Why Hiring a Wedding Planner Is The Best Wedding Decision You’ll Make (Besides Getting Married!)

So you’ve just said yes (yay!) to marrying the love of your life. Everyone on Instagram loved your proposal pictures but you’re already getting loads of questions like “When is it going to be?” and “Do you know where you’re going to register?” Suddenly your head starts spinning thinking of all the decisions you’re going to have to start making. You pour a glass of wine, open your phone and search “how to start planning a wedding.” The first two sites that pop up are planning websites promising a complete how - to guide with step by step instructions which is great, but you have to make accounts on their site to access the guides. Once you make an account you start scrolling through pages and pages of possible venues and before you know it your wine needs a refill and you’re freaking out thinking about everything that needs to get done! Where do you even start? 

I recently took a poll of my followers asking them “If you had to start planning a wedding, would you know where to start?” and 75% of those who responded said they would have no idea where to begin planning a wedding. I don’t say this to shame any of my followers, I say this because I don’t expect them to know where to start! They aren’t professionals in it! Even though I am a pretty handy DIY-er, if I need to buy a house, I hire a realtor. If my water heater is broken, I hire a plumber. It’s no different when it comes to planning a wedding. There’s a myth out there that you don’t need to hire a planner for your wedding because you can just “figure it out” but when it comes to the day that gets referred to as “the greatest day of your life”, you want someone there from the beginning to guide you through the process. 

The First Few Months of Your Engagement 

If your first step in planning your wedding is hiring a full service wedding planner then congrats! You’re on the right track! If not, let me give you a few reasons why it should be. Did you know that most professionals recommend that you actually build your guest list first? It isn’t the most glamorous or exciting first step but without a general idea of how many guests will be in attendance it’s going to be extremely challenging to find a venue, not to mention one in your budget or style. When you sit down with a wedding planner like JayBird Events they’ll take your approximate guest count, budget, and style preferences and be able to generate a list of potential venues without hours of seemingly endless scrolling on websites like The Knot or Zola. They’ll also do the heavy lifting of scheduling tours at those venues, probably being able to contact the venues directly because they have an established relationship with them already. 

A professional planner will help narrow down the list of venues you want to see in person, and will usually accompany you on those tours. It may seem fun to tour a bunch of venues and visualize your wedding in each and every one but most couples tire out after the third or fourth tour. Don’t forget that you are also a person with a job and a life, you don’t want to get run down! A professional planner will know the right questions to ask on these tours, I can’t tell you how many times my couples have said “Oh that’s a good question, I didn’t even think of that” when we’re touring a venue. You want to make sure you have as much information as possible so you don’t run into an issue of wanting to be able to do something fabulous at your wedding only to find out your venue doesn’t allow it. 

Deep In the Weeds of Planning

Unless you are a differently minded person like I am you probably don’t love planners, organizers, and spreadsheets. Keeping track of all the emails, contracts, and invoices from up to 14 different vendors can be overwhelming for a lot of people. A professional wedding planner will have systems in place and templates that they love to use to keep track of every detail of your wedding. Many of those details won’t show up on a generic planning template, either. A professional planner will have planned dozens, if not hundreds of weddings and will think of details and to do’s that most of the public doesn’t even know about due to how perfectly they were planned and executed on the wedding day. 

One of the hardest yet most important parts of wedding planning is staying in your budget. Couples can get pulled in by the glamor of a slightly more expensive rented tablecloth, or the pressure by family to add flower arrangements down the aisle even though that will add $500 to your florist proposal. Personally, I don’t ever want my couples to feel pressured to go over budget and I want to be there with them at their rental meeting to remind them the tablecloth isn’t the most important aspect of their wedding day and that the cheaper option will be just as beautiful in person and in photos. A strong wedding planner will help you create your budget based on your preferences for the big day and will help guide you to stay on track. 

Not Losing Yourself In The Process

At the end of the day, the real reason you are getting married and bringing your closest friends and family together is to celebrate you and your marriage to the person you love the most. A professional wedding planner will help make sure you can stay grounded and continue to enjoy yourself and your love through the planning process. Your entire life does not, nor should it, need to become all about your wedding. You are still people with jobs, friends, families, and your own personal needs. It is one of the most important days of your life and being burnt out by the time the big day rolls around may result in tarnished memories and smaller smiles in your wedding photos. 

Usually wedding planning and execution falls more on one partner than the other, and without a professional helping hand that partner (typically the bride in a heterosexual relationship) can experience severe burnout and higher than average levels of stress. There are countless threads on sites like Reddit, Wedding Wire, and The Knot where brides go to lament how they wish they had someone helping them and just want the whole thing to be over with. If you are able to budget a small chunk of your budget to a professional for full, partial, or at least day - of coordination, so much of that stress can be relieved and you can enjoy every moment of anticipation before the wedding and every moment of the day itself! 

Everyone will say that your wedding day is about you, and they are correct! However your wedding planning process is also about you. Getting on track, staying on budget, and keeping your mental health in mind are all key aspects of planning a wedding and hiring a wedding planner will help with all of that and more!