When you were a child, did you ever pretend to get married? What did your wedding day look like to you?
I know I envisioned every single person I loved watching me walk down the aisle with a big, beautiful bouquet of flowers in my hands, on my way to spending the rest of my life with the one person that I knew I would love forever. The setting was always very natural, probably somewhere outdoors, on a brisk day sometime in the Spring where not a single cloud dotted a perfect blue sky. I always saw myself being as calm as ever, smiling the entire time along with all of our guests.
If I am being honest, the child part of me probably didn't come up with that vision as much as the adult part of me did, but that is all part of my job as a wedding coordinator. It is what I want for my own wedding some day as much as it is what I want for all of my clients' weddings.
Unfortunately, though, we are sometimes presented with obstacles that turn our seemingly perfect wedding day sour. What if it had rained on my dream wedding day and I didn't order a tent? What if the florist never showed up (Heaven forbid!)? What if my family and I had just spent the entire morning of the best day of my life setting up my wedding day and we were ready to simply crash? These are all things that I deal with as your wedding coordinator so that you and your loved ones don't have to, and I wouldn't have your wedding day any other way.
W H A T D O E S A W E D D I N G C O O R D I N A T O R D O ?
The great thing, in my opinion, about having a wedding coordinator is that your wedding day can truly be the best day of your life without all of the added stress of hosting a large event. I have heard all different kinds of things from brides about this idea, but the one that stands out the most to me is this: why would it not still be the best day of my life if I don't hire you? The truth is, your wedding day should be the best day ever no matter what because you are joining your partner in a vow to love one another forever. Whether or not you have a wedding coordinator, no one and no event can take that away from you. However, with a wedding coordinator, you have someone who will set up and clean up your wedding, someone who will do all of the stressing for you if they need to, someone to manage everyone who you've hired already, and someone to take a final deep breath with you before they send you on down the aisle. You get a best friend who you do not have to feel guilty about giving a job to on your wedding day, and that's the best thing ever.
Let me put it this way - suppose you start a business and you are preparing for your grand opening where there are going to be some very important people coming. You hire six employees to do various tasks and you decorate the store beautifully; you are fully prepared to greet the important people as they arrive and mingle and network. As the time comes and your guests are arriving, you find that you are very busy managing your employees and keeping the shop clean, and are missing out on the opportunity to network and grow your business. If you had hired a manager to do these things while you were busy, the manager could have taken care of these things for you.
Day-Of Wedding Coordinators are those managers. And we are more than happy to make your wedding the very best version of your wedding possible.
M Y D J / V E N U E I S P R O V I D I N G A C O O R D I N A T OR
The first thing you need to understand is that your vendors are there to advocate for themselves and the companies they work for, not you. (I'm not saying they don't care about your wedding - they've spent a ton of time with you and they probably love you!) What I am saying is that you can't expect your DJ to show up to your venue and start setting up your final details, or your venue coordinator to call your limo driver when they don't show up on time. They are there to do a job that is not about managing the entire wedding, but managing their own smaller aspect of a bigger picture. Can your DJ or venue coordinator create a timeline for your wedding day or try to que the bridal party to go down the aisle at the correct time? Sure! However, don't expect it to be the same as if you hired a wedding coordinator.
On another note, lets say something goes wrong with the venue. The venue coordinator has to go deal with the issue and can't manage the rest of the wedding day because they are not there for you, they are there for the venue. That's why they are called venue coordinators. In addition, venues are known for having high turnover rates, so the likelihood that the person you booked with at the venue and the person that coordinates your wedding day will be the same person is pretty slim.
W H A T I S T H E I N V E S T M E N T F O R A W E D D I N G C O O R D I N A T O R ?
There is no one answer for this question because every wedding coordinator charges something different, but you can expect to pay somewhere between $900.00 and $1,500.00 for Day-Of Coordination. Like most things, you get what you pay for, so be weary of wedding coordinators who charge significantly less than that.
So now you might be thinking, "Wow, I really see the value in hiring a wedding coordinator but why do you charge so much?" Think about all of the planning and all of the hours you have put into your wedding day... There are a ton of moving pieces and last-minute adjustments that have to be made, right? We take care of all of that, but we have to start at least 30 days before your big day so that we are sure we know every single piece of what you have created! This means hours upon hours of contacting your vendors (and possibly sitting down for a meeting with them), setting up your timeline, making checklists and contact sheets, getting to know your bridal party, getting to know you and your vision, and then coordinating your rehearsal and your wedding day (which by itself could be more than eight hours of work). We do a lot! You can read here about a great emergency kit that my clients get to use on their wedding as well, which is also built into a wedding coordinator's cost!
I S T H E R E A N Y T H I N G T H A T A C O O R D I N A T O R W O N ' T D O ?
Again, every coordinator is different so make sure you really get to know your coordinator before you hire them. Your coordinator should have their responsibilities outlined in their contract with a little excerpt about what they will not include in your package. If you hire them and you still have some major pieces missing from your planning that you want your coordinator to help you with, you should expect an extra charge for the planning!
E: Mandy@TimelessWeddingDesigns.com
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