We know that wedding days can be one of the most expensive days of your life. There’s so much that is necessary to make the day all that you want it to be! The trouble is that a lot of those things can add up quickly and all of the sudden you’ve found yourself with a total much higher than you’d like it to be.
Often times, brides and grooms will hit a point in the planning process where they feel that it’s necessary to cut costs somewhere, and a lot of the times that starts with the behind the scenes things or people. We know that a wedding coordinator can pop up on that list of people or services that don’t seem necessary. Or at least you may have a conversation to see if any of your friends or family can play that role.
But we want to encourage couples that hiring a wedding coordinator (who wouldn’t otherwise be a guest at your wedding) is a worthy investment and will enhance your wedding day both logistically and emotionally!
Design & Coordination by Honey & Joy Events
Leading up to the WeddingÂ
Planning a wedding is an incredibly joyful and exciting process – but it is also one of the more stressful processes that you will go through. Before you’re engaged, when you picture wedding planning you only picture the fun stuff – cake testing, dress shopping, engagement photos, picking your bridal party, etc. And those things truly are a blast! But there is also a lot more that goes into it that can be more stressful and less fun.
For example, confirming times with vendors, keeping track of deadlines and timelines, day of coordinating and details for days. There are simply things that are very time consuming, stressful, or you wouldn’t know to do if you’ve never planned a wedding before!
When you have a wedding planner/coordinator you still get to do all the fun things you’ve been looking forward to, but then you have someone else keeping track of the details and walking you through the steps to ensure that everything about your day will run smoothly. Every planner is different, but it was so helpful to have ours contacting all of our vendors and bridal party and anyone who was involved in the wedding to ensure that everyone knew when they were supposed to be where and what they were doing. It allowed for us to enjoy the freedom to make the big decisions in the beginning and then hand over the contact details and not think about vendors again until we were enjoying their services on the day of the wedding. Not only does this free you up to be excited about the day with less stress, but it also frees up your time as you no longer have to be the one in consistent contact with the people who are a critical part of the day.
The Wedding Day
Not only does a planner help leading up to the wedding, but the argument can be made that they are crucial to the day of the wedding to ensure that the day runs smoothly and everything flows as it should.
One of the perks to having a wedding planner/coordinator that has walked through the planning process with you is that they already know how the day is supposed to go and what all the key details are. They’re the ones who will oversee every part of the day. They’ll be the one at the venue while you’re getting ready to make sure that your flowers made it there and are getting set up as they should be. They’re the ones who will make sure that everyone is in the right place at the right time. Your planner is  the one that you’ll go to when you have any questions or issues and they will be the ones to take care of it. They’re the one who will be overseeing the timing of your ceremony and telling the bridal party when to walk down the aisle. They’ll be the one to open the door or pull the curtain for a bride and her father to walk down the aisle to her groom. Simply put, a coordinator makes sure that you don’t feel worry or stress about the details of your day and they allow for you to be present in the moment without thinking about one thousand other details.
Design and coordination by SoireeÂ
Some of this may sound like a luxury not a necessity, but there are times where you’ll need a point person because you and your bridal party need to be doing something else and you can’t be the one to handle issues as arise. Whether you’re off taking pictures with your bridal party, or your hiding out with everyone before the ceremony, sometimes you will need to have a designated person who will take care of anything that may come up, and often they can take care of it without you even knowing there was a problem! It’s also important to have one person who knows the timelines and all of the ins and outs of the days that isn’t the bride or groom. There are so many people involved in a wedding day and most of them are bound to have questions, and it’s unbelievably worth it to have someone there to answer those questions and directing people where they need to be.
What About a Family Member?
The last point to be made is that sometimes it can be a great option to ask a friend or family member to be your wedding planner/coordinator. It is an incredibly generous offer for someone to make to a couple and if you feel that’s what’s best for your wedding than I would encourage you to go for it! However, there are some difficulties to having someone close to you playing that role in your day.
There are two hard scenarios that your friend/coordinator could fall into. They could get distracted by the guests that they know at your wedding and finding themselves enjoying the event with everyone else and not necessarily being mindful of all of the details that are happening around them. Or the flip side is that they would get so focused on making sure that the day runs smoothly that they forget to celebrate the wedding and don’t enjoy the day as you’d want your friends and family to! All that being said, some people could walk the line perfectly and make sure that everything unfolds as it should while also enjoying the day with the couple and the other guests. But we think that it’s worth considering that it may be more beneficial to hire someone that you don’t know (or at least don’t know well) who’s job it is to make sure that one of the most important days of your life goes off without a hitch!
Design & Coordination by Honey & Joy Events
We say all of this because we’ve seen a lot of weddings and we know that no matter the size, theme, venue, bridal party, etc. there is always going to be more details than you’d think! We want for brides and grooms to be able to enjoy their day and the planning process without drowning in details. We know how beneficial it is to be able to loosen the grip on the details and to just enjoy the day for what it should be – a day spent with the love of your life and your closest community!
Some of our favorite planners in the Iowa area:
Honey & Joy Events
White Willow Events
Make it Happen Events
Mostly Becky
Soiree Iowa
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