How to Hire a Wedding Planner

Know how to find the right one for you!

Whether you’re engaged or just dreaming of your perfect wedding, the decision to hire a wedding planner has probably crossed your mind at one point or another, especially once seeing all the moving pieces involved in a successful and beautiful wedding.

If you’re planning a wedding, social media like Instagram and Pinterest might already be your best friends for inspiration, but don’t rule these out for a good place to find your wedding planner and designer as well! Google is the obvious default place to search for a wedding planner, but visual sites like Instagram and Pinterest are great because they allow you to see your planner’s work in action. If you see a picture of something beautiful and inspiring, someone had to design and plan it. These sites are great ways to search for a wedding planner based on the things you see – and already like!

Another good tip to keep in mind is not to limit your options of wedding planners based solely on geographical location. You don’t have to search for a wedding planner in the town you’re getting married! Some planners will come to you and your wedding location, so don’t limit your options – especially if you’re planning a destination wedding!

Know what to expect!

Keep in mind that it’s important to have an idea of what your needs are when talking with your potential wedding planner. Truthfully, if you reach out to us, it’s going to be very difficult for us to help or even give you potential price quotes without knowing exactly what you need.

What made you want to reach out to an event planner in the first place? Is it simply to have someone coordinate your ceremony or handle vendors on the wedding day, or is it important to you to have access to an industry expert, have help in finding the perfect vendors for you, or to have someone take stress away from your plate so that you can really enjoy your day? If everything (or more) is important to you, keep this in mind when discussing your budget with your planner. There are drastic differences in the amount of hours and work put into each of these services, and it’s important to understand that this effects pricing in different ways, much like what Kristin said in her last post about realistic wedding budgets.

Nancy Ray Photography

You realistically cannot expect to pay even similar prices for full-service planning and month-of coordination services. I know this might seem obvious, but keep in mind that, even though we love what we do and are thankful for being able to do it, event planning is a service. It’s amazing, but it’s also a lot of work, and the amount of hours spent on a full-service wedding package (400+!) are greatly going to outweigh a month-of or even day-of wedding package.

Keep in mind the things that are most important to you before you call, so that we will be able to better suggest the ways in which we can help you.

Have a budget in mind. It doesn’t make sense to spend all of your budget on an event planning fee. It’s important for us to understand what budget we would be working within before we can even begin making suggestions for you.

Til next time,

Brittany

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Partnership Series: Working with Wedding Photographers

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Wedding Budget Calculator Tools & Myths