Hiring A Wedding Planner

Wedding Planning can be overwhelming. There are so many details to attend to, things you’ve never had to consider before. Your family and friends might have plenty of good suggestions, but they could be all over the place and you just don’t know who’s got it “right.” Everyone has a different opinion on how you should or shouldn’t do things. You have to start somewhere. One place to start that can help you preserve your sanity along the way is to look for and hire a wedding planner.

A Wedding Planner can help you make a game plan, stay on track, deal with vendors, and plan and execute your dream wedding. A professional Wedding Planner has been through all the details of a Wedding plenty of times, and you can benefit greatly from their expertise, as well as their connections.

Tell your Wedding Planner your goals for your Wedding. They’ll listen to you and figure out how they can best make your vision come true. They might come up with a great suggestion you never would have thought of. They can tell you things that they have witnessed that do or do not work well, and why. If you’re overlooking an important detail, your Wedding Planner will pick up on it right away. He or she will help you prioritize your Wedding Planning tasks.

Your Wedding Planner will help you with all of your negotiations with other vendors. A professional Wedding Planner knows what to ask, knows what should be included in a contract, and where hidden charges may lie. He or she has done this many times and will probably have more skill with strictly Wedding related negotiations. A Wedding Planner will also have more sway with Wedding vendors. Vendors want to impress Planners so that they get repeat business, so they often will give deals to a Wedding Planner’s clients. And a Wedding Planner also wants repeat business, so it is in their own best interest to only recommend the best of the best vendors.

A Wedding Planner will help you negotiate the best deals with the vendors you contract with, and they will also help you see where you might be spending unnecessary cash. It is again in their best interest to make you happy, so that you will recommend them to other engaged couples. Between these savings with vendors, and the countless hours of frustration and planning that you’d have to spend figuring all these things out on your own as the first time you plan a Wedding, a Wedding Planner is a cost that is easily justified, and may in fact be less than you’d spend negotiating with vendors on your own.

A Wedding Planner will play a huge role in your Big Day, so choose wisely. You need to make sure you choose a wedding planner who is very organized, has great follow-through, listens to you, and has a good reputation. Ask any one you know who has used a Wedding Planner who they used and what they thought of their services. Check the Yellow Pages, search online. Interview several Wedding Planners. Ask each candidate: What services do they offer? What is their fee? What does the fee include? How many Weddings do they do per year? How long have they been a Wedding Planner? Are they a member of any professional associations? Do they have references? How available are they? Will they be focusing on your Wedding, or on several Weddings at once?

Once you find a Wedding Planner you are comfortable with , sign a contract that details everything that you expect from them. If it's not in their contract, they aren't obligated to do it. You don't want to be hit with an unexpected charge. This should be a happy and rewarding collaboration. Good luck!

--Minnie

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