Wedding 101 or 9-1-1? Bridging the Gap!
I speak with wedding vendors on a regular basis and I want to be able to make their jobs easier. The end beneficiary is the wedding couple and their families. I even had a mother of a bride (with her daughter and future son-in-law’s reluctance) pay for a wedding planner because all she wanted to was buy her dress and the next thing she would do was sitting down before the ceremony! That same reluctant couple actually toasted me during the wedding reception with a huge thank you and stated they could have never done it with me and the bride’s father actually said in his toast that other people with a wedding in their future should hire Greatest of Days! Most couples think that they don't need a Wedding Planner or they have a friend or relative who can fill that role. It sounds like an honor to be placed in that role, but in reality that person is probably going to be the one who has the least chance of really enjoying the wedding, or... will automatically fall into the guest mode leaving the couple getting married stranded. Ironic, but true.
Here are some misconceptions people have about hiring wedding planners!
~ Wedding Planners are too expensive.
Wedding Planners have so many options to help whomever is planning a wedding. So many times when a couple or perhaps a mother is thinking that they are saving money by doing things on their own, they can actually be wasting money. Wedding Planners have discounts offered to them that the couples can benefit from that they can't get on their own. Every couple engaged to be married owes it to themselves to at least have a complimentary consultation with a Wedding Planner. If you believe that time is money, you really owe it to yourself to see what you will save in time alone. For an average wedding, without a Wedding Planner, the equivalent of 7-1/2 40-hour work weeks is spent planning a wedding. I’d say to wedding vendors, recommend a complimentary consultation with a Wedding Planner as a gift to your brides. Chances are, they will thank you for it!
Please look at our various Wedding Planning Packages.
~ A couple will often have friends who seem like they are naturals to help plan a wedding. There are so many things that the recruited or volunteering friends and family members just don't know about the actual wedding day and what can happen. Wedding Planners spend a lot of time networking, doing research and taking classes.
If a website isn't kept up to date or does not reflect a particular vendor's personality, you just don't know if they will be the fit for you or not. As Wedding Planners we try our best to match vendors and clients according to their personalities, styles and budget range. Just as a bride/couple is looking for an ideal vendor, a vendor is also looking for an ideal client. Vendors learn that not every bride is going to be one that they will work well with.
~ A Wedding Planner will take over my wedding.
Wedding planners feel that the most important thing they can do is listen. We listen to what you want, can sense a couple’s or parents’ uncertainty, can feel what kind of pressures they are facing and learn by the expression in their faces that they have found that "just right" dress, venue, photographer, etc.
~ A Wedding Planner won't let me use any vendors I've found on my own or will make me work with a list of their preferred vendors.
The opposite would be true 99% of the time. The most common type of job that a Wedding Planner is hired for is what is referred to as a "Day-of" Coordination. In this case, all the wedding vendors or other people filling in for those roles, have been set. A "Day-of" Coordination usually doesn't include any research for venues or vendors but actually puts in, according to statistics, 40-80 hours of work before a wedding. I have actually had brides call me wanting someone to coordinate just their wedding day and not hiring me because didn't think that there could possibly be that much work involved for the "Day-of" Coordination. You might have noticed how I always put quotations marks around “Day-of“ and that is for a good reason. There really is no such thing as Day-of like the name implies or what the bride thinks she wants. Of all days, you don't want someone coming to your wedding and not knowing all the aspects and variations planned for the wedding. For many of us, the part we like best about doing a "Day-of" Coordination, if finding new vendors whom we might not have met otherwise!
Brides, Grooms, Same-Sex Couples, Venues and Vendors alike, I would love to have the opportunity to speak with you about various ways Greatest of Days can help you out! If you are a venue or a wedding vendor, we can help you as well.
If a Wedding Planner is given the chance, a wedding engagement time can be cut in half! Grooms particularly love that!
Wishing you the greatest of days!
Planning and Designing Events and Weddings since 2007!
No comments:
Post a Comment