Ok so I am not getting married until next year (april 2011) but I am already freaking out, here is my situation
1) I already have a venue, but I have to bring EVERYTHING there, the only thing included there are the chairs and tables.
2) I have no idea how to deal with vendors and frankly I don't want to, I want to bring someone on to find me deals and do all the contract negotiations
3) I don't want to deal with anything having to do w/ setting up the wedding the week of or on the day of the wedding. I need someone and their assistant to set up the decorations for me the way that I want, I don't want any family or friends running around
4) I basically need someone to help deal w/ vendors, and pull everything together at the end
The good part is this
1) my aunt owns a flower shop and she'll be doing my flowers, but she will be out of town during that time
and the shop will be closed, so basically the flowers will get done by her assistant and someone else has to deal with picking them up and it's VERY important that everything is set up correctly on the day of
2) I have a DJ + jazz band. I have a lot of creative friends who are big time performers, so they are going to handle the music part
3) already have a photographer, another good friend who owns his own company... although I will need a videotographer
4) I have most of the decorations but i need someone to help me pull it all together, but in addition to that I need other big things to create the wow effect, where do I go for those ideas??
5) Food. I only want to have organic and overall vegetarian food. I can't find any good places for that in South OC... although I could in LA
I just have this vision in my mind, especially when it comes to the decorations, set up of tables, set up of flowers, etc. and the worst thing is that I do non-profit chairty events. I do massive event planning but only ones that are art/music related.... and all my charity evens are in LA, not OC. I live here in Laguna and will be getting married here, so I am clueless when it comes to vendors here. I have the vision in my mind and the fact that I wont be charge on the day of makes me feel so nervous. I feel like I literally have to draw charts and graphs of exactly how I want things. Otherwise I am going to want to hike up my dress and fix things when I see something wrong. We also have some very little interesting details for the wedding (tons of family pictures, DIY photobooth with props for people to use, an outdoor large live painting going on at the reception where our little artsy friends can contribute to the painting) and i feel like I MUST have someone responsible who gets all of this and can execute it all on their own PLUS be able to keep everything on track and moving along on the day of
I knwo there are day of coordinators, but I am sure that I will need someone befoe that, especially since I need help w/ finalizing stuff w/ vendors.
Now here's the kicker, as I mentioned I work for a non-profit and so does my fiance. we're not even going to register for our wedding, we're asking people to donate to Doctors Without Borders ( I work for them ) or Engineers Without Borders (My fiance works for them) in lieu of giving us any gifts. We don't need it, we don't really want it. BUT our personal budget is still tight. While we could spend around $25K for our wedding (that's what we originally budgeted) we really want to keep it much less. Can I hire a wedding planner for under $1,000 - 1,500 to help me w/ these things and possibly work on the decor and putting the whole thing together at the end? are there more affordable options when it comes to this?
My fiance and I would personally like to use the majority of our budget on our venue and the rest on food and drinks. Decor is going to be relatively cheap and easy cuz we have great folks who have given us access to some amazing stuff. It's just the final pulling it together that's making me freak out. i don't want to be the one doing it at the end, but I also don't want to pay someone thousands of dollars just to do some tough stuff for a couple of days. Can I hire wedding planners in training? or just people who have worked on weddings and kind of know what they are doing and will take directions well? I am willing to pay for that, I just don't want to pay for someone to make me some budget and give me a binder.
I also want a planner who is a little more indie and someone that does not make me plan some brunch the day after or do some of the typical traditional things seen at most weddings. Like they have to be a bit open minded and understand my vision and basically just help me make it come into life
I feel bad for sounding a bit mean while typing this, I just figured that I would be perfectly honest and have you all tell me if what I am thinking is possible or if I am being a crazy bridezilla.