What Went Down With Wedding Wagon After Shark Tank
Although it's a significant event in a married couple's life, a wedding can also be a fraught experience. Aside from the logistics and expenses involved, issues like dealing with a troublesome bridesmaid can rear their heads to dampen the whole party's enthusiasm. The other option would be to do a courthouse wedding, which, while quicker and easier to plan, doesn't have the romantic pomp of the traditional ceremony.
Living in Las Vegas, the so-called wedding capital of the world, gave James Cass and Adrian Gonzalez the idea of offering engaged couples another option. What if they could just dial a number to have someone meet them where they'd like to get married — a park, a garden, near the beach — and have a van roll in, complete with an officiant and a photographer? This is the service offered by Wedding Wagon, which the two launched in 2012. With the service cost starting at $99, the company saw quite the demand from couples who were flocking to Las Vegas to get married hassle-free. In 2013, Wedding Wagon made $243,000 from booking six to eight weddings a day.
The success inspired the founders to take the business nationwide, so they went on Season 6 of "Shark Tank" in hopes of getting $125,000 in investment in exchange for 20% equity in their company. However, while the Sharks got a kick out of Wedding Wagon's innovative concept, a business decision that Cass and Gonzalez had made left them all saying, "I don't."
What happened to Wedding Wagon on Shark Tank?
The mobile wedding service company's pitch started with a mock wedding between Barbara Corcoran and Kevin O'Leary, with Gonzalez as the "officiant." The other investors got a good laugh over the ceremony, which ended with the two Sharks sharing a peck. They also reacted positively to Wedding Wagon's numbers, with the company valued at $625,000 (per Biznewske).
O'Leary's inquiry about their plans for expansion revealed a disturbing fact, though: Cass and Gonzalez had sold the rights to the Las Vegas chapter of their company in 2013 for $120,000 so they could focus on launching a franchise business. Dismayed by this discovery, Mark Cuban asked why couldn't they have just bought a second van, given their robust sales. The founders admitted to purchasing one and hiring a team for it then blamed these employees for not being as committed to the business as they were, to which Robert Herjavec objected. Cuban said he couldn't make sense of that business decision and declined to make an offer. Herjavec gave a similar reason for opting out.
With Wedding Wagon's franchise fee a steep $25,000, Lori Greiner didn't see it as sellable. O'Leary and Corcoran both couldn't get over the fact that the founders sold their business model, with the latter admitting that had they retained their rights to their idea, she would have been all in. As it was, no investor offered Cass and Gonzalez a deal.
The Wedding Wagon continues to provide its fun and convenient service in Las Vegas
Despite receiving no investment from "Shark Tank," the founders went on to establish their planned Wedding Wagon Franchise Company in 2014. Today, though, the business is known as the Las Vegas Wedding Wagon, with a reported net worth of $12 million, per Geeks Around Globe. Its services now start at $129 for a basic package that includes only an officiant. It also offers an Indoor Chapel Package that costs between $299 to $499, inclusive of decorations, witnesses, and the filing of legal paperwork. Couples can check for availability and book services through its website. They can also check pictures of the Wedding Wagon's previous clients on its Instagram account.
A mobile wedding service would undoubtedly enjoy a brisk business in Las Vegas since, per NPR, an average of 340 couples get hitched there daily, contributing to the $2 billion Las Vegas wedding industry.
One of the company founders has pivoted to the food and beverage industry
After a year with the Wedding Wagon Franchise Company, Gonzalez shifted to marketing, working for homebuilding companies from 2014 to 2018. He then pivoted to the F&B industry and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee to work as both the line cook and marketing person for the TacoKnox Food Truck, based on his LinkedIn profile. The food truck then switched its brand to No Joke Nachos which is now known as The Nacho Cart. Its Instagram page says "closed until further notice," though this could be temporary, given that the latest post, dated October 6, announced the food truck's unavailability due to inclement weather. There's no available information, however, about Gonzalez's former business partner Cass.
It's tempting to imagine how far the two would have ridden the Wedding Wagon had they not sold their rights to it prior to making their pitch. But as plenty of "Shark Tank" stories have shown, getting an investor to say "Yes" is just the beginning of a story that has many twists and turns in store.