Should I Hire a Wedding Planner?
In my option everyone who is having a wedding (or event for that matter) can benefit from a wedding or event planner! The question comes down to if hiring a wedding planner is worth it to you. Here are some simple tools and questions to ask yourself to help you decide if hiring a wedding planner is worth it for you.
Do you have 10+ hours a week to devote to planning?
Have you ever planned an event close to this size before?
Spreadsheets - do you think they're sexy?
Do you like spending time researching?
Do you enjoy negotiating contracts?
Do you want to work on the day of your wedding?
Are you and your spouse in agreement about the details of your wedding?
If you said YES to most of these questions, then kudos to you. You are probably in pretty good shape to plan your own wedding, but you might want to keep reading just to be sure. If you said NO to a lot of these questions, then you are going to want to talk to a wedding planner. Notice how I said talk to a wedding planner and not hire one, at least not yet. Most wedding and event planner will do an initial meeting with you for free. In fact, if they are not willing to, that is a red flag. In this meeting, a planner will talk to you about what you have already done, what you plan to do, your budget, and how you want your wedding to run. By the end of this meeting you should have a good sense of what if any value you will get out of hiring a planner.
What does a wedding planner do?
At Fierce Productions our most important task of being a wedding planner is helping you co-create your vision. We see the vision of the event through your eyes but the difference is we have executed events hundreds of times and we know what works and what doesn’t work. We know how to produce the vision you see in your minds eye that you may not know how to execute. We help you set priorities and expectations. We co-select your venue and vendor team and manage all of logistics for your entire wedding. We do the leg work, you enjoy your engagement. In some cases our clients give us a guest list, answer some questions about their vision and sign on some dotted lines. On the opposite end of the spectrum you could hire someone to consult for just a couple hours to make sure you are not missing anything important or hire a coordinator. Our coordination and management services begin 3 months before your wedding to ensure that we are not missing anything during the last, most critical months of planning. We highly recommend that you talk with a planner as your first step rather than after booking your venue. It is always best to hire a wedding planner to manage the entire event but if you can’t make it work with your budget make sure you leave room for a coordinator at the very least!
Here are some of the most important questions that a wedding planner can help you address.
Are my wedding plans reasonable? With enough time, money, and effort almost everything is possible, but you almost certainly have some limitations on your budget and time. A wedding planner can help you work out if your budget and vision match up. If your budget and vision don’t match your planner will help you ask the right questions to decide what you should cut back on, or if your budget needs to be revised.
Am I forgetting anything? You probably have not planned a wedding before! The average wedding planner has planned hundreds of events. A planner will more easily see the logistical considerations in each element of your wedding that you could easily overlook. You don’t want to realize on the day of your wedding that your band’s sound system cannot work at the same time as your officiants microphone, or that your homemade decorations can’t be hung on the wall where you want because the venue does not allow it. A wedding planner if going to help you think through all of the possible issues.
Which vendors should I hire for my wedding? Choosing your vendors is one of the most critical parts of your wedding. If you choose the wrong caterer you might end up with the tepid bland tasting food. If you hire the wrong photographer you might not get the dream photos that you have waited a lifetime for. An experienced event planner will have worked with a wide variety of vendors, and will know which ones are FIERCE and which ones are just so so. If you tell your planner what type of experience and menu you want, they will be able to suggest several caterers that they have worked with before and trust. If you have a certain style of pictures you want, they can suggest a photographer that has experience taking that kind of photo. This can make your wedding run much smoother. Beyond that it can save you hours of research for vendor on sites like The Knot.
What if my spouse and I disagree about our wedding? While a wedding planner is not going to choose a side, they do want is to make this the best day for both you and your spouse. If you have different visions about what needs to be included in your wedding, your planner can help distill what each of you want most out of your wedding day and make sure it is included. They can make suggestions, based on what has worked well in other weddings, that will satisfy both of your needs. Just remember there may still be need for some compromise.
When do I need to finish? A planner is your wedding’s project manager. After finalizing all the plans for your wedding, they will move on to execution. Many tasks will be taken care of by them or their team. But some will still fall on to you. What is the final guest count? Did you sign the contract with the vendor? When can you go see the venue? Your planner will come up with a timeline for all the important decisions and remind you of important deadlines and what needs to be done in the next weeks and months. They may also use a tool like Aisle Planner that will show you all the outstanding items, and automatically send you reminders before any important dates pass.
How do I want the day of my wedding to go? No matter how carefully you plan your wedding there are going to be some issues that come up last minute, there are going to be members of your wedding party or family that are going to have questions, and someone will need to verify that all the vendors are on schedule, and setting up according to the plan. A wedding planner can take on these tasks so that you don’t have to deal with the added stress and demands on your time on your special day.
How much does a wedding planner cost?
What a wedding planner costs will depend heavily on your level of service, your location, your guest count and how experienced the wedding planner is. The cost for a full service wedding planner, who will help you through every step of your wedding planning and execution, will usually range from $7,500 to $13,000 in Chicago, depending on services needed. In smaller markets the price could be half of that. A wedding coordinator, who will become intimately familiar with your plans and run your wedding, will range from $2,500 to $4,000 in Chicago. There are also some planners who bill themselves as Day of Coordinators. I personally don’t think you can have a good enough understanding of an event by just stepping into it the day of and here is why.
When thinking about hiring a wedding planner also consider that they will likely save you time and money along the way too. Most couples, who plan their own wedding, go significantly over their budget because of expenses they did not have in their initial plan. Marriage license fees, flatware rentals, event insurance, these are all small expenses you might not find out about until you have already allocated your entire budget. A planner will have a check list of these in your first or second meeting with them so you are far less likely to have surprise expenses!
How to decide if you should hire a wedding planner?
If after reading this post you still are unclear how you should proceed I will give you a couple of final rules of thumb to help you make your decision.
Do you want to do this by yourself? Is this wedding a huge production with a lot of elements?
Are you having a very casual wedding? Do you mind if you have to work on the day of your wedding? Are you cool if things go a little off the rails?
If you are still unsure, feel free to simply talk to a wedding planner. They will be able to tell you in way more detail what they provide, and you might even get some tips even if you do not hire them.
About the Author
I have been a wedding planner in Chicago ever since I planned my own wedding in 2015. I have done hundreds of wedding and events since then. I truly believe that a wedding planner is an essential part of making your wedding run smoothly and be relatively stress free. However, I also know that a wedding planner does not fit every budget, vision or every couple. I hope you found this post useful!
I have mostly planned weddings in the Chicagoland area, but have also planned weddings across the country. In 2021 I will be planning weddings and events in Miami, Florida! If you are interested in hiring me to help plan your entire wedding, or even if you just want me to consult on your wedding for a couple of hours feel free to fill out this form.