Wedding Planner? DOC?

Woodsy62

Wanted to get your guys thoughts on hiring a wedding planner and/or a Day of Coordinator..
is it necessary?
Can anyone recommend someone?

TerriandJoe

(Someone asked about this not that long ago, forgive me for copying and pasting my answer again. The first sentence and last sentence are new)

It all depends on your venue. And your gut feeling about it for the day of.

If you are working with professionals - at a catering hall (or other venue that routinely handles weddings) there isn't a need to have one.

You should be dealing with a banquet hall manager (and maitre d') who on that day, the only concern of theirs should be if you are happy. If you let them know ahead of time what you want, they should be able to make it happen.

Yes, it helps if someone can be the go-to on the day of. But there isn't any reason, that you need to hire someone for this. My venue asked for all the vendors names and phone numbers ahead of time, but I was the one to contact them to confirm in the days leading up to the big day.

If there is an issue of what to feed the dj - know what - they'll ask the dj. Or something like that. Like someone had said - the question about how she wanted her cake topper positioned, they asked her.  In a similar case they might check with your MOH, and if she doesn't know, then yeah, they will probably ask you.

But everything else, your professional venue and vendors will figure out. And know what, something will go wrong. My centerpieces were not the quantity they should have been. I told them when I noticed it and it was corrected as best it could be before my guests saw. But if it never got corrected, no one would know.


Leave detailed instructions. If you want your favors to the left of the place cards, and they put then to the right of the place cards - it's not going to make a difference in the grand scheme,e of things.

Save the money. When you have your final meeting with your venue, go over the things that you have in mind. When the day of happens, your professional vendors and venue want you to be the happiest bride out there.

They aren't going to bother you all night long about the tiniest of issues. (If we run out of potatoes, do we give rice or rice pilaf? ) They will figure it out themselves. And if they think rice was your second choice, and it was really rice pilaf and the guests at table 14 got rice instead of the pilaf - it's not going to be a tragedy.

The professionals that you hired are not going to interrupt your wedding day over trivial things.

If something major happened, they would probably check with someone in the wedding party first, before bothering you.

And for all the general issues - what kind of flowers, what meal choices, who is allergic, etc, they will probably go over them with you in the week before your wedding day.

Good luck!

Now, if however, you are doing a do-it-yourself wedding at a place that you need to set up , break down, etc, then in that type of case, a DOC might make sense.

Good luck!

ps- Lauren Paige Associates gets recommended on here a lot, if you decide to go with someone. but it's completely up to you if you want a DOC or not.

probablykate

I agree for the most part that I don't think it's necessary unless you are doing it at more of a DIY place where you have to coordinate everything (and even then if your vendors are good professionals they should be able to communicate with each other). 

If you have the budget for it and you really think you'll be too upset/nervous if you don't have one, then it might be worth it.

Also, it might be worthwhile to have someone to coordinate if your ceremony and reception are in different places and you are providing transportation.  I went to a nightmare of a wedding where the bus they hired to take everyone from the church to the reception was missing and the poor bride and groom were freaking out and trying to figure out what to do.

(the church was on the upper west side of manhattan, and the reception was in way south east brooklyn.... it was insane.... many of the guests, us included, ended up taking a $100+ taxi ride)