Congratulations on Your Engagement!

First of all, if you’re recently engaged and reading this – Congratulations! Your wedding day is the day that you’ve been waiting for since you were little playing wedding with a white play-gown and a pillowcase veil hanging from the back of your head. Your wedding speaks volumes about who you are, your personality, and the love you share for your significant other.

Let me tell you, planning weddings is the most fun experience. However, many brides think getting engaged is a prescription for stress. (Don’t get sucked into that lie!) It’s no secret that planning your wedding is like a full time job in itself, and today’s brides are only getting busier and busier, but it doesn’t have to be stressful. I know what you’re thinking… “Cathy, what the heck are you talking about? How?”

Trust me, I totally get it, you’ve dreamed about this day for as long as you can remember and can’t imagine anyone but yourself planning it. You want to make the decisions, and you want it to go your way. I was the same way when I planned my own.

So, should you hire a wedding planner?

Yes. Yes. And, Yes. A million times – YES.

I think I should get something straight before I dive into this topic: Hiring a wedding planner doesn’t mean that you don’t know how to plan a wedding. I mean, heck, you’re still making the decisions with a wedding planner. What a wedding planner does do is piece your vision together and bring your dream day to life. Just because you’ve spent countless hours on Pinterest doesn’t always mean that all your pins will come to life in the middle of the night like Toy Story. (Holy smokes would that make all of our lives easier though!)

It really is a lot harder than you think to put all of your inspiration together and have it flow and work together in harmony – especially when you don’t know any wedding vendors! With their experience, wedding planners can really help you as a bride realize your true vision, bring that vision to life, and help you create your dream day. I’d like to say that a good wedding planner has probably seen it all and has a great idea of what can work and what might not. Plus, since they’ve seen it all, they most likely can find solutions to issues that you may normally give up and feel defeated on.

Your engagement is suppose to be an extremely exciting time in your life – not a prescription for extreme stress and anxiety.

Weddings are beautiful, but let’s face it, it takes a lot to pull off the perfect day. A wedding planner’s job is to keep you organized and think of details no one else would have dreamed of to take stress off you as a bride, make your day go smoothly, and allow you to soak in every bride-to-be moment. It’s our job to be with you every step of the way to make sure your wedding is exactly how you want it to be. Let’s be honest, even Beyonce needs an assistant.

Although I didn’t use a wedding planner for my own big day out of my excitement to finally plan my own wedding, I did use a day-of coordinator to be in charge of details during my wedding weekend so that I was able to relax like Beyonce with a big bottle of Chardonnay. I can confidently tell you that my coordinator had saved my life a couple times, and honestly I don’t know how I would have survived some of those last minute hiccups on my own. (and I do this for a living!)

When deciding to hire a wedding planner, your investment is important.

There are no ‘do-overs’ when it comes to planning the best day of your life with the one your soul loves and longs for. How can you put a price on having a professional with you every step of the way to make it perfect and exactly what you dreamed it to be? It really is a no brainer: trust someone who does this for a living or wing it yourself? (Oh dear baby Jesus I am having a panic attack just thinking of winging it)

Let’s face it, you don’t even have the time to ‘wing’ your wedding.

It’s not a secret that today’s brides are getting busier and busier, and wedding planning can be overwhelming for even the most OCD and Type A bride. You don’t have time to research vendors and spend hours sending emails back and forth. Not only is a wedding planner the master of the schedule, they are also more likely able to match you with vendors that can better meet your needs or budget while helping you maximize the value that you are getting from them since they most likely have relationships with a variety of vendors in the industry (depending on how big the wedding industry is in your area).

And if you don’t have time to ‘wing’ your wedding in the planning stages, what makes you think that you’re going to have time to ‘wing’ it on your actual wedding day?

You also want to be able to enjoy your wedding day, right? While being the whip that makes sure your vendors are in shape when it comes to coordinating on the day of the wedding, wedding planners also make sure your bridal party sticks to the schedule so you don’t have to track down your eleven bridesmaids that you’re totally regretting by the day-of. They make sure that everyone is exactly where they are suppose to be, and helps the night progress so that you’re not wondering how exactly you ran out of time for the bouquet and garter tosses before your DJ packs up and leaves.

Who wants to be on the phone coordinating with vendors while they’re trying to get their hair and makeup done? (or who wants to be worried about making sure the reception goes on schedule?) I guess in a way they could also be known as a sheep herder.

It’s impossible to both direct and star in your big day…

Like I tell all my brides, it’s impossible to both direct and star in your big day, and it’s perfectly okay to have professional help. You don’t have to let planning a wedding consume your whole life. Regardless of how your wedding planning journey goes, however, the most important thing is that you enjoy the journey and keep sight on what the whole journey is about – getting hitched!