Top Wedding Tips from Wedding Planners

Wedding Planners Share Their Top Tips For Your Wedding Day!

 

It is your wedding day and everything is going according to plan… until your flowers don’t arrive on time. Where are they? Did the florist forget? Someone now has to call the florist and find out where the flowers are. Do you want to be calling them? Do you want your mom to stop helping you get into your wedding dress in order to call the florist? No. You don’t. Enter, a wedding planner. Your wedding planner would be on top of this and already be on the phone with the florist before you ever even know that the flowers for the wedding have not yet arrived.

 

Wedding planners are the unsung hero of anyone’s wedding, both on the journey to the wedding day, and on the actual day itself. They help you along your wedding planning journey and are your best ally on your wedding day. They worry about all the little details that go into a wedding so on your wedding day, you do not have to worry about anything at all. I had the amazing opportunity to connect with several wedding planners all over the country and pick their brain to discover their best tips and advice for couples!

 

Here are the amazing planners I connected with:

 

First Row Across –

Brooke DePauw– Stellaluna Events – hwww.stellalunaweddings.com  Image by Hannah Adams Photography

Alison Semmier – Lifestyle Maven Events www.lifestylemavenevents.com  Image by Lundy Photo

Courtney Urquiza – InStyle Event Company www.instyleeventco.com  Image byPure Love Photography

 

Second Row Across:

Audrey Jones – Georgia TLC Events www.gatlcevents.com  Image by George Francis Jr. Photography

Laura Small Grusky – Elegant Events by Laura www.eleganteventsbylaura.com Image by Kamila Harris

Elyse Bullard – Something Blue Lake Geneva www.somethingbluelakegeneva.com Image by Kristina Lorraine Photography

 

Third Row Across:

Tatum Pettrey – Make My Day – Wedding & Event Planing www.mmdplanning.com Image by Heather Johnson Photography

Shannon Pierangeli – Meraki Event Planning www.merakieventplanning.com Image Source unknown

Becky Dreyer – Something Blue Lake Geneva www.somethingbluelakegeneva.com – Image by Kristina Lorraine Photography

 

 

 

The number one piece of advice from all of the wedding planners is to ask yourself this question:

For you, what is the most important aspect of your wedding day?

 

Obviously, the ceremony is the most important, but what else is important for your wedding day? What is that one thing? Is it having an amazingly unbelievable dress with a cathedral train? Memorable photographs that will last you a lifetime? Chef catered dinner for 300 people? The main concept is to figure out what is most important to you, and that is where most of your money is spent.

 

Brooke DePauw of Stellaluna Events says:

“In a world of thousands of wedding ideas that come with a quick Pinterest search, it can become very overwhelming trying to plan

what would fit into your wedding. I’ve seen far too many weddings where the couple tries to do too much, and it all becomes stressful

and confusing for your guests. When I first meet with my clients I

ask them to list the top 3 most important details of their wedding:

Is it the entertainment? The bar selection? The food? The flowers?

Decor? Favors? Destination? Selecting those three most important

items really helps you to shape your budget.”

 

What is a common item most couples forget to consider when they plan their wedding on their own?

 

Logistics – Allowing enough travel time between locations, photos, incidentals (traffic, people getting in and out of cars, etc.) – I can totally agree on this! We try to remind our couples all the time when we are chatting about the timeline that having cushion room in the timeline is so important! An extra 5-10 minutes here and there during the wedding day makes the day run so much smoother. No one is worried about running to cars, or getting stuck in traffic, etc. If you end up with those 5-10 minutes being down time, grab a drink of water or eat some fruit because most likely you have been on the run the entire morning and haven’t had a chance to eat or drink!

 

A wedding planner can definitely help remind you and help with your overall wedding day timeline to figure out where there might be tight timeslots that need a few extra minutes. Planners help get everyone where they need to be, and on time! I can tell you from experience that the weddings in which we work with a planner go so much more smoothly because we (as photographers) do not have to worry about getting people where they need to go. The planner is there to help corral everyone into cars and get people to the right locations! We are able to focus more on what we do best! Photographs!

 

One of my favorite questions I was able to ask all of the amazing planners was:

What are some of the trends for 2017?

 

It was so awesome that these planners were from all over the U.S., because that meant the trends were different depending on the part of the country in which the planners worked.

 

One overwhelming response was the recent 2017 Pantone color – Greenery. Greenery has been getting more popular since we first saw it in 2016 in floral arrangements and dress colors. We are excited to see if our 2017 couples incorporate more greens in their weddings to follow the new Pantone color.

 

A couple of other trends we’ve seen coming through a little bit from last year are copper details, live entertainment, and more DIY (Do It Yourself). We LOVE our DIY brides. I myself was a huge DIY bride and made a lot of our décor. If you are not crafty, don’t worry! The only important thing when it comes to décor on your wedding day is that it is meaningful to you whether or not you or someone else made it!

 

I hope this post has helped you with your wedding planning! I was able to chat more with a couple of the wedding planners and soon you will be meeting them more in-depth on the blog! They are all such wonderful women and I was so humbled that they took time out of their busy schedules to answer my questions and to help all of my couples out on the blog!

 

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a more in depth chat with a couple of the amazing wedding planners!