What if you skipped a wedding planner?
If you are thinking about hiring a wedding planner, but haven’t decided on the issue, I’d like to give you some meaty advice, hire one.
As a career-long wedding videographer, I have seen many weddings over the last 23 years where a couple skipped out on hiring someone to help with their wedding day.
You’re asking for stress and trouble, trust me.
Today, I’d like to spend a little bit of time chatting about what happens if you decide to skip out and not hire a planner of any kind.
I will give you a few of my personal one-on-one experiences that could have been avoided if these couples would have spent just a little bit of additional money on a professional.
First, what is the purpose of a wedding planner?
Wedding planners take your money and run, you never see them again. Okay, that’s not true, but I hope that I have your attention!
All joking aside, a planner wears many hats through your wedding process, but I want you to think of them as a conductor in an orchestra.
They bring everything together for your wedding day and they make sure that vendors know their places, the bridal party operates smoothly at the ceremony, and that your day goes off without any major issues and if there is one that pops up, they worry about it, not you.
The truth is that not everyone hires a professional, they skip the idea of forking out money to someone and they, many times will DIY or do it themselves.
They Forgot What?
Back in 2013, I covered a wedding for a couple in central Virginia.
It was a spring day, birds chirping in the trees, leaves starting to blossom and the day was lovely, about 65 degrees, I remember it well.
The bride decided to skip out on hiring a planner and decided to manage everything herself, from vendors such as me to the timeline of the day.
She also skipped out on hiring a catering company in lieu of hiring from a restaurant in order to save money, Olive Garden.
The OG has a nice wedding catering meal plan that runs about $13-ish per person including pasta, salad, breadsticks, and the like, not a bad deal if you’re looking to have a meal.
When the bride ordered food for the wedding just a few weeks beforehand, she told them that she was going to have used chinaware instead of their plates and not to worry about bringing them.
Well, the bride forgot all about ordering the mix-matched chinaware for the wedding day and when the reception took place, something was missing.
The people to help serve the food and the chinaware.
Olive Garden back then literally dropped their food off and went on their merry way, you needed someone to serve the food and you needed plates of any kind.
So, what happened?
Well, the bride’s dad ran out and got styrofoam plates for everyone, while it was a bit embarrassing for the bride and most people just laughed it off, it was stressful on the bride knowing that she forgot an important piece of the day.
Had the couple spent money on the planner, she would have made sure that the chinaware was ordered and delivered and the bride would not have been so embarrassed in the first place.
Well worth the cost.
What’s missing when you skip a wedding planner
When you don’t hire a wedding planner, you become the main source for everything.
From directing people where to stand at the wedding rehearsal, telling people how to set up the reception, to putting decorations out and making all the major and minor decisions, it puts you in a hard place, one of stress and little time to enjoy yourself, let alone the day with your soon-to-be spouse.
Furthermore, not having a planner puts a huge deal of stress on vendors such as myself.
Without having someone to direct the wedding ceremony or reception, vendors are many times left without direction, as a wedding videographer, I’ve seen firsthand how ceremonies run late, where receptions stall because no one communicated with the DJ or tells catering to fire up dinner service 30 minutes beforehand.
It can be a huge mess at times, we wedding vendors see it, but so do your guests.
Back in 2014, I asked 223 people that were in a bridal party what their biggest complaint was with a wedding they attended over the last 12 months. Surprisingly the complaints revolved around not having a wedding planner at the wedding.
What bridal party complained about most
While couples saved an average of $500-$3,000 or more by skipping a planner, they created a world of mess with the timeline of the day, lack of direction with the ceremony and reception, and lots of ‘dead space’ where nothing was happening and no one really knew what to do.
It simply boils down to education and knowing how to run a wedding, something that most couples fail at doing because they’ve never navigated a wedding before.