Most couples
who hire a Wedding Planner trust their chosen wedding guru to the fullest
extent. After all, most couples have never planned a wedding before or their
knowledge is limited to what they’ve seen in magazines or at their
brother/sister/cousin/friend’s weddings.
And so they hire Wedding Planners to guide them through the intricate process
and to help them plan the wedding that they have envisioned or, in some cases,
a wedding that exceeds what they had envisioned (in a good way of course).
However some
couples hire a Wedding Planner to advise them during the planning process but
then are selective as to when they actually trust their chosen Planner’s
judgement. Whether it’s regarding their wedding budget, the rules of etiquette,
how to handle certain situations or even in terms of style, some couples would
rather do things their way instead of listening and, more importantly, trusting
the wedding professional’s advice. After all, it’s their day right? What they
want is how things should be right?
Nope. If you’re
not going to trust/listen to a wedding professional’s advice, what was the
point of hiring them in the first place?
Here are the
top three things that you may hear from your Wedding Planner for which you need
to put the “It’s-My-Day/This-is-What-I-Want-And-You-Have-To-Make-It-Happen-Because-I’m-Paying-You-To-Make-It-Happen” mentality aside and for the love of
Gawd, trust your Wedding Planner’s judgement (in addition to all of our other advice of course!)
YOUR BUDGET IS UNREALISTIC
Wedding
Planners have worked on countless weddings of different sizes and budgets and
so you have to trust that they have a pretty good idea of what things cost. Just
by looking at a client’s wish list and their guest count, etc, they have a really good idea of what a
150-person wedding or a 50-person wedding will cost overall. Because they have
likely worked on…oh…about a gazillion of them.
If you present your total budget to your Planner and it’s completely
unrealistic or not enough of a budget to have your dream wedding that you just
described in detail, a good Wedding Planner will tell you this.
Rather than get
your nose out of joint, insist that your parents say it’s a realistic budget (this
isn’t the 1970s anymore people!) or refuse to make sacrifices or increase your
budget; you need to trust your Wedding
Planner when they say it’s not enough money.
Your Wedding Planner is not telling you these things because it will
benefit them nor will it affect what you are paying them for their service.
They’re telling you that your budget is unrealistic because they want you to have that wedding you’ve
always dreamed of and they don’t want
you to go into debt in order to have it.
No Wedding Planner can force you to change your budget but if you don’t
trust your Planner/refuse to increase your budget/refuse to sacrifice some of
your grand vision to make ends meet (NOTE: if you don’t increase your budget
you WILL have to sacrifice some things), then you can’t get upset with your
Wedding Planner when you’ve gone so far over your original budget that you can’t
remember what the initial budget was anymore.
THAT IS NOT
SOMETHING YOU NEED/
YOU SHOULD CONSIDER SOMETHING ELSE
As mentioned
above, if your Wedding Planner is telling you something it’s for your own good.
If, in the interest of keeping you on budget, for example, they tell you that you don’t need that ice
sculpture or those acrobats in your wedding, then you need to trust them. Sure,
your Wedding Planner understands that perhaps you want to one-up your cousin’s
wedding or that you want a “unique” wedding. But if there are more important things
in your wedding that require your funds (especially if you’re on a tight
budget!), you need to trust that your Wedding Planner knows what she/he is
talking about. A good Wedding Planner will ensure that you’ve got all the
necessities covered first and IF you have extra funds, she/he will implement
those extras that you don’t need.
Also, if your heart is set on a particular
trend that has been so many times that the only reaction it gets nowadays is an
eye roll, you have to trust your Wedding Planner when she/he tells you that it’s
overdone and allow her/him to find another “wow” factor for your wedding.
They want you to have the best wedding ever and while you may think that following the latest trend is the way to have that, your Wedding Planner knows better and will ensure that you feel that same excitement but with something that hasn't been done a million times over.
THAT IS
SOMETHING YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED/
MUST DO
Further to
the above point, if your Wedding Planner is telling you that there is something
you need or must do in order for your Wedding Day to run smoothly as planned or
to have the look that you desire, LISTEN TO THEM. This is not your Wedding Planner’s first
rodeo. They know from experience what you need in your wedding or what you must
do. If they are telling you that you need
that DJ over playing an IPod, they’re telling you this for a reason. If they
are telling you that you must have a catering tent in addition to your
reception tent, they’re telling you this because they know the proper regulations for tent weddings. If they are telling you
that if you allow a handful of guests to bring children to your adult-only
wedding then you have to let everyone bring their children, they’re telling you
this because they know proper etiquette (not to mention have personally witnessed the fallout of ignoring said advice)! Whatever the
item/etiquette/requirement is, refusing to accept what your Wedding Planner is
telling you or worse, thinking that you know better than your Wedding Planner,
is a sure-fire way to have challenges come up on your big day.
When you first met your Wedding Planner, something in your gut told you that this was the gal/guy who was going to give you the most romantic, most fun, most organized and brilliantly planned Wedding of your dreams and you hired them. Just like you trusted your instinct that day, you need to trust the professional you hired. Trust me (no pun intended), you'll be pleasantly surprised.
