What does a wedding planner do.

And do I really need one?

The simple answer to that question is, yes you probably do! Planning the average wedding may at first seem quite a simple thing to do, but you are going to need a lot of time on your hands! This is even more true if you have little knowledge of what you are doing, or which suppliers will provide adequate services and if you do not have the technical knowledge of putting together, what can be, quite a complicated day!

Sure, we all know someone who planned their own wedding from scratch and it seemed to have worked out well enough. What those people probably do not mention is how much of a chore it really was and how many hours they spent, choosing the venue and services, arranging meetings with them, food tasting, venue visits and more. Then chasing up the service providers and venue before the day, to ensure all are on the same page. It's no mean feat and that is all before the big day comes around, now let us talk about the actual wedding day too!

The typical wedding can make for a very long day, especially for the couple, from waking up early to prepare and get yourselves ready, to the event itself, where you will often find yourselves pulled left, right and centre! Taking your vows, socialising with your guests, popping off with photographer here and there, eating your meal and of course, enjoying your own party, that you paid for! It's an emotional and physical roller coaster of a day, now ask yourself, do you really want to add a ton of work to the day as well? Are you there to enjoy the day, or take your place as the wedding coordinator too?

You definitely don’t want to be the one dealing with setting things up, keeping things on track and sorting out any problems on your wedding day do you? Hiring a wedding planner should be an important part of your budget!

Let's stop for a moment to consider what the average wedding planner actually does for you, leading up to and on the day of your wedding. Also bearing in mind, that if you are planning your wedding in Spain, or another destination away from home, it may be of even greater importance to hire a good local wedding planner! Also the bigger your budget, the more you need to allow in it for the wedding planner, higher budget weddings, or large guest numbers often require a lot more work! However, hiring a wedding planner can actually save you money in the long run and help you avoid costly mistakes!

Here are just a few things that a wedding planner can do for you!

1. Solid recommendations.

A wedding planner will generally only recommend services and wedding venues they know to be highly reputable. This avoids you accidentally contracting the cowboys that are most certainly out there! It's in the wedding planners interest to do this, as they want the wedding to go well and to avoid the stress that can be caused by the less capable, less reputable providers. There are some real wedding horror stories out there, that could often have been avoided by hiring a good, knowledgeable wedding planner to guide you. If you're using a wedding planner, don't start interviewing and hiring vendors on your own. Most wedding planners will have preferred vendors they'll ask you to consider first, with good reason why!

2. Good advice and practicalities.

You only have one wedding day to arrange (well we hope), but your wedding planner is involved in many. An experienced wedding planner will be able to help you with the practicalities of planning your wedding and will, without doubt, have a lot more experience of what can go wrong, thus, helping you to avoid any pitfalls. Let's face it, planning a wedding is not cheap, it's often one of those big expenses in life, like buying your first house, would you go about that without the advise of your estate agent or solicitor? You wedding planner has one thing in mind, to make sure you have a fabulous wedding and that the money is spent wisely, in order to achieve this! If you know what you want, but are not sure where to start, then you need a wedding planner!

" Planning a wedding is not cheap, it's often one of those big expenses in life, like buying your first house, would you go about that without the advise of your estate agent or your solicitor?"

3. Keeping your Budget.

The typical wedding can involve quite a few independent vendors, the minister, the florist, the cake maker, the caterer, the Dj, the decorator, the venue itself, the list goes on! That also means a lot of payments, deposits, part payments, balances etc, to take care of! Your wedding planner can help you keep track of this and remind you when you need to pay for your services. They can help you keep in line with your budget and advise where to cut back, without spoiling the day, if the intended budget is going overboard! They can be the ones to collect any cash payments from you and pay the vendors on the day too. There is a lot to think about and it's perfect having a wedding planner on which to offload some of that stress!

4. Coordination on the day.

After all the services are booked and the wedding day draws close, this is where your wedding planner really kicks in to take the stress away from you! Although the Job title of "wedding planner" can seem quite a glamorous career, it is actually very hard and demanding work, both mentally and physically, work that is taken away from you and entrusted to them. This allows you to fully appreciate the wedding day you paid for!

• Making contact with suppliers, before and during the day, chasing late suppliers
• Assisting and supervising set up, to ensure it is done correctly
• Setting out favours, name cards and those little details just how you wanted
• Dealing with all suppliers on the day, providing just one point of contact for your requests
• Finding solutions fast if a problem does arise (A car can break down at any moment).

The list goes on and on, if I was to spend time thinking about all the things I have personally dealt with as a wedding planner, so would this article! Personally I think that hiring a wedding planner is money well spent, in fact after many years in the wedding trade, I think it quite essential! Before getting into this business, I had no idea how much work it would really involve, not just on the wedding day, but proceeding up to it, there can be many hours of emails back and fourth alone! Without a wedding planner, all those hours of work are yours alone, as is all the stress and possible problems on the day.

Destination weddings - Another set of problems.

If you have lots of time on your hands and are self planning your wedding local to home, where you may well know the people / local customs well, it can be considerably easier than planning it in a location foreign to you. So it becomes more important to hire a wedding planner, who speaks your language and has local knowledge of the area and the local vendors. If that destination is southern Spain, then of course you have the services of Marbella Bride at hand, we are specialists in weddings throughout the Costa del Sol, Malaga province. However whatever the destination you choose for your wedding, do the sensible thing and contract a reputable wedding planner from the onset, it will save you time, money, stress and possibly a disastrous wedding day!

So the answer to the Question, do I need a wedding planner - Yes, you probably do!

Article by Mark A Borrow - Nov 2017