern California’s hilly vistas – for brides, grooms and all their guests.

The economy isn’t doing too hot, but wedding bells are still ringing. That means Americans are still side-hustling.

Extravagant weddings reached their peak in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic: Couples who waited out the lockdowns were willing to splurge on lavish dessert tables, photo booths, live wedding painters and more. While the average cost of a ceremony and reception dipped in 2024, it’s still well above what couples were spending in 2019.

Weddings had 14 vendors on average in 2024, according to wedding vendor marketplace The Knot. This makes them a veritable gold mine for people who want to start a business. Weddings often take place outside of the normal nine-to-five office hours, with no shortage of customers or niche, sometimes wacky demands.

And in an endless flood of content from wedding planning vlogs to bridal get-ready-with-mes on social media, some people want their weddings to stand out — spurring add-ons like vintage photo booths, mocktail mixologists and even live painters.

As one vendor told CNN, “there’s basically enough room for everyone” in the wedding industry.

“You’re always going to have the weekend warrior or the side hustler creating something that has a small barrier to entry,” Shane McMurray, CEO of market research company The Wedding Report, told CNN.

A July Bank Rate survey found that over a quarter of American adults take on side jobs, though it’s at it lowest percentage since 2017. Gen Z takes on side hustles more than other age groups, with over one in three having an extra job.

While the most popular reason for side-hustling was discretionary spending, a majority of Americans take on extra jobs to support their households, pay down debt or shore up savings amid higher prices and inflation, Bank Rate found. This comes as the latest jobs report showed a slowing labor market with major downward revisions, reflecting a fragile job market for most industries.

With uncertainty looming over the US economy, here are four people who are turning to wedding side hustles.

Shar Aguilar, photo booth

Shar Aguilar started a new corporate job in ad marketing for tech last month. It was her first week back at a full-time job since she got laid off in 2024.

But that weekend, she would also set up photo booths at weddings.

Aguilar and her husband, who are based in Southern California, started their own photo booth business in March 2023 to help pay off their student loans.

“Obviously, at first we wanted to just make extra money,” Aguilar told CNN. “Weddings are mostly on the weekends, so that’s a perfect time for us to do it with our corporate job on the weekdays.”

Around 22% of weddings request photo booths, according to McMurray. For Aguilar and her husband, their rates start at around $1,250 for four hours of photo booth time.

Aguilar said they took out a loan to cover the initial investment of $15,000 to $20,000. They searched for an affordable manufacturer for the photo booth — then they had to find equipment, a printer, backdrop and props.

Now, they have paid off that initial loan and have three photo booths as well as three part-time employees.

On the weekends, they can work up to eight-hour days, including set-up, travel and packing up the machines. And during peak wedding seasons, there are often triple bookings.

But despite the extra income, Aguilar said she can only earn so much as a side hustler and enjoys the structure that comes from an office job.

Sarmed Qadeer, coffee cart

Sarmed Qadeer, a 28-year-old from Austin, Texas, had spent his first paycheck from Corporate America on a Breville espresso machine. He and his sisters always enjoyed trying cafes and making matcha lattes at home, he said.

About a year and a half ago, the siblings decided to start their own coffee cart, a mobile kiosk that serves beverages like strawberry matcha and cinnamon cardamom lattes. It’s an increasingly popular trend at alcohol-free weddings; Texas in particular has a large Muslim community, which typically has dry weddings.“We wanted to make something out of it, cultivate and grow a community, and essentially create something with our bare hands,” Qadeer, co-founder of Qadeer Coffee Co., told CNN. The cart has also serviced events at mosques and universities.

The siblings put in $15,000 of their own money as an initial investment. That money went toward an espresso machine, the grinder and a cart. The business has since grossed around $75,000, Qadeer said, and charges between $1,500 to $2,800 for a wedding. The siblings have used the profits to pay off their debts and invest back into the business, such as hiring a barista for events.

A three-hour event can mean up to two days of prep, between making syrups, stickering cups, and loading 80 pounds of ice into a van, Qadeer said. And that doesn’t include the long drives between Texan cities.

In his day job, Qadeer works in tech sales, an industry that is facing cuts to its workforce.

“(The coffee cart is) a buffer with layoffs being more prominent than ever and the economy struggling, I think it’s really important to be able to invest in yourself,” Qadeer said.

Savera Bayat, content creator

Twenty-one-year-old Savera Bayat just graduated college and works part-time as a French program instructor in Toronto, Canada. But for the past seven years, she’s attended hundreds of weddings and has been flown out to 20 different destinations.

Bayat has been working as a wedding content creator since she was 14, filming short clips of events to post on TikTok and Instagram with the ultimate goal of going viral. She’s carved out a niche for herself working South Asian weddings — often grandiose affairs with playful customs such as the bride’s siblings hiding the groom’s shoes

Nowadays, content creators can almost be as ubiquitous as traditional photographers and videographers. Bayat will consult with a couple on social media trends, then film short videos and post in real time on the bride’s or groom’s social media accounts. That includes TikTok videos and Instagram stories as well as Bayat’s own TikTok account, which has more than 95,000 followers. She currently charges up to $1,800 for 12 hours of content creation.

When she began, “not everyone understood the concept of it.” But now, she said, most couples see the value of getting real-time memories.

“I’m taking this chore off (the couple’s) hands, because when you work social media, it’s a full-time job,” Bayat said.

By Bayat’s fourth year in university, “I was traveling the world for it like every month,” and she had to balance it with her classes. Now, she works with a team of five people.

“I’m only 21 right now, so I don’t see myself really stopping,” Bayat said. “I genuinely love it.”

Sariah Howell, magnet maker

Memory Magnets makes magnet versions of photos. Now, Sariah Howell and Memory Magnets not only do weddings, but also sell machines and tutorials for others who want to get in the business.

The magnet-making business began after Howell gave birth and became ill in 2024. Her husband was working two jobs at the time to keep their family in Northern Utah afloat.

“I wanted to do something that was not too hard, not too demanding, something that I would enjoy, but also something that might be able to help bring in a couple hundred extra dollars a month to just help provide where I could,” Howell said.

e started making magnets at local markets in Northern Utah and her online store; now she sells the toy-sized machines, kits and courses on how to start a magnet business. She originally invested around $2,500, and by June 2025, she posted on social media that she was packing hundreds of orders a week and that the company had reached $1 million in sales.

Her business got a big boost from weddings, which allowed her to work with a lot of different vendors.

“Without the wedding industry, I don’t know that we would have as much success now,” Howell said. (CNN)

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