The Q: I’m recently engaged and live in the Boston area with my boyfriend.  My family does not.  We’re looking to have our wedding up here in New England (where we met) and I’m thinking about hiring a planner. The thing is, I’m not 100% sure what to look for?  Any tips?  Are event designers the same as a planner?

The A: This is a GREAT question and I think for anyone really looking into spending the money on professional wedding help, you should be asking yourself this.  First, not everyone who plans designs, and not everyone who designs “plans” all aspects of the day.  You should ask the individual to clarify what it is that they do.

However, more importantly, before you start looking, ask yourself “WHY am I hiring someone?”  Because the truth is the barrier to entry to becoming a “wedding planner” is so low these days that the term is broad and WHAT one person does as a planner is totally different from what someone else does who has the same technical job title.  Think of it like the title “Engineer”… some people build bridges and dams, other people manage a sound board, etc.  And the difference in fees between “types” of planners is great. So step one is WHY you want someone on board.

The Logistician:

Some people want a planner because they are completely overwhelmed by the process and want someone to hold their hand on the day itself.  This person is looking to hiring a logistician. Someone who is thorough, detail oriented, works off tons of checklists and sees the forest for the trees.  Their background should be in something organization oriented and you should expect to pay a modest fee.  Because they are mainly logisticians, you should expect that they have a high volume of clients, so ask them about their work load and their staffing on the day of and the number of weddings a weekend.   If this is what you are looking for, I’m sure you can find someone who is getting started or who perhaps has a background in other kinds of event production and management and is seeking to break into weddings.

The Negotiator

Other people higher a planner because, in addition to the qualities of a logistician,  they want someone to insure that their “investment” in their wedding is going to pay off- by guiding their spending and leading them to the right people at the best price.    If you are this couple, you are looking for someone with some experience. They may or may not be a designer, but you want someone who has been in the business for some time who has the relationships to deliver on your desired results. Someone who joined the Association of Bridal Consultants and hung a shingle 5 months after their own wedding isn’t going to be able to leverage relationships (or have the volume of business) to help you get the best prices or even to help you find the BEST FIT for you.  In addition to bringing experience to the table, they also should be a bit of a match maker of sorts and be able to read personalities to create a “team” of professionals that will best suit who YOU both are as a couple.  Someone with experience shouldn’t be cheap and if you want someone to manage your spending, you should be willing to INVEST in them.  Ask them about their vendor roster and their experience with various venues.  Are they recommended at a venur or by a vendor?  Vendors and venues can often be better judges of performance than past brides.  I wouldn’t be too weirded out if they haven’t worked in your particular venue before if they are experienced, as a good event professional with experience should be able to learn/ manage nearly any venue.

The Experience Designer

Finally, some people want a planner because in addition to all of the above they want their wedding to be a unique, memorable and positive experience for their guests from start to finish and they want a hand in helping them to craft that experience.  This couple typically knows who they are and what they like and dislike, but they need someone to assist them in tranlating and executing that into “wedding language”.  At this level, you aren’t looking for just a “planner” you are looking for someone to help you create an experience. So in addition to portfolios and examples of their past weddings, ask yourself when meeting prospective candidates (or in reviewing websites) “What does this person bring to the table (in addition to experience) that I DON’T have?”  Perhaps its a culinary or hospitality background, perhaps its training in interior design, perhaps its a specialty in a cultural or religious style of wedding or a mastery of destination weddings or a particular geographic region.  Ideally it’s a combination of all of the above.

When you meet with the “experience designer” you will know. They will start by asking you questions about your vision and your take on entertaining and about who you are.  They may or may not be an event designer in addition, but they will immediately bring imagination to the table because they “dream” in events.    With this type of “planner”, the logistics and the negotiation are inherent to them being able to experience design, and in a lot of ways you are judging them MORE on their unique skills, personality, past work AND degree of comfort.  You SHOULD expect to pay a lot more for this person as they are a specialist and are doing more than guiding you through a checklist.  You SHOULD also expect to get a high degree of attention for your fee and an enormous amount of bang for your buck in the end.

Ultimately, your planner should fit your needs and personality, but shopping and deciding will get easier if you make an honest assessment of what you need and what each candidate brings to the table!

The Q:“I’m finding wedding planning so frustrating.  I felt like I had a healthy budget (even by New York City standards) and yet it seems that everything that I’m looking at is a blowout cost and this wedding feels like it’s ballooning out of hand.  Is it possible to have a dream wedding and stick to a budget (here in New York)?

The A: Yes… and no. It’s totally possible, but it involves 3 disciplines, Compromise, Restraint and Resolve.

As a planner, I often hear brides say that they really want to stay on budget, but often, when push comes to shove what they can afford at their budget isn’t necessarily what they would like.  This is where Compromise fits in.

If you know that budget it important, it’s important for you to accept compromise as a part of your wedding planning process from the outset. Do I mean settle for less when it comes to your dream day? No. But I do mean identifying areas that are of the UTMOST importance to you, prioritizing those and maybe deciding where you can go “Loehmann’s” in other areas.

“Loehmann’s” wedding planning means that you don’t need to go highest end, most well known vendor and pay retail price for every single service. You should find areas where you can find “designer discounts”. For instance, let’s say you know for a fact that you want So and So Photographer. He is 12,000. (don’t gasp, its possible here in NYC) This is the most important thing for you. You also love the work of Such and Such graphic designer and stationer. They do the most interesting things and you are just in love with their designs. However, you realize that the Photographer is the MOST IMPORTANT thing and this is less so, and you have a strong sense of what you like and what you don’t. So instead, perhaps you visit a couple of stationers and look at some ready to order lines of invites or you shop around online for a line or designer out of the city that has more reasonable rates, but isn’t short on style. That is a Loehmann’s approach to wedding planning. It isn’t less fashionable, but it is less expensive and you pick and choose your “splurges”.

So, in addition to compromise of expectation, I think the other tip is to CONTROL your guestlist.  If you can do this, you can splurge on what happens with each guest versus simply paying to get people to the table. This will involve some restraint. But if your dream day involves a 4 star meal and a fine wines and the best band ever, then you MUST control the number of people if you are on a budget. However, if your dream involves everyone the two of you have ever known being there, then you should re-think the need to have everything be really high end.  In today’s tough love lesson, if you realize that you can’t afford to have (or don’t want to spend to have) everything that you want, it’s not a reason to be angry.  You wouldn’t be angry if you wanted to wear Prada every day but instead recognize you may have to make do with some DVF sample sale dresses, would you?  So don’t be upset if you can’t afford every single thing that you might want for your wedding, it doesn’t mean it won’t still be glorious.

And that really brings us to the final idea, which is Resolve. When on a budget, your worst enemy is indeciscion and uncertainty. If you don’t know what you like or what you want or what style of wedding you want, you will have NO guidelines with which to direct your budget. If you don’t know if you want a black tie, sit down dinner or a casual buffet, how will you set a catering budget and how will you know if you can afford 75 people or 175 people? How will you decide? You must decide the kind of atmopshere and style of wedding you want in order to make your life easier. For instance, if you are the couple I referenced above who wants everyone on the planet at your wedding reception and you look at your budget, you might realize “OK, I think that necessity is going to dictate buffet, so let me wrap my head around WHY I wanted everyone there- is my real dream to be dancing and partying with all these people that we loved? If so, then let me not stress out that we’re having buffet (because that’s totally acceptable) and let me focus on the entertainment and the drinks and making the large celebration the focus of the party.

So, yes, you can have an amazing wedding, but I think the real advice is to adjust your “dream” wedding around the things that are most priority to you and it will be much easier to find satisfaction in your wedding planning process.

The Q: I love reading your blog and really appreciate the inspiration that I get from it.  The issue that I’m having though is that I’m getting  married in a relatively small town and I’ve found that the vendors that work in weddings here aren’t as inclined to take my ideas.  I’ve been told more than once about ideas for our reception that “that isn’t the way that things are done”.  How can you have a creative or unique wedding if you can’t get your vendors on board?

The A: I completely know what you are talking about… I used to call these kinds of reactions a meeting with Mr. or Ms. No. They seem like meetings from the twilight zone because everything that is brought up that is mildly “outside the box” (if that box had been manufactured in 1995) is seen as “impossible” or “not the way that things are done”.  For every amazing vendor out there always looking to push the envelope and go the extra mile for their clients, there are probably 2 vendors that really see this is as a formulaic job.  Perhaps it’s laziness, perhaps it’s a love of tradition, perhaps its simply habit from doing things the same way over and over again. Whatever the reason,  for the bride or groom (especially someone working without the help of a planner to help showcase how simple things that seem difficult can be) these kinds of negative meetings can be disheartening, because a) I think most couples are a little bit afraid of “doing something wrong” with their wedding and b) because the vendor appears as an “expert” in the situation, they usually get their way and opt to NOT go the extra mile.

Often, this is when normal brides either throw their hands up in the air OR, opting to go in another direction, get Bridezilla on the vendor.  This other route tends to not really be the most effective, since if you read this blog regularly, you know that you can get more wedding flies with honey than with vinegar.

My first suggestion for a meeting with a Mr. or Ms. No, is to never start it with “So, we had this idea and we were wondering if…”  I’ve found that in my dealings as a wedding planner, I always like to explain the raison d’etre for an idea, detail or request.  If I am asking for a banquet facility to skip the wedding cake and bring in a croquembouche, I might start out with “So, Bill and Sara have a huge affinity for things French. They met there while studying abroad and Sara’s family spends summers there.  It would really mean a lot to them to have a Croquembouche vs. a traditional American wedding cake.”  It is much harder to shoot down an idea when it is presented as more than something that you saw in a magazine that inspired you, and the real reason it inspired you.

Sometimes Mr. or Ms. No tells you that what you want to do (like dance with your mother instead of your father, or not dance between courses) is “just not the way that things are done”.  I always like to answer that one with a smile and “Well, I’ve never been that interested in what other people are doing”.    Seriously though, I think again, if you want to veer away from tradition, give your vendor some insight into WHY.  Not only will this usually make them less argumentative, but often it will make this detail stand out in their mind on your wedding day.  Your band leader, photographer, banquet manager is much less inclined to forget a detail of your day that strikes them as unusual, especially if they know it’s unusual for a specific reason.

People feel one of two ways about tents: Love or Loath.  To some they are big, complicated things that need to be gussied up a ton, and are a necessary obstruction from the open air that would otherwise be avoided.  To other people, they are exciting, blank canvases.

I probably would put myself in the latter category, a tent lover.  To me tents evoke a sense of fantasy, especially in the right setting and well… with the right tent.  Let’s face facts, not all tents are created equal. Some have horrible ugly poles, most need a tent liner, but then not everyone likes that draping, romantic look.  So I was just blown away when we discovered Sperry Tents (actually, big shout out to Traci Romano who put us on to them).

Sperry Tents were the accidental discovery of a sailmaker who was preparing for a large gathering and used what he had on hand- light, gorgeous fabric for sails- to create these gorgeous canopies. They are light and airy and, well, if a tent can be beautiful, that’s what these are.  Who wouldn’t want to have their first dance under one of these gorgeous structures?  Sperry tents are available nationwide.  If you are thinking of tenting, how can you pass up one of  these stunning canopies?