Ever wonder what wedding planners really do? Well, it’s no surprise that our title lets you know that we obviously plan weddings. However, that is a blanket term that covers SO much throughout the planning process, on the wedding day and even after the wedding. We are going to candidly explain “what we really do” throughout this blog post to shed light on why having us on your side is the best decision. Now more than ever, wedding planners are so valuable!
Most wedding planners have different levels of service they can offer, depending on how involved you want them to be with you. Whether you hire them for their basic or most involved service, there are still so many things they have to deal with, that you may or may not even be aware of! We like to tell our couples we are an unbiased opinion, a therapist or mediator (when necessary), protector and expert. Our couples are the forefront of everything we do!
There are many instances that we have to deal with throughout the planning process. A mother and daughter having a fight in a planning meeting, a silent & hard-to-please father of the bride, an absent-minded groom, or a know-it-all best friend. We have had to help clients fire vendors before. We’ve had hard budget discussions with parents. We deal with sweet surprises that a groom has for his bride that he wants to incorporate on the wedding day (how do you keep something from the bride?!)
On wedding days, we are constantly putting out fires, while keeping the clients happy, fielding questions from your entire vendor team, setting up your event items, calling that one vendor that is 10 minutes late, and keeping an eye on the ever-changing Florida weather, all while keeping our composure and not eluding to any issues. We aren’t lying if during the wedding, we have to make the executive decision to adjust your ceremony floral on a windy day. Or we have to pin your one piece of hair that keeps falling down a hundred times. Or deal with a drunk groomsmen who wants us to “relax and join the party”. Or slide your garter up your sweaty leg because you forgot to put it on earlier. Or hear fiesty older guests’ complaints. We have even had to call 911 during some weddings, without making a scene or disrupting the party!
It also isn’t unusual if some of your items still have pesky price labels on them, favors are in individual plastic wrapping or a table number arrives broken. Our favorite instance? When a cake is done by a family friend and delivered to the venue 4 hours early and placed into a kitchen without air conditioning. You can imagine the condition of the cake when we arrived and had to work our magic to make it look presentable (without telling the client!). Yep, we fix all of that to make sure it’s perfect for your guests, and that usually involves the help of our trusty emergency kits!
Just because the sparkler exit is done and guests have left and everything is packed up, doesn’t mean our jobs are done for that wedding. There are often things we have to communicate to clients or family members or handle ourselves for weeks following the wedding. The venue calls us when they’ve realized a chair was broken during the wedding and we have to tell the bride her damage deposit might be affected. Or a linen didn’t get packed up to be shipped out and we have to retrieve it and ship it back ourselves. All while our couples are on their honeymoon and to this day, still never know about!
As you can see, we don’t just go through the motions or follow a checklist to ‘plan weddings’. Our jobs entail way more than putting together a great team, making a timeline and telling you when to walk down the aisle. What wedding planners really do includes a lot of good, but also some of the bad and unpleasant that fall onto our plates. Our passion to make everyone’s (couple, family & guests) day perfect is what drives us, and we hope that you can see our true value! Our friends at Every Last Detail share more on this topic too!
