| The Educated Bride Vol. 1-3 | Hire a Wedding Planner |

5 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Wedding Planner

When you envision your wedding day, do you see a celebration where all of your loved ones are having just as much fun as you and your new husband are?  Do you think about the details and feel slightly overwhelmed with the thought of how every little part of your Wedding Day will unfold? Whether you are starting the wedding planning process pretty clueless or you feel like you can plan your wedding day like a boss, maybe I can share a little insight into the decision of why you should hire a wedding planner. The advice below comes from my personal experience with planning my own wedding and from my experience as a wedding photographer helping other brides plan their weddings.

1.) Planners can help you expand your Wedding Day vision and create a plan to bring that vision to life.

Maybe you have it all figured out and you’ve been pinning things to your Wedding Pinterest board for years. You’ve been waiting for this day to come and you are organized and ready.  Or maybe you don’t know the first thing about planning a wedding. You may have a potential color scheme or a theme that is special to you that you want your wedding to be based on, but that’s really it.  Whether you are the first or second Bride-to-be that I described above, I still believe a wedding planner can help you.  An experienced wedding planner has seen many themes, seasons, color palettes etc. come together and executed at the weddings they have helped plan.  Not only will a wedding planner be a source of inspiration, but they can help you expand your vision for your wedding with their connections and resources that they have gained though years of experience.  Maybe you want a certain color palette, and they are familiar with the flowers that will be available to you in the season you want to have your wedding.  Or perhaps you are thinking you want your wedding decor to be unique and fresh.  The right wedding planner will help guide your vision to become a reality.

2.) Hiring a Wedding Planner will allow your guests to be guests and enjoy themselves at your Wedding Celebration.

I know your mom, or sister told you they want to help you with everything for your Wedding Day.  The thought sounds nice, and of course you want them to be involved with your special day.  From my experience, it is best to have them be your guest and not your workers at your wedding.  If you are still not sure about hiring a full event wedding planner, I urge you to consider hiring a wedding planner for day of coordination.  They will not be as involved in the entire planning process before your Wedding Day, but they will be the one executing your plans, your vision, and keeping the wedding day timeline on track.  Most wedding planners offer this service if full wedding planning isn’t what you’re looking for.  Having someone who is not family, to take care of the necessary responsibilities on your Wedding Day takes the stress off you and your beloved guests.  Trust me, you want them to enjoy themselves and celebrate with you. You don’t want them worrying about moving chairs from the ceremony to the reception, or setting up table centerpieces, welcome tables, arches, dessert tables…and I could go on and on.

3.) Your Wedding Day will run smoothly, on schedule and allow you to enjoy yourself if you hire the right Wedding Planner.

I kind of touched on this in the last section, but I wanted to go into a little more detail here.  There is no one right way or one standardized wedding day timeline all Brides must use or follow.  That’s why creating your custom Wedding Day timeline is so important.  A skilled wedding planner will help you draft up a potential Wedding Day Itinerary with all of the days events/vendors/locations/times in chronological order so that you will have an outline of what your Wedding Day will look like.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”

Benjamin Franklin

A wedding planner will advise you as to which vendors are most important to book right away, she will help you decide on a ceremony time (hopefully you seek help from your photographer if having great photos is important to you), and she will begin to fill in the time slots of who’s arriving when, and in what order is everything going to happen.

(Read my post about Your Wedding Day Timeline here) – coming soon

4.) Your Wedding planner will handle same location ceremony and reception flips with ease.

Are you thinking about having your wedding and reception at the same venue?  Sometimes certain areas of the location will need to be utilized for both the ceremony and the reception.  In which case, certain things will need to be moved, or flipped over to the reception.  For example, sometimes the chairs that are used for the ceremony will be the same ones used at the dining tables for the reception.  Someone has to be responsible for this not so little, slightly time consuming, but necessary task before the guests make their way to their tables.  Also, I’ve seen where the flower arrangements that are used for the ceremony are moved over to the reception and placed at the head table or dessert table for extra aesthetic.  Having a wedding planner to carry out these flips, is so worth it to keep you focused on what’s most important during your wedding day.

5.) Wedding Planners can recommend other vendors you may have not found for your Wedding Day yet.

Choosing the right wedding planner and communicating your vision to her is only the beginning of planning your wedding.  Most weddings utilize the services of at least 10 different wedding vendors for their Wedding Day, if not more.  Whether you have already booked a vendor or two before you find a planner, she can most certainly suggest vendors you may still need.  Making sure you find the right vendors, whose work you love, and personality you mesh with is also integral to planning and having an amazing wedding day. Referrals are great, but make sure to take the time to visit the suggested vendor(s) websites so you know what their style and work looks like, and you make sure you get a feel for who they are as well.

Hope you enjoyed reading this post. Want to be an Educated Bride? Click HERE for more articles about Planning Your Wedding!

-Andrea Linn

 

The beautiful venue featured in the photos above: Bakers Ranch – Parrish, Florida