You've Decided That You Will Use a Wedding Planner/Consultant - Now What Do You Do?

You've decided that your budget will support having a wedding planner/consultant in some capacity so what is the next step? 

If the area where you live is large enough to support having wedding planners, there are several places to begin looking. First, start asking everyone you know who is married (or who has been married) whether they used a planner and get names and any references.  Then go to one of the following associations.  These associations are either registrars of wedding planners and/or educational organizations for wedding planners with memberships. 

Are You Thinking About Using a Wedding Planner/Consultant?

Many people consider their wedding one of the biggest events in their lives which totally justifies the great amount of effort taken to get everything ready. Given the complexity of the event, you'll definitely need help in planning your wedding, be it from professionals or from close friends and family. There is a psychological stress reliever that comes with help in planning a wedding. Once you get it, you no longer need to worry about every detail, and the experience becomes a true delight,  not a burden.   Most brides today work full time and have a limited amount of time available for taking care of the millions of things having a perfect wedding day entails, so have you considered hiring a wedding planner/consultant?  

Next Step of your Plan? . . . Set a Date

Ok, now I’m assuming that you have determined how much money you will have available to finance your wedding and have gotten your basic wedding planning supplies together.  There are several things that should happen pretty simultaneously here so I will be making references to all of them even though they may be discussed  individually somewhere else. 

Next up is the date.  A lot of factors need to be addressed – the first one being the schedules of both the bride and the groom.  Weddings are often not ‘convenient’ in fast paced lives of today so when looking at your schedules only deal with the dates that are absolutely not movable.   Then, if parents are included in the wedding, what are their unchangeable dates?  This will give you time frames to look at for planning your wedding.

Now That You Have a Budget, Let’s Get Organized to Begin Planning Your Wedding!

The next step is to get yourself some type of wedding planner/organizer (notebook) – you will be collecting so much information from this point forward that if you don’t write it all down or have a central place to keep everything, you will definitely be lost! Also, it’s a good place to keep all of the estimates, contracts, etc., that you’ll be collecting. Amazon has about the best selection I’ve seen at pretty good prices.

Make sure that the organizer has labeled dividers/sections for every aspect of your wedding plan. Keep extra dividers for any area that is not covered or to break an existing section down into sub-categories. Also make sure that you have pockets in each section for filing all the loose things that you need to keep. You will also need to keep at least one zippered pocket for things like pens/extra pens, markers, paper punch, paper clips, stapler, scotch tape, measuring tape, calculator, etc. Just trust me that you will use all of them and it makes it so much easier to have them with you.

OK, Let's Get Started - First Up is the Budget!

The very first step toward planning your wedding day is for the two of you to sit down with your families to figure out a budget. If you haven’t done so already, go here and download the sample budget. This is really a preliminary category budget to help you determine how much you are going to spend; you can either use that form as is or as a starting point for creating your own. Individual budgets should be made for each category then compiled into a master budget.