Your wedding is only one day, splurge a little!

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen me sharing some of our wedding photos, and I absolutely love them! Wedding days are filled with fleeting moments of love, joy, romance, and all the emotions. It’s a day you absolutely want photographed and captured, and I feel very strongly about researching and understanding your investment with photography. But this blog isn’t about photographers, it’s about wedding planners because your wedding planner makes the magic happen!

As a photographer, I knew the value of wedding planners from experience. Every wedding where a wedding planner has been involved in the planning process runs so much smoother. They know your vendors, where things go, how things should run and they have the time to communicate these plans with your team BEFORE the wedding. The week before your wedding is stressful and chaotic enough without you having to check in on e-mails and triple check that the vendors know where to be and when. Things run so much smoother on the day of with a wedding planner involved.

Why do wedding planners help things run more smoothly?

Experience. They’ve been there before and they are equipped to handle anything the day throws your way. As a photographer, I like to get a little involved with the day of timeline to ensure my couples know how long they should expect certain photography related aspects of the day to take. I recently created a guide to help my couples plan out their wedding day timeline, but I can’t be in charge of creating the whole timeline.

So why can’t your photographer be in charge of the day of timeline?

Because they’re busy photographing details, planning the perfect spot for portraits, holding back tears during your first look, swooning over your vows, corralling family for portraits, avoiding your “guest photographers”, fixing dresses and checking that the grooms shoes are tied… And that’s the short list. Your photographer is going to be way too busy taking pictures, so they can’t also be worrying about keeping everyone on time.

I’m creative by nature. If I could, I would just keep you and your new hubby in front of my camera for hours and hours because weddings are so beautiful. I need someone to keep me on track, too!

Here’s 7 reasons why hiring a wedding planner was the best thing I ever did.

 

They will invest in your vision

We had one word to describe our wedding; Christmas. We also had words like rustic, romantic and classic. I also wanted to be pretty much hands off with planning things because working full time, running a part time photography business and planning a wedding was a lot to handle! I cannot thank Erika Amalia Events enough for all that she did to make our wedding perfect.

We picked colors and decided on groomsmen attire but Erika kept my mind on track with what needed to get done and when it needed to get done by. She was there every step of the way with ideas, suggestions and was fully invested in creating the perfect Christmas Wedding.

They know what to expect

You may think you can plan every second and that things will stay on schedule, but I have yet to shoot a wedding that was self-planned and self-coordinated that actually ran on time. By self-coordinated I mean the bride’s aunts sister was the coordinator (with no experience) or something similar. Every wedding with a planner ran on time. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

One word: Timelines

There’s a hundred things happening all at once, and fitting it all into one day can feel like such a daunting task. Your wedding planner will not only create your timeline, but typically they’ll share it with your vendors so they know where to be and when. Like your florist who needs to arrive at the church at 10:30 and then head to the reception hall at noon. And your DJ who needs to arrive at 1 so he can set up all the speakers before the guests start to arrive.

All of those details will be in your wedding timeline and all you need to do is show up at the right place at the right time.

The thing is, wedding planners can help set realistic expectations with the bride during the planning process so I don’t get the timeline and see that the bride has sent me a family photo list a mile long and planned for 15 minutes of photos. Yes, this has happened. While I do try to communicate with my couples to set realistic photo expectations, it’s a give and take. What is more important? Capturing a photo with every single aunt, uncle, and cousin or your photos with your new spouse. Either way you answer, we will totally accommodate that, but you also have to consider this during planning. This is why having a planner can be crucial to the success of the entire day.

They know people

Your network is your life! Locally, the vendors here are amazing! It’s so amazing to work with such talented local businesses. So when you hire a coordinator local to your wedding, they’ll know people in your area, and probably have advice on things they’ve heard or experiences working with a vendor you might be considering.

It takes the pressure off your family

Just because your cousins best friend’s sister wants to be an event planner and successfully planned the YMCA brunch doesn’t mean she should be your wedding coordinator. Weddings are much different from other events. That doesn’t mean family can’t help! We had family and friends help bake things for our dessert bar, family “bartend” for us, friends help us with decorating and stringing Christmas lights in the clubhouse and helping get things prepped on the days leading up to the wedding so that we wouldn’t be stressed about it later.

You’ll feel less stressed

Knowing that my wedding planner had everything under control relieved so much stress. I was still a little stressed, but I asked my mom once, “Can you imagine trying to talk to me right now if we didn’t have Erika?”. Her eyes got REAL big as she shook her head. I really tried not to be a Bridezilla, and I think I semi-succeeded at that. I mostly just didn’t want to make decisions. So having a wedding planner who knew my vision, loved my vision and wanted to make it come to life was the biggest weight lifted off of my shoulders.

 

They can take care of things afterwards

Trevor and I closed the house DOWWWWN on our wedding night (and ran through the Taco Bell drive thru before heading to the hotel) The next afternoon, we hopped a flight to Maui. Erika and her team not only put away all the rentals like plates and silverware, she showed up to the venue to meet the rental crews the next week as they took the tents down and picked up their things. It was such a relief!

So maybe your photographer will help you with your timeline, and that’s great. I know I like helping my clients with figuring out the best times for things. But photographing a wedding is enough work without also hoping they’re going to keep everyone on schedule. Do yourself a favor and INVEST into this day, because guess what? It only happens once, and you deserve to have the best day ever!

 

All of my wedding photos courtesy of: N. Godinez Photography