A couple gets engaged, signs a venue, and starts working down the list: photographer, flowers, food, music, cake, hair. For each one they search, open the map, read reviews, and message three or four vendors. Every message they send is a slot you did not get to compete for.
What stings is that the vendors who beat you are often not better. They are just visible. Their listing has a post from this week and yours has one from the last wedding season, so theirs reads as a business that is still taking bookings and yours reads as a maybe.
So you lean on the venue coordinators and the planners who send you work, and that is genuinely how the industry runs — until a coordinator changes jobs, a venue signs a preferred list you are not on, or a directory raises its listing fee again and you pay it because you have no other source.
Then it is the quiet season, your calendar has holes where last year had bookings, and every option left costs money you would rather have spent in the autumn.