While it might be the day you’ve been dreaming about for just about your entire life, planning your wedding is a remarkably stressful affair for most people. Hence the scores of stories about bridezilla’s who, in their quest to get everything just right, often end up sabotaging their own experience and happiness on their big day.
When planning a wedding the goal is to get everything perfect, to somehow stay within a reasonable budget, all while somehow ensuring that everything happens according to schedule. Which makes it easy to see why a wedding can be so stressful.
Fortunately, there is no need for you to go it alone on this big day, not with experienced event planners at the helm. With the right assistance, you can have that fairy tale wedding you’ve always dreamed of, without the general stress that often comes with trying to do so.
Here we will help you decide whether or not you can benefit from assistance from an event planner for your wedding. We will take a look at the benefits of partnering with one, explore how they get things done, show you what to expect from them, and will also offer a little advice on how to select a planner worth their salt.
So, let’s get started:
THE BENEFITS OF HIRING AN EVENT PLANNER
Let’s take a moment to explore a few of the major benefits to be had from hiring an event planner for your wedding.
Event planners play a pivotal role in making sure that everything about your special day is carefully orchestrated to ensure that it all goes perfectly.
In doing so, there are a number of benefits to be gained that will make planning and conducting a wedding, all the more convenient for you.
These benefits include being able to work more effectively with an allotted budget, making sure that each element of the wedding happens according to schedule, being able to see to every tiny detail of the day and giving your wedding day a personal touch that is unique to you and your partner.
FIND IT EASY TO STAY IN BUDGET
Anyone who has ever been involved with organising a wedding can tell you just how difficult it is to stay in budget. I’ve heard too many married couples tell me about how a 20 grand wedding quickly became a 50 grand one, then a hundred grand.
As the guest list grows and you need to cater for more people, each and every element of your wedding day begins to take up a substantial cost, even when care is taken to keep expenses low.
Due to their experience, contacts and well-developed negotiation skills when organising events, event planners are able to make better work with all types of budgets.
They will also advise you on how to keep costs low, as well as which expenses are integral to the success of the day, and which ones you can afford to compromise on.
This will make it much easier for you and your partner to arrange a wedding day that won’t see the two of you paying off debt for the foreseeable future.
EVERYTHING ACCORDING TO SCHEDULE
It doesn’t matter how early on you start planning for your wedding day (and believe me some people spend most of their young lives doing it), there always seems to be a missed detail somewhere down the line; some last-minute rush to get something finished to perfection.
As you could imagine, this can be immensely stressful for the couple getting married, since wedding days are often associated with scenes of utter perfection.
And when anything seems missed or out of place, it can feel like the best-laid plans start to fall apart at the seams.
Thanks to extensive experience with coordinating different types of events, event planners are effective when it comes to making sure that everything, from the dresses, guests, and venue, right through to the menu, music and décor, is seen to in good time; which takes a remarkable amount of stress out of planning and conducting a wedding service and reception.
A PICTURE-PERFECT WEDDING DAY
Of course, having everything ready in good time doesn’t necessarily translate to a picture-perfect wedding day. Planning mustn’t just be done in good time, but must also be done with special care and attention to what you want the final results to look like.
This requires a somewhat creative way of thinking that is married with practicality and logic. If you want that white sandy beach wedding in the Maldives, your plan to do it on a shoestring budget simply isn’t going to work.
This type of foresight might seem obvious as you read this article, but in the bustle of planning a wedding even the most glaringly obvious details can sometimes be accidentally overlooked.
Again, this is where the experience offered by an event planner becomes invaluable in planning and conducting a successful wedding.
Planners are used to working under stress when it comes to orchestrating any kind of event, and although weddings offer uniquely stressful situations for planners, there is no difference when they are working on them.
They will be able to spot details and possible complications in a plan that may otherwise have been missed, which translate to no unpleasant surprises when preparing for your ‘ I do’s’.
GET A PERSONAL TOUCH
Everybody has a different idea of what their ideal wedding would look like.
Are you a fan of the traditional approach or are you looking for something more contemporary; how about a mixture of the two?
Cultural and societal differences can change expectations for the perfect wedding day. So too can your age and social influences; just to name a few.
This means that there is no formula for the perfect wedding plan, but rather it is something subjective that changes from wedding to wedding.
Event planners understand this subjective perfection very well, and as such generally strive to host an event that matches the desires of their clients.
Oftentimes, couples have a difficult time actually agreeing on a plan for the wedding, finding it difficult to decide what is perfect for them.
In such cases, event planners offer an invaluable service by helping them envision the wedding day of their dreams, then putting it together in a working formula.
HOW EVENT PLANNERS ENSURE THE PERFECT WEDDING
Talking about how an event planner can benefit you when planning for your wedding day is fine and well, but how exactly do they do this?
Planning a wedding is complicated after all, and there is no room to leave anything to chance.
This means that planners need to have carefully honed skills, insights and connections in the industry that they can take advantage of to provide the above benefits to their clients.
To do this, they need to have extensive experience in planning weddings. They need to develop a collection of reliable contacts in the industry. They must be able to negotiate effectively to get you the best possible prices, need to know the ins and outs of various wedding venues, and must also be able to offer you advice when you need it.
Let’s take a look at each of these skills and insights in a little more detail, to see why they are so important for a successful wedding plan:
LEVERAGING EXPERIENCE
The most important tool in any event planner’s collection is that of experience. The more of it they have, the more smoothly planning your wedding will go.
While experience in planning just about any type of event is valuable in this regard, you want to find a planner who has had specific experience with organising weddings.
The nuances of these events often set them apart from all other types, and as such, a certain amount of experience with successful weddings should be considered a prerequisite when hiring a planner.
Remember that they need to be the professionals, they need to be able to confidently walk you through the whole process, and you need to be able to trust their judgement.
This can only be done effectively if the planner has enough experience with organising weddings.
A WIDE POOL OF CONTACTS
The value of having multiple contacts on hand when organising a wedding simply cannot be understated. In event planning, as it is in just about any other industry; a lot of your success is dependant on who you know.
Being able to source the perfect caterer, a venue at less of a cost, knowing dress fitters that can be trusted, a baker for the wedding cake.
These are but a few of the essential personnel that will be needed to plan the perfect event, and if you don’t have contacts on hand, much of the work will involve just finding the right fit for the job, and then hoping that you have made the right choice.
The right event planner should, due to their experience, already have a collection of valued contacts that can be relied on to bring the whole thing together.
With the right people for the job seeing to the details of your wedding, every part of it will go a lot more smoothly than trying to get it done yourself.
STRONG NEGOTIATION SKILLS
Being able to negotiate effectively is also an important thing for your event planner to be able to do. This will ensure that you keep your wedding within, or at least close to your allotted budget.
When people organise weddings themselves, they tend to accept prices for what they are when they are quoted, and everybody knows that where prices for weddings are concerned, costs tend to rise purely due to the nature of the event.
This means that, for those with the skill to negotiate their way around a deal, there is always room to take a little bit off of the price.
This is an essential part of not only staying within your budget but still getting what you want out of your wedding day when you do so.
A SOURCE OF HELPFUL ADVICE
Thanks to their experience and contacts, the ideal event planner needs to be able to offer advice to the bride and groom to be at all stages of planning and even while the wedding is taking place.
An event planner needs to be able to do this based on a collection of prior knowledge that allows them to offer advice or simply consolation to the wedding party when tensions flair or stress rises.
This is often overlooked but is an integral skill for planners to have since this accounts for removing much of the common stress associated with having the perfect wedding.
A wedding party needs to be able to trust that the planner has everything under control and that everything is taken care of just as it should be, but they also need to be able to get advice from the planner when they need it.
CONTACT HOT SHOT EVENTS FOR FURTHER DETAILS
Are you planning a wedding anytime soon and are looking for assistance from a professional event planner who can help you to ensure that everything goes exactly how you expect it to, while also ensuring that you stay in budget?
Be sure to get into contact with a representative from Hot Shot Events today, or visit our website for additional information on our offers.
