The Two Most Underrated Wedding Services & Why You Need Them | Part 1

Behind the Scenes

Sep 21

If we had a dime for every time we heard either of these two questions…

Do I really need a fashion stylist for my wedding?
Do I really need a videographer?

Here’s the answer, short, sweet, and straight up. Just what we would tell any couple planning a luxury wedding:

Yes. You do.

A little longer version of that answer? Here goes…

No you don’t absolutely need either of these. Just like you don’t need a photographer, a venue, a caterer, a florist, bespoke stationery, a beauty team, or a band. After all, the only things you really need to have a wedding are a fiancé, a legal officiant, and a marriage license. Quite literally everything else we often associate with weddings are professional services and products that are desirable luxuries, and not true necessities.

But you’re not asking these questions because you’re planning a wedding centered only around necessity. You want a wedding experience that is exceptional. Exquisite. Extraordinary. Expertly curated, designed, and produced. Meaningful. Memorable. And of course, documented in a way that is timeless and invaluable for your future enjoyment and the legacy you pass on to future generations.

So let’s chat for a moment about the value of the first of these two services that we wholeheartedly endorse for any luxury wedding.

Why You Should Hire a Wedding Stylist

As wedding planners and designers, our team has a front row seat to every facet of the wedding experience. We can anticipate moments of joy and anxiety with remarkable accuracy, so you can believe us when we say that curating wedding fashion is often much more difficult a process than many people could possibly imagine. With a seemingly endless supply of gowns, suits, tuxes, accessories, and options for customization, whether existing in seasonal collections, off the rack, or entirely couture, it can take a lot of time and expertise to select the perfect wedding attire.

The reasons to invest in the services of a wedding stylist are very similar to the reasons you would choose to invest in a high caliber planning/design team:

You manage a full-time career with a demanding schedule and you don’t have countless hours to devote to research or sourcing;
You want a flawless look, but you also want your fashion choices to reflect your sensibility and personality, to feel effortlessly “you” and not contrived or as if they jumped off of someone else’s page of collected trends and ideas;
You realize that you don’t event know what you don’t know, may lack industry connections and insider relationships, and you simply don’t have the same access to designers or options that a seasoned professional will have;
You see the value in having an expert help wisely steward a large and important investment;
And… you ultimately desire an experience that is fun, free of stress, and joyful from start to finish. After all, if there was ever a time to feel pampered, this is it.

A stylist will spend time getting to know your preferences, collaborate with your planning and design team, review the design/mood boards to deepen their understanding of the broader wedding aesthetic, and ultimately curate and source options in a much more efficient and thorough manner than you could ever do on your own. They can open your eyes to options and silhouettes that are most flattering on your body, work with designers and fashion houses to customize gowns and accessories, and help oversee the process of alterations and final fittings. But their expertise does not stop with bridal gowns or tuxes.

As an engaged person, you’ll likely have numerous parties and celebrations for which you need to dress your best, such as an engagement party, a bachelorette/bachelor getaway weekend, bridal luncheon, wedding shower, and all of your wedding weekend events like a rehearsal dinner, welcome party, late night after-party, etc. A stylist can help you with fashion for any or all of these occasions as well. They can also take the lead on creating an interesting selection of attire for your wedding party. Love the idea of mixing patterns, styles, and colors of bridesmaid dresses? Trust us, it’s not easy to pull that off well.

Additionally, it’s worth asking yourself whether or not the sales associate on the floor of the bridal salon - as amazing and helpful and friendly as they may be - is ultimately more driven to sell you a gown in the collection they represent… or help point you in the direction of other designer collections that might truly be a better fit for you. When you hire a stylist, you have an advocate, an advisor, and an expert with a larger measure of loyalty in your corner.

During the wedding weekend, you may have have needs that bear anticipation, preparation, and to say it bluntly… critical response. Fashion emergencies don’t only happen to celebrities. They happen to real people in the most unexpected moments. We see them all the time and it’s worth considering the following possibilities:

Somebody steps on your dress and it rips.
A zipper or clasp breaks, exposing your skin or undergarments and/or ruining the shape and fit of your attire that was custom tailored to your body.
Your dress bustle has 24 different steps involved and none of your friends know how to handle it
A well-meaning friend leans in for a hug and spills wine on your gown.
Your shoes and dress hem are covered in dirt or mud after the pre-ceremony portraits outdoors.
Your fiance accidentally scrapes their hand and doesn’t realize they’re bleeding a bit… on you.
You dress and veil are a wrinkled mess after air travel to the destination of your wedding.

The list goes on and on. Many people assume it’s the responsibility of the planning team to troubleshoot and fix all of these challenges. And truthfully, when one of these scenarios unfolds, in the absence of a wedding dresser or stylist onsite, our team will bend over backwards to do what we can. We’re adept at bustling dresses, and we have an emergency kit onsite to sew a zipper, cover a stain, etc. We are resourceful, responsive, and have a do-what-it-takes mentality. But tasking us with the care of all wedding fashion is akin to tasking your caterer with setting up all of your wedding decor. They might be able to help, but to do so takes up critical time, sacrifices the aesthetic potential, and worst of all - it pulls them away from their area of expertise and away the job that you hired them to do, and that you need them to do.

Even asking your planner to steam your dress(s) or jacket, your wedding party attire, etc. is a dangerous thing to do. Why? Because their time and energy was already planned to be spent on other critical tasks.

Time for a true story…

Many years ago, we were producing a complex wedding at a private estate. Less than four hours before guest arrivals were to begin (read: crunch time in the world of event production) our client asked us to steam all of the bridesmaids’ silk faille dresses with her mother’s iron. A member of our team quickly snapped into action and grabbed the iron from the mother of the bride’s sewing room. (Note: we always have multiple irons and steamers with us on any job site, but they were all in use outside in the tent as our team steamed creases and wrinkles out of table linens.) As she hit the button to steam the dress, dark reddish/brown rust water spilled out of it, you guessed it… onto the front of the dress, staining it badly and very noticeably.

Not only had we been put into an unnecessary time crunch to begin with, now we had a real problem and an even tighter timeline. It pulled two of us away from final wedding prep/installation to troubleshoot the situation and work on stain treatment/removal, all in the final hours leading up to a celebration that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, which we had been planning meticulously for the previous 14 months. If a dedicated stylist or dresser were onsite, they would have been equipped with their own (clean/trustworthy!) steamer, and a variety of tools to prevent that scenario in the first place, and/or deal with any spills, stains, or other challenges.

Is a stylist necessary? Of course not. Is hiring a stylist a good idea? Without a shred of doubt, absolutely. Not only will the process of selecting your fashion be that much more enjoyable, but you can also have them onsite to dress and attend to you, which ensures you really do look and feel your absolute best. And like we said before… if ever there was a time to feel pampered, this is it!

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to read the interview we did with fashion stylist, Gabrielle Hurwitz last year.