What does Wedding Planning mean to you?

To me, it means FOUR things:

1. Vendor Management
2. Event Management
3. Inspirations and Styling and
4.  ‘Cost of Love’ Management

Those are effectively my business four main service pillars.

Vendor Management includes supplier sourcing, recommendations, selection, negotiation, booking, payment, contracts and SLA review. It’s important to review all your supplier contracts and ensure service levels are met as per agreement on your wedding day.

Next up is Event Management. This is about the design of your wedding day format and itinerary as well as having someone on the ground on your wedding day to co-ordinate everything on your behalf. With years of experience in the wedding business, I have witnessed many beautiful moments but also the craziest incidents! We all plan for and expect the best but sometimes things just don’t go as we hoped. I have seen the most beautiful cakes melt in the heat, brides get so emotional and anxious they faint, florists deliver the wrong flowers, make-up artists call in sick, PA systems fail during speeches. The list goes on! You need not only a wedding co-ordinator but also a partner on and before your wedding day, who will help you to handle the difficult or unexpected situations or any emotional challenges that you may experience throughout the process.

Inspirations & Styling – this is all the floral arrangements, decorations and the overall design & setup that you see at your Ceremony and Reception. Work involved in this space varies greatly and is very dependent on your budget. When it comes to styling, the sky is the limit. You can opt for a fully personalised, exquisite styling package or a simpler design that oozes elegance. Alternatively you can choose a venue that requires little decoration or styling.

Last but not least and this is my favourite: the ‘Cost of Love’ Management. Yes, i call it the ‘Cost of Love’ 🙂 The work here involves budget setting, cost allocation, expense tracking, negotiation, cost saving strategies & tactics.

So that is what Wedding Planning means to me as a Planner. Culture also plays a very important role in wedding planning and it is integrated throughout these 4 main service pillars. Your culture, background or personality will determine the suppliers you choose, the design of your wedding day format, the floral arrangement or decor you choose to have as well as your cost management and negotiation style.

Same with Lauren from ‘Every Last Detail’, this question is also very close to my heart and I would like to look into answering it. Some of the notes here are quoted from Lauren’s article.

“Why do I need a wedding planner?”

You NEED a wedding planner, you DESERVE a wedding planner, and you should have a wedding planner. Every engaged couple NEEDS a wedding planner. – From Lauren, Every Last Detail – I could not agree more.

The only exception is if you don’t work full-time and have time to re-create everything from scratch and that you actually enjoy building things from scratch. Having said that, it is still very difficult for anyone to learn everything about the wedding business within a few months. It took me over 10 years to figure out how this business really works and build the relationships, network that I have in order to do business better with people. On the other hand, the books say that you must book things in ASAP, right after engagement, where is the time for you to really learn about the wedding business, industry before you get into actions with planning your wedding?

In addition – with how hard you are working in your fabulous job that I know you have, why would you want to add another full time job to your workload? Wedding planning takes a lot of time, so why not leave it to the planner to help?!

Before I get into further details, let’s get a few things clarified straight up:

1. Having a Wedding Planner doesn’t need to be considered ‘optional’ or a ‘luxury’
2. A Wedding Planner is different from a Wedding Day Coordinator and is again very different from a Venue Coordinator
3. A Wedding Planner is also very different from a florist or a wedding stylist

Over the past few years, I’ve heard lots of reasons for why couples think they can’t have or don’t have a wedding planner and I am going to discuss a few of these reasons below.

“I’m on a tight budget”

Everyone is on a tight budget when planning a wedding but you know what, the wedding planner is there to help you with that budget. I have seen DIY weddings within my family and friends – which I did not plan for – have had their budgets blown out of proportion. Good planners can always get you very good deals, or at the least, better deals than if you were to go direct, and they save you the headache – that’s just business.

And you know what else? Planning fee is not that high either. I know some planners charge $6000 – $10,000 for planning but that must include styling as my full planning fee service is a lot lower than that. I know many other planners also charge reasonable planning fee too. So to trade this planning fee for the 250 hours that you have to spend on planning your wedding and your sanity and peace of mind – I think it’s totally worth it.

“I want to be able to plan my own wedding”

Yes, I understand this. I am not married but I have seen hundreds of weddings and brides and grooms and I do understand this very much. Some of my work colleagues are in fact my ex-clients (brides) and so I understand what brides want, feel with respect to this. BUT you want to get involved in the fun, creative parts of wedding planning, not the stressful, tedious and boring parts! Ok, some brides do actually go through each vendor contracts word by word and pick out the T’s and C’s that they don’t agree with – but really, is that really what you want to do? Contracts review? Then the whole documentation of the planning process – your order details, your action plan, wedding day format, itineraries – you really want to work on putting those together? I truly think that you would prefer to hold your glass of martini with your partner on the beach somewhere while the planner does all this work for you.

If you have a wedding planner, you WILL still be planning your wedding. You WILL still have control over what happens for your wedding – most decisions still lie with you. It will just be you planning your wedding with more guidance, knowledge, and a directed focus. And on the day of your wedding, and this is what most brides who have hired planners tell me – you will be able to enjoy yourself a lot more knowing your planner has got everything taken care of.

‘I have a specific vision for my wedding and I don’t want to trust anyone else to execute it”

Having a specific vision is all the more reason to have a planner. What’s important here is that you need a planner who understands that vision and is able to transform it into exactly what you want and at times, even more than what you expected. Many brides are also indecisive and while they sort of know what they want, the way they communicate their vision can be confusing, giving mixed messages – a good planner is someone who can transform such complexity at times into something simple yet perfect and of what the bride wants.

The first thing I ask from my clients is their wedding brief – this is so that I can get that vision from them. During the first meeting with me, to be honest I rarely do any talking and its more the client who does and that is how I get to understand their vision. More so than anyone else, planners know how to successfully make it happen for you once they know what you want.

“I want to design/craft/DIY my wedding bouquets, centre-pieces, table setup, floral arrangement”

Wedding planners are different from wedding stylists or florists. All the above-mentioned work is often done by florists, stylists. If that is really what you want to do it, you can still do it with having a planner. A planner helps you with 4 things:

• Vendor Management – which covers supplier sourcing, selection, booking, payment, contracts, SLA
• Event Planning – plan and design wedding day format, program, schedules, itineraries, wedding day coordination
• Cost Management – budgeting, expense tracking, cost saving tracking, vendor negotiation, special deals, contracts.
• Inspirations and styling – giving you inspirations, styling advice but the work is to be done by our florists or stylists. If you want to DIY the florists or stylists work, you can!

I would note here however is to be careful when you try to DIY too many things for your wedding. Here’s another thing: professionals do the same job over and over again to become good at what they do yet you still don’t see a business that does both flowers and hair and make-up, do you? So, for a bride to attempt to take on all jobs or DIY everything for her wedding, it would be very stressful, and you do not feel this stress until closer to your big date. You will have no time to manage anything. Let me put it this way: there are very few actors who are both the star and director and producer of their biggest movie! Those who are successful at doing this would have done many movies already in their career to get to that point. For most of you, this would be your first time getting married!

“My venue has a planner”

So here’s the thing – most ALL venues have coordinators, but they aren’t wedding planners. The truth of the matter is that they are there for the venue. They are there to handle logistical matters for the venue, therefore needing to have a relationship with you. Their concern is the venue, as it should be, since that is who pays their paycheck. When it comes to actually planning you wedding? The only thing they’re going to do is handle things having to do with the venue (like what appetizers you want served at cocktail hour, or when you want dinner to start). They won’t make appointments for you, help you design your wedding, assist you in choosing your stationery, or create a timeline for your whole wedding day. They’re going to be there on the day of your wedding, but they won’t be there when you need them to bustle your dress (and then fix it when it breaks), hold your bouquet, coordinate and deal with your suppliers as/if they don’t live up to your expectations (one of the biggest responsibilities for the coordinator), or setup, pack down anything that is not of your supplier’s responsibility.

I would not advise you against using the venue’s or any supplier’s resources but just to be clear, a venue coordinator is not a wedding planner and even when comparing with an independent wedding coordinator (who also does wedding planning), there are still many differences. Wedding planners are also your wedding advisors and so it’s important that they are in-dependant and work towards the best interest of the couple, not the venue or any other employers, suppliers. Their employers should really be you!

One last point I want to leave with you is: if you do consider hiring a Wedding Planner after reading this, make sure you do it early – before any planning work is to start. That is how the planner can advise, guide you right from the beginning and help you get the most value. And you all can afford a planner! should have a planner, and DESERVE a planner!