Congratulations, you’re engaged! After the post-engagement glow, comes the time to set your wedding date and begin to plan, plan, plan! But, wedding planning can be daunting and with so much information floating through various sites and bridal magazines, where do you start? The best way to make sure your wedding planning goes smoothly from start to finish is to know who to hire and what their jobs are. So, let’s jump right in!
The Decorator
When you’re scrolling through Pinterest and you see all these beautiful photographs of exquisite floral design, beautiful table settings and dramatic décor staging; that is the work of a wedding decorator. Hiring a wedding decorator ensures a reception and ceremony design that your guests will be talking about weeks after you say, “I do”.
A wedding decorator works on wedding design, setup and breakdown on your special day. They have all the necessary contacts you’ll need to bring forth your wedding vision like: florists, fabric warehouses, their own personal warehouse with props and design elements to complete your look.
Depending on the size of your ceremony, reception and venue space, a decorator can be expected to put in a lot of man hours drawing out the design plan, confirming and gathering all the materials, along with staying after hours to break everything down and clean up. Your decorator just doesn’t throw things up in the air in hopes of it turning out gorgeous, they’re dedicated to color theory, design sketches and fabric pairing. Every design element that goes into a wedding day, you have a decorator to thank for.
Your wedding planner will more than likely introduce you to the decorator through his/her contacts. It’s always best to work with a team because more times than none, they have all worked together before at various weddings and events, so everything will run smoothly for you. You don’t need to hire a planner to get to a decorator, but the two can go hand in hand.
The Planner
Your planner is the person you hire as soon as you set your wedding date. They are with you every step of way, you will feel as if you’re marrying them as well because that’s how much time you’ll be spending together. A wedding planner is perfect for the person that needs help organizing, delegating and choosing vendors and venues. Some people require a wedding planner and others don’t find it necessary-it all depends on your specific needs.
A wedding planner helps create your wedding budget, venue research, vendor research, contract reviews and reminds you when payments are due and scheduling meetings with your caterer, entertainment, photographer and videographer. You may even bring your planner along to help pick out invitations and lock down color schemes. The planner is you’re A-Z, your Alpha and Omega; they are designed to take the wedding planning stress off your shoulders so you can actually sit back and enjoy the entire process.
What many people don’t truly realize is how much goes into planning a wedding and sometimes the anxiety can set in and before you know it, you’re letting moments pass you by because you’re feeling so overwhelmed. It’s always great to have a wedding planning spirit guide to walk beside you as you go to dress choosing and fittings, seating charts and floral arrangements. It’s also great to have a buffer just in case you have some unruly bridal party or family members.
The On-Site Coordinator
Your wedding coordinator is a must. Why? Because this person makes sure that the day of your wedding goes by without a hitch. They’re job is to, you guessed it, coordinate. They are the movers and the shakers of your wedding. They make sure everything and everyone one is where they’re supposed to be-on time, ready to go. The difference between a planner and coordinator is simple to explain: a planner, plans the behind the scenes details (i.e. invitation, contract reviewing, venue choosing) and a coordinator organizes the wedding day process (i.e. making sure the bridal party is on time, the tent vendor is on time and set up, the decorator present and ready to setup the areas).
Typically, the bride or groom love to plan their wedding themselves, but they don’t have the time (and let’s be honest, they shouldn’t have the time, their primary focus is to enjoy their day) worrying if the caterer has arrived, if their cake arrived without a scratch or if their ceremony setup is they way they envisioned it. This is where the coordinator comes in. Typically booked months prior to the wedding day, your wedding coordinator collects all the information and detail from you and your partner and begins the coordination plan ready. The coordinator is a "month of/day of", which means they begin work around 6 weeks prior to the wedding date.
Wedding cake stuck in traffic? Don’t sweat it, your wedding coordinator will fly a helicopter themselves to make sure your cake is ready by reception time. They are a wearer of many hats and are extremely diverse; they will assist the DJ, the florist, the bartender, the photographer-whoever needs help, your coordinator will make sure they’re there as everyone’s support system. Your wedding coordinator is pretty much the heartbeat of your wedding day.
Your wedding day is one of the most beautiful days of your life. You are surrounded by the most important people in you and your partners life and even though nothing in life is perfect, hiring one or all of these wedding professionals above can guarantee an as close to a picture-perfect wedding you can ever have.
All of the above photos are from Carismas events along with the photographers info per event....