Planning a wedding is a huge undertaking – regardless if it’s a small, simple affair with close family and friends only or a huge celebration with 200+ guests. Either way, weddings require a huge amount of coordination, oversight, and detail-oriented prep. And because of the nature of weddings, brides and/or grooms are usually unable to provide the attention necessary during the period leading up to the wedding – and much less on the big day itself.
Enter the wedding planner! As a professional who is present to ensure that all goes according to your plan, the planner can act as the final piece of your wedding puzzle – pulling together all the pieces to create a perfect whole. And while the decision to hire a planner isn’t for everyone, those who do usually credit the choice as one of the best they made during their wedding planning process.
Still undecided? Unsure whether you’re ready to put so much trust in someone else when it comes to the biggest day of your life? Here are a few reasons that may help you to make your ultimate decision when it comes to hiring a wedding planner:
Less stress = more fun. Weddings are intended to be a celebration of your love as well as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to party with everyone you love most. However, the stress of planning and coordinating all of the tiny details tends to make wedding planning into a chore. What better reason to hire a professional than to ease this burden?
Even if you decide to handle the pre-wedding planning yourself, consider hiring a day-of coordinator – who will come in approximately six weeks prior to the wedding day to make sure they’re familiar with your plans and to wrap up all loose ends. Brides and/or grooms are pulled in a million different directions on the wedding day as family members arrive, hair and makeup is done, photos are taken, etc. And while many couples believe that they’ll have the time and attention to coordinate all the details (decorating the venue, ensuring that vendors arrive on time, dealing with last minute hiccups), it typically isn’t the case. Let a field expert take on the stress so you can sit back and make memories to last a lifetime.
Recommendations and knowledge without the research. Tired of spending hours on Wedding Wire or The Knot looking for the PERFECT venue, florist, DJ, photographer, caterer, makeup artist, bakery, and on, and on, and on? Run out of steam when it comes to researching wedding etiquette, realistic budgets, planning timelines, wedding favor ideas, vendor tipping norms, band/DJ power requirements, venue layouts, etc., etc., etc.? There’s a reason (or maybe many reasons) that so many people look to an expert.
Wedding planners have years of training and experience in answering exactly these questions and addressing these issues. Once you hire a planner, it’s literally their job to take on the research for you. Wedding planners also often have pre-existing relationships with all the best vendors in your town. A planner will often be able to get an answer from said vendors with a quick text (where it could take you multiple calls or emails to get the same answer). With a wealth of knowledge in exactly those areas haunting your wedding planning dreams and countless industry relationships that can be used to benefit your big day, a professional planner can ultimately save you endless amounts of time that can be focused elsewhere in your busy life.
Vendor communication streamlined. As a professional, it’s every wedding planner’s job to ensure that all of your other wedding vendors are providing exactly what they promised in their contracts, that they arrive when and where they should, and that everything is set and ready to go exactly on time. Wedding planners speak the language of other wedding industry vendors. They know how best to communicate timelines, priorities, and requirements to other “creatives” who may respond best to non-traditional forms of correspondence and/or different types of encouragement.
Wedding planners use detailed timelines that are created with other vendors in mind; they’re able to provide the streamlined details necessary to make sure that your whole wedding team is coordinated and ready to go at game time! They also understand when it’s crunch time… and when it’s not. A wedding planner will be able to tell you when it’s appropriate to push a vendor to provide a deliverable item or action, as opposed to those times when it feels urgent but all is actually going exactly according to plan. From day one of planning to your actual wedding day, a wedding planner will help to make communicating with your vendors a breeze.
Less wedding day woes. Most importantly, you want to actually ENJOY your wedding day, right!?! Do you really want to be running errands, sweating during set up, and checking off intricate to-do lists on your big day? Give yourself the best wedding gift of all: a wedding day that you’ll actually be able to remember fondly via a wedding planner. While he/she handles all the gritty details including setup, vendor coordination, and timeline management, you’ll be able to focus on the important moments that you’ll cherish for the rest of your life!
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