The 6 Attributes of a Stellar Wedding Planner

There are many reasons why hiring a wedding planner is a good idea, mainly to ensure everything runs smoothly and to save you time. We’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the top wedding planners in the country and have found that what sets them apart from the crowd are these six attributes.

In this article Audrey Obrien of Studio Stems, a premier floral company chimes in on what makes a great wedding planner from the viewpoint of a professional vendor.

1. Time Saving

One of the biggest draws of a wedding planner is the luxury that comes with them saving you time, allowing you to enjoy the anticipation and experience of the big day worry-free. A good wedding planner will communicate effectively, and meetings will be short, to the point, and productive while still feeling personal. A good planner will not be intrusive on your daily life, will work with your schedule and will make sure that you get the maximum benefit compared to your personal time invested. If the wedding planner is exceptionally good, you will probably have no idea how much they have done; you will simply show up on your big day and everything will go perfectly. Your mind will be at ease and open to remember every second of the monumental occasion.

2. Unique, Creative Ideas

Everyone wants their wedding to stand out. A good wedding planner will be able to take your Pinterest pins and magazine cutouts and put a creative, unique spin on these ideas. He or she will have a fairly substantial portfolio of things that they’ve done so that you can get a good idea of the creativity they have and will put into your wedding. You want a wedding planner that makes it their business to have fresh, original ideas. They’ll be passionate about what they do, and that passion will reflect into their previous and current work.

3. Connections

Wedding planners should have the right connections to the right people that allow them to cater to each personal bride. The best wedding planners have formed long-term relationships with premium wedding transportation services, floral, catering and so forth. A great wedding planner will know which relationships and providers fit the brides need and they will have a plethora of connections to choose from.

A well connected and experienced planner will do so much of the work for you! Eliminate all that shopping for the right vendors, after all time is money! And let them do it for you, leading you to the right style and budget fit in every discipline needed. Most wedding vendors also will feel that your planner is their client in addition to the couple, a client who can also send them business, this offers more security to you and often times results in higher quality work as well! You will not have a no show on your big day for any facet of contracts that are processed through your planner!

4. Great Attention to Detail

Details, details. It’s all in the details when it comes to a wedding, and a wedding planner that has an eye for detail is wildly important. Many brides spend many countless hours dreaming about and thinking of wedding details. A good wedding planner will be ok with being neck-high in details and will understand the wedding experience is determined from the little details.

Not only is it all in the details, if you do not have a planner on staff all those details may be left in your hands to implement on the big day and you realistically will not have the time or the focus. Too often brides take on the details themselves not realizing how much work it is to have each element prepared, packaged, delivered to the venue and then staged and styled, essentially every detail implemented correctly. Even something as simple as a favor could eat up an hour or two of time on your big day so you may want to consider whether you have the time. We recently had a bride who spent several thousand dollars on a custom favor that was very meaningful to her, it never got sent out and no guests went home with it, a detail that got lost in the haze of a busy wedding and ultimately cost the bride thousands of dollars, a few tears, and did not fulfill the sentiment she intended. Many planners & coordinators offer various packages to meet your wedding needs, even day of coordination can be worth its weight in gold!

5. Extreme Organization

They should take organization to the extreme; and you’ll be extremely grateful they do, because staying organized while planning a wedding means fewer sleepless nights and more possible crises averted. An organized wedding planner will most likely use a proven system to ensure you everything is moving along as planned. And don’t raise an eyebrow when the planner tells you it’s time to mail off the last round of invitations or make the final decisions on a cake; you’re paying him or her to be organized and to keep you organized too.

There simply is a reason that you can acquire an actual binder to help you organize your wedding plans, contracts, schematics, design proposals, and all the many other details. It is a complex process and you will need a binder or two or three, or maybe you just really need a planner! Those binders can be confusing and if you are not naturally organized you will never be able to keep up with the demand. Recently a bride walked into our office whose wedding was a short eight weeks away, she needed help finding a good florist and ultimately we discovered that she had no idea who she had hired for other areas, how much she had spent, what the contracts entailed, or what she still needed to figure out before the big day! There were so many things she had not thought of and it simply was not in her nature to organize such a big event! Hand it over to a pro!

6. Enough Time to Devote to You

Some brides like to be involved in every little part of the wedding planning process while some like to hand the reins over to a wedding planner and just show up the day of the event. Whatever your expectations, make sure you convey that before you agree to have someone work with you. Some wedding planners will be busy planning several weddings at once, so it’s not a bad idea to ask them what their schedule is like.