How to Save $3,012 on a Wedding Planner with This One-of-a-Kind Online Service

Since my wedding is less than a month away, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned in the wedding planning process.

One of the biggest insights I can share is the best way to do “DIY” wedding planning.

If you want to get out of this phase without going bananas, here is the truth. You need to hire help.

But the harsh reality is a wedding planner or “wedding consultant” will cost you a few grand.

According to The Association of Bridal Consultants, the national average wedding planner cost is $3,262.

Most people can’t afford this, so they end up doing all the planning on their own.

This can be very stressful because if you’re planning on doing all the usual stuff, there are a gazillion details.

As a guy whose parents were both raised in the East and who has had very little exposure to Western wedding traditions, my ignorance to many of these details was quickly revealed.

“WTF are wedding favors?”

“WTF is a groom’s cake?”

These are real questions I asked my fiancée as she stared at me in bewilderment.

And she thought she was marrying someone smart.

Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot. And with 26 days still to go, I’m sure there is much more I will learn.

Fortunately, as it turns out, I am smart and I was able to bring something to the table.

Something big that would save us both a lot of stress.

My ability to think outside the box.

This is a skill I’ve been developing for about a decade, especially in the last eight years after reading The 4-Hour Workweek.

As I started learning about all this wedding stuff, two things became clear.

1. I need to help my fiancée with as much of this shit as possible
2. There’s no way I’m doing all this shit on my own

The obvious solution was to look into cheaper alternatives to wedding planners, since I knew we weren’t going to spend thousands of dollars on one in addition to the tens of thousands we’re already spending on the wedding.

Back to The 4-Hour Workweek, I remembered reading about inexpensive VAs (virtual assistants) and how you can use them to “outsource your life”.

Putting two and two together, I thought “Maybe I can find a VA to do our wedding planning.”

A couple of Google searches later, I hit a goldmine: fancyhands.com.

Fancy Hands is a team of virtual assistants that will do just about anything that a normal assistant with a computer and phone can do. As an added bonus, they are all based in the US so I can talk to them about stuff like “wedding favors” and they won’t be clueless like I was.

After reading some of the reviews and testimonials on their website, I realized this was a perfect solution to my wedding planning dilemma.

The best part is that their pricing is very affordable.

Check out this page for examples of common requests. There is even an entire category on wedding-related requests, so clearly I wasn’t the first person to think of this.

On their Professional plan, you get 15 requests a month for $49.99 a month.

This is the plan I signed up for and I don’t even use all 15 requests each month. Fortunately, they roll over, which is awesome.

I use Fancy Hands primarily for research because these are typically the most time-consuming tasks.

Here are some actual wedding planning requests they have taken care of for me:

Pretty cool, right?

Here are a few of my favorite things about Fancy Hands:

Their research is as specific and detailed as you want it to be.

In many of my requests, I wanted to make sure the option we chose was within our budget for that service or item. Researching this on my own would typically involve calling multiple places and potentially spending hours on the phone.

I also want to hire reputable services that have received good reviews. This would involve me researching the reviews online. But they take care of this too.

With research requests, they’ll summarize the results that meet my criteria in email for me to easily browse and select one.

The assistants are friendly, extremely responsive and quick to fulfill requests.

The Fancy Hands assistants often start on online research requests immediately, sometimes completing the request within a few hours if they don’t need further guidance.

If they need clarification on something, they will email back immediately.

If the request involves calling a business or scheduling an appointment and they need to wait until the business is open during normal hours, they’ll usually get it done as soon as they can get ahold of them within one or two business days.

You can submit requests any time of day via email, text or phone. They even have an iPhone app that I downloaded.

They show stats on your account.

Of course, as a number nerd, I love stats.

These include calls placed, emails sent, requests made and most importantly, time saved.

So far, they have estimated 4.8 hours of time they’ve saved me. When I consider the requests I’ve submitted, I think they’ve actually saved me a lot more time than this because they are likely conducting research and making calls much more efficiently than I would be.

So five hours for them might end up being 10 hours for me.

Worth the price?

Without a doubt!

I value my work time at at about $50 an hour and my personal time even more than that.

In fact, I plan to continue the service even after my wedding because I’ve really come to appreciate outsourcing tasks that I don’t enjoy doing and that I’d normally need to do on my personal time. So for me, it’s a no-brainer.

I’ll probably scale down from the $50 per month plan to the $30 per month plan, though, since I won’t make as many requests.

As you can see, there is a lot Fancy Hands can do to help with your wedding planning.

Obviously, they will not be able to do anything you need to do in person, like meet with the vendors, photographer, etc. and discuss personal preferences.

But this is all stuff you’d have to do anyway.

As far as up front research, though, they are definitely a life-saver.

However, like any VA, they are only as good as the instructions they are given.

It’s up to you to communicate effectively and you can save yourself a lot of back-and-forth time with them by being very detailed and specific in your requests.

This is the best article I’ve read on how to effectively communicate with VAs so that they are actually able to do what you hired them to do: save you precious time.

If you do decide to use Fancy Hands to help you plan your wedding, here is the approach I recommend:

Don’t purchase a plan until you’ll actually start submitting requests.

Realistically, unless you’re obsessed with wedding stuff, you won’t start getting into the nitty gritty until a few months out, so save your money until then.

This is when you’ll do most of your preliminary research on food, gifts, DJ, etc. You’ll need to take care of the bigger ticket items like the venue and photographer much earlier.

There are some things you won’t be able to actually book until you know how many people you’ll have and this will happen about three to five weeks out depending on when you send invitations. So, you can really make good use of them during the last couple of months.

My fiancée and I got engaged in July 2014. Our wedding is July 2015. I didn’t start using Fancy Hands until March 2015.

Five months of their Professional plan cost me $250. Compare this to the average wedding planner cost of $3,262 and that’s a savings of $3,012.

Now, if you don’t think you can afford $250, then don’t do it. Or, maybe only hire them for a couple of months.

I think once you start using them, though, you’ll quickly see the value and be happy to pay.

At least, that’s been my experience.

I also place a very high value on my personal time and I only like spending it on things I enjoy, so Fancy Hands is a perfect fit for someone like me.

I’ll leave you with one thing to consider before you leave this page:

When deciding whether to outsource tasks, always consider the opportunity cost of not doing it.

I hire a handyman to do all kinds of stuff for me not because I don’t think I can do it on my own, but because I don’t want to. Plus I suck at them and don’t care enough to spend the time to get better. That’s the honest truth.

It’s often less cost-effective for me to do things I am not skilled at on my own.

I’m paraphrasing something I heard somewhere, maybe on a podcast, but it went like this:

Before you dismiss paying someone $50 an hour to do something, consider how much you value your time. If you value your time at $50 an hour and you do it, then guess what? You just paid $50 an hour to get it done. And possibly for a shitty job, if they could have done it better than you.

A smart, analytical approach to life involves choosing your battles wisely.

There are some battles you must face, but that doesn’t mean you need to put yourself on the front line doing the fighting.

If you are about to embark on the battle that is wedding planning, you should definitely consider Fancy Hands.

If you do, you can do me a solid by signing up here through my referral link!

Now, leave a comment and let us know what you think about outsourcing wedding planning (or any other life tasks)!