Hello everyone, my name is Mike and I just recently became engaged to the most wonderful woman I have ever met, Shannon. We are just now starting the planning for our November 2011 wedding and could use a little advice.
Since neither of us know anyone that has planned a wedding in the Houston area we are considering hiring a wedding planner. However, we are not sure if this is feasible on our budget so we have a few questions.
1) Is ther a general rule/guideline on wedding planner costs as a % of your overall wedding budget? If it ihelps we are budgeting 20K for the wedding (excluding dress, honeymoon, planner fees; those items have been budgeted separately as estimations at this point).
2) With our relatively limited budget are we crazy thinking that we can/should hire a profesional planner?
3) Are there any wedding planners that you would recommend? We have already contacted Jennifer Wood (waiting to hear back) and Sourieebliss (just heard back, but a little concered she is out of our budget range).
4) Should we just move forward with finding a venue and then utilizing their own in-house wedding planner?
Thanks everyone for any and all information you can provide.
MikeB.