Does a Wedding Planner Really Make a Difference?

In order to save money on a wedding, a lot of people will naturally gravitate towards the idea of skipping out on a wedding planner. This can work for some people that have excellent organisational skills, but it’s not always the best option even if you think you’ve got everything covered. The fact is, a wedding planner should really be seen as an essential component of any successful wedding. Their job is to literally oversee your wedding and help you make tough decisions. Unless you’re able to take several weeks or months off work, you’re probably going to find it tough to balance your day job with your family life and the wedding planning process.

Think about it this way; people are paid serious amounts of money to plan weddings. They can earn a living by helping others plan their big day, so it should be a clear indication that it’s going to take a lot of time, experience and knowledge. That’s why a lot of people will instantly go to a wedding planner once the proposal has been accepted. It just makes everything easier, more streamlined and manageable.

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Why don’t more people hire wedding planners?

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people that aren’t convinced that hiring a wedding planner is a good choice. They think that control of their wedding might be stripped away, they might be worried about the cost of a wedding planner and they might feel like having a wedding planner is just another potential point of failure that could ruin their big day. For instance, the wedding planner might cancel the contract at a crucial moment or cause more issues than they are helpful.

That said, plenty of people have experienced beautiful and successful weddings without the help of a wedding planner. It really depends on how much time, experience and also the help that you’ll get, but for most people, hiring a planner is a solid choice that you should be considering. To help you make a decision, we’re going to cover some of the main advantages of hiring a wedding planner and what you’re really paying for.

Giving someone else control will take a load off your mind

We’ve previously spoken about how much time it takes to plan a wedding. After all, it’s a full-time job for some people to plan weddings, so it’s probably not something you can do in your spare time after work. It’s going to take a lot of research, you’ll have to call a lot of people to plan your services, and it’s going to involve a serious amount of work. Even if you split the work between you and your partner and get friends and family members to help, it’s still a massive undertaking.

On the other hand, a wedding planner’s job is to plan weddings. They can dedicate all of their working hours to helping you plan a wedding, and some of them are even willing to respond to your calls and offer help outside of their business hours. Offering control to a trustworthy wedding planner will give you all of the peace of mind you need.

They fix everything that goes wrong

You also get plenty of peace of mind knowing that someone will help you fix everything that goes wrong. If a vendor pulls out of a deal or if a catering service can’t offer something you’ve requested, then you don’t need to stress out or worry about it. Instead, your wedding planner will step in, deal with the issue and then you’ve got no more worries to think about.

In fact, many wedding planners will fix issues behind the scenes by themselves or with their team. They work behind the scenes to make sure that your day doesn’t get hindered by wedding planning-related issues. Instead, you can just sit back, live your day as normal and let the wedding planner contact you whenever there’s an issue or if they’d like your feedback on something.

They have insider knowledge that makes all the difference

Another benefit of hiring a wedding planner is being able to take advantage of their insider knowledge. This could be unique wedding venues that offer excellent services but aren’t well known, or it could be lower prices when purchasing decorations and supplies. One of the biggest differences between a seasoned wedding planner and the average person is that they have more connections and more knowledge of the industry. They’ll make a huge difference when it comes to getting the perfect dress, the dream venue and also the most delicious catering services.

The combination of discounts and exclusive services is more than enough to make up for the cost of a wedding planner. What you spend on a wedding planner will likely be returned in the form of discounts and savings you make from the connections your planner has.

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They’ll handle all of the small and big tasks so you don’t forget anything

There are a lot of considerations when it comes to planning your wedding. Things like preparing a guest list or designing a wedding program for your guests can easily slip under the radar. Before you know it, you’ll be scrambling to get everything together and you might need to sacrifice quality due to a lack of time or resources. This isn’t an ideal outcome when planning your wedding, hence why having a wedding planner can help to cover all of the big and small tasks so you don’t miss anything.

You can rest assured that your wedding planner will be incredibly organised and be able to dissect your wedding plans to optimise everything. They’ll make sure that your big day goes smoothly and that you haven’t forgotten or neglected anything during the planning process. You might think that you won’t have any issues because you’re being systematic and thorough in your planning, but you’re eventually going to run into something problematic that slows you down.

They’ll help you manage any legal considerations

At the end of the day, marriage needs to be legally recognised in order for it to actually count officially. As a result, you’ll need to deal with certain legal aspects, such as registering you and your partner as married. This might sound like a relatively easy thing to do, but as the tasks and frustrations start mounting up during the wedding planning process, you might forget key things such as the legal implications of marriage.

This is why we’d recommend hiring a wedding planner to ensure that you’re dealing with your legal responsibilities correctly. With their experience and knowledge, they’ll make sure that you don’t miss a single thing in the planning process.

Inspiration and ideas that you never would’ve found yourself

Wedding planners know all about weddings. They’re experts that have experienced dozens, or perhaps even hundreds of weddings in their line of work. As a result, they’re walking encyclopedia of information about weddings and they know everything from the wildest wedding themes to the worst ideas that could ruin your wedding day. Having this extra knowledge and valuable experience means that you’ll have access to a lot more ideas and inspiration. If you’re not particularly informed about weddings and their themes, or if you’d like for someone to guide you and offer you advice, then a wedding planner is an excellent source of inspiration.

In addition, your wedding planner can also offer you advice on how to tweak your ideas to better match your goals. For instance, if you’re looking for a classic fairytale-like wedding, then your wedding planner can suggest lots of different themes and ideas that will inspire you and help you get creative. Having a friendly person to speak to about wedding ideas, tropes and themes can make it a lot easier to decide what your ideal wedding looks like.

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Some final words

We’d like to end by saying that hiring a wedding planner isn’t always going to be a positive experience. Your planner is human, after all, and there will be times when they might be unable to get you the venue that you really wanted or there might be days where they get sick and can’t make any meaningful progress. You also might have your ideas shut down if they’re not practical, and you might need to overshoot your budget a little if you’re adamant about certain things going your way.

With that said, a planner isn’t the only way to have a successful wedding. In fact, there are many wedding venues that offer full prepackaged services, acting somewhat similarly to a wedding planner but with limited choices for things like venues, entertainment and catering. This is the complete opposite of planning a wedding yourself where you control every single aspect of the wedding. We find that hiring a wedding planner is a good middle point that offers you enough control to make the wedding feel personal, while still offloading the majority of the stress.

Hopefully, this article has given you some valuable insight into the advantages of hiring a wedding planner and how they can make a huge difference on your big day.