What is a Wedding planner?

We often get asked to explain what we do as Wedding Planners, well we are your wedding expert, trusted advisor, wedding guru, financial planner, organiser, problem solver and creative genius all rolled in to one…. Typically, when you think Wedding Planner you may think of a certain film where we all totter around in our Jimmy Choo’s looking busy with a clipboard bossing everyone around? The reality however, couldn’t be further from that stereotype. A wedding Planners primary task is to collaborate with the couple on design, suppliers, guest management and financial management all ensuring that the wedding day is delivered exactly as imagined and perfectly planned.

1. Your wedding planner is the one person that looks at the whole wedding and how all of the various elements will come together, how the various suppliers will work with each other and how the wedding will look both in photos and on film. They will not be afraid to tell you to choose a different dress style or colour scheme and even play peacemaker when key people within the family have very different ideas of what you should be doing.

2. Time - You may simply not have the time to plan your wedding, or bring your ideas to life. Your Wedding Planner will collaborate with you ensuring that your ideas, design and personality shine through on your wedding day and everything is exactly as you would want it. Your planner essentially will do all the ‘nitty gritty’ supplier searching, consultation bookings, contract negotiations and liaising and you still get to do the fun parts like cake and food tasting!

3. Know How - OK let’s be honest, planning a wedding cannot only be time consuming but also quite stressful. Not everyone knows where to start and this can as a result very quickly become very overwhelming. Your wedding planner is there to guide you through the whole journey from creative design to minor but important detail and everything in between.

4. Investment - Getting married these days can involve a fair level of investment - rarely in life would anybody consider spending tens of thousands of pounds without some assurance that their investment is well spent and going to give them exactly what you want. Your investment in your wedding day should be no different? A Wedding Planner will ensure that your investment is efficiently spent and used to its full potential with minimal risk.

5. Using a Wedding Planner means you have access to all the tried and trusted suppliers that the planner has spent potentially years building relationships with ensuring that you have a shortlist of trusted suppliers that meet your brief.

6. You get access to our planner’s emergency bag - we have everything from hair clips to sewing kits, batteries and confetti all at your disposal to cover almost any eventuality.

7. Outdoor weddings, tipi and marquee weddings require an exceptional level of logistics and specialist skill sets over and above any other wedding, if you don’t know the difference between 13amp, 16amp and 32amp or what an AMF panel is you need a Wedding Planner that can carry out complex power distribution calculations whilst setting the places or putting final touches to the cake scape.

Can we afford a wedding planner?

Whether you can afford a planner depends on what you require from them and how much budget you have available. If you have a budget of £40k upwards then it is likely that you would need a planner to bring styling, creativity and management together with a Full Planning service. If your budget is less than £40k then you probably do not need a full planning service but might however benefit from a ‘Wedding Day Management'. Ultimately a planner wants to give you the most amazing, stress free day all within or under your allocated budget.

Ideal Qualities You Need in a Wedding Planner

As an industry leading and award winning Wedding Planner with over 15 years’ experience in event planning and management, I have expansive experience and a reputation for creating beautiful, luxury venue weddings and complex outdoor weddings. A typical wedding may have 7-10 suppliers whereas some of our weddings have had over 40 suppliers who are all required to work seamlessly together to bring the design and vision to life. Patience is indeed a virtue when you are looking for your planner, as indeed is their ability to remain calm and unflappable, be a problem solver and to think on their feet.

Below is our list of the qualities to look out for when you are looking to book a planner:

1. Collaboration and Vision - a top quality is the ability to listen to our clients, you may know exactly what you want or you may have an idea but struggle to translate this into something everyone else understands - through our years collaborating with couples we have honed the important skill of listening and ensuring we understand your vision which allows us to create for you, your perfect day.

2. Experience - Our clients definitely love looking through our many and varied portfolios of previous weddings. Knowing that we have the experience and expertise and being able to see what we have previously created is vitally important.

3. An almost obsessive attention to detail - The devil as they say is in the detail, whilst we love getting our creative and design juices flowing, we also understand that all that is wasted if the day is ruined by a minor detail - as professional planners we plan meticulously every last detail. That could be carrying out complex power distribution calculations for an outdoor wedding through to ensuring every last table setting is perfect.

4. Perfectionism - OK you got us! We are obsessed and everything has to be just perfect! You will see this on the day when as a planner we ensure that the entire bridal party are all perfect before they enter the ceremony(lipstick touched up, veils in place and trains perfectly placed). During photos you will find us working with the photography to make sure your dress is placed perfectly in every single shot. We also make sure that you always have a drink in your hand and that you manage to get your hands on the canapes that you chose all those months ago and that every place setting is perfectly aligned with every knife, fork or spoon polished to a perfect shine.

What can we help you with?

If you feel like we could help you with your wedding planning, we have various services available which are always tailored to your individual requirements. We are generally involved after the engagement for our ‘full planning' service and are with you from the very beginning; including venue sourcing, supplier sourcing, budget management, design, creativity and of course the management of suppliers/venue on the day. .

For our ‘wedding day management' service we can be involved anything up to 1-3 months before the wedding day. We take over the management of any existing contracts with suppliers you have entered into and source any outstanding suppliers or suggest recommendations to the wedding day schedule

If you think that we could help you with any aspect of your wedding planning then please contact Vanessa on 07595 986476 or email hello@randfweddings.co.uk. If you are curious to find out more about us; please head over to our website www.randfweddings.co.uk to view our services and read testimonials and view images from our previous clients.

Huge thanks to Lina & Tom of www.linaandtom.com for the images featured of just a few of our previous weddings.