While many couples love the idea of planning their own wedding, the reality can be far more overwhelming and time-consuming than first imagined and the novelty can soon wear off. A wedding planner isn’t right for everyone, but here are just ten of the ways in which hiring a wedding planner can help ease the pressure, allowing you to focus on what’s most important.

Focus & Direction

Once the post-engagement celebrations have died down, the realization kicks in and the wedding planning process can be rather more intense and overwhelming than expected. With so many things to sort, it can often be hard to know where to even begin, however a wedding planner can help provide focus and direction. It’s important to prioritize, knowing the key vendors that get booked quickly, and working your way through these one by one. At A. Marie Events & Design we always establish clear priorities for each of our couples, tailoring these to their timelines and where they are currently in their wedding planning process. By breaking it down into individual steps, it helps to make things much more manageable and allows you to focus and checking things off, one by one.

With the average wedding taking between 250-400+ hours to plan, it’s no wonder that couples today are increasingly struggling to find the time to plan their own wedding. Juggling with busy schedules and careers and spending time with friends and family can already be enough of a struggle with, without the pressures of planning a wedding on top of it all. By hiring a wedding planner, this can free up a huge amount of your time, leaving you to focus on the key priorities in your life – rather than spending your evenings and weekends going through wedding magazines and searching online for inspiration, vendors etc.

The wedding industry is saturated with wedding vendors and it’s often hard to know where to begin. By hiring a wedding planner who is well-connected within the industry, you know you can get access to the top venues and vendors. A good wedding planner will be able to help you select the highest quality vendors, that best fit both your budget and your style. As one of the most important days of your life, you need to know you have a team of suppliers who you can trust to deliver on your wedding day.

Value

By having these connections, it’s often easier for wedding planners to obtain better value with venues and vendors. Not just in terms of cost, but in terms of added extras, such as getting extended hours or additional services thrown in.

Budget Breakdown

Establishing a budget is one of the most important first steps in wedding planning, but it can be difficult to know where to begin (read our previous blog for tips!). Once you’ve come up with your budget, your wedding planner can give a guide as to roughly how this should be allocated between vendors. At A. Marie Events & Design, we believe it’s important to fully get to know each and every one of our couples right from the beginning, to understand your likes and dislikes, wants and needs, so that we can shape your budget breakdown based on your priorities. While some may want to go big on flowers, for others it’s all about the food, and by understanding this from the get-go we can really tailor your day to you. We also believe in the importance in transparency and will always be honest with each of our couples in terms of setting realistic budgets, and flagging if costs start creeping up.

Admin

When dreaming of planning a wedding, no one dreams of the endless amounts of admin and back and forth required with vendors! A wedding planner can help do the heavy lifting, managing vendors and saving you from endless email chains and phone calls. Not only this but one of the key skills of any wedding planner is effectively managing your budget. At A. Marie Events & Design, we aren’t ashamed to admit we love a good spreadsheet! We create a personalized budget tracker for each and every one of our weddings, hosted online, so that at any stage in time you can dip in and see how much you’ve paid so far, as well as what’s left to pay and when – giving you total control and transparency.

Styling

While Pinterest and Instagram may be great for inspiration, it’s so easy to become overwhelmed. While we love a good spreadsheet and meticulous planning, we also love styling and getting creative. We find creating a vision board provides our couples with focus and direction, and ensures each and every element of the day, from stationery to flowers to tableware, is all coordinated and delivers exactly the look you want to achieve. We can not only help provide modern and fresh inspiration for the styling for your day but can also help source all of the props and furniture to help deliver your vision and create the wedding you are looking for.

Tailored to you

Some couples worry that by hiring a wedding planner, they will lose control in their day. At A. Marie Events & Design, we tailor our approach and are happy for each of our couples to be as hands-on or hands-off as they wish. We hate cookie cutter weddings and believe that no two weddings should ever be the same. We take the time to really get to know each of our couples, so that we can ensure your day really reflects your personalities and is completely unique to you.

Ongoing Support

By hiring a wedding planner, not only are you tapping into their specialist knowledge of the industry, but you have a go-to who you can contact throughout the process to ask for advice, support and guidance. Whether you’re worrying about the politics of inviting children, or struggling to decide between two different styles, we’re happy to support and offer guidance throughout.

Stress Free Day

A wedding planner should not just take the pressure off in the build-up but should also give you complete confidence that your wedding day itself is all under control. With most couples spending months or even years planning their wedding, and investing substantial amount of money, it’s important that after all that hard work the day itself goes smoothly. Your wedding planner should be there first thing in the morning to ensure everything is set up, through to managing the pack down at the end of the night. Your wedding planner should be ensuring the day runs seamlessly, with everyone in the right place at the right time, allowing you to fully relax and soak up the day you’ve been waiting for. With our ethos of laid back luxury at our core, at A. Marie Events & Design we work hard to ensure your day exudes quality and luxury, yet maintains the laid back, fun nature for you to relax and enjoy with your favorite friends and family.

For more information on our services or if you have any questions contact us at info@amarieevents.us