Stacy Dymalski
After you settle into the idea of being engaged, your work really begins. Planning a wedding may seem like the ultimate dream job until you hit your first obstacle (which usually involves lack of money and/or time). If you’re like most brides, you have a definite idea of what your wedding to look like, so it’s hard not to fall apart like a wet tissue when you can’t find exactly what you want. That’s when it’s handy to have a wedding planner on your side.
What’s that you say? A wedding planner is too expensive for the likes of your modest nuptials?
Now who told you that? Chances are you came up with that misconception all on your own by reading about highly paid wedding planners who map out expensive mega weddings for the rich and famous. But the fallacy in this thinking is that wedding planners are only for big budget weddings. On the contrary, wedding planners actually save couples money. In fact, the smaller the wedding, the more couples can save by using a wedding planner.
How so? Well, let’s start with the myth that wedding planners take a sizeable percentage of the total cost of a wedding, regardless of what they do. That is simply not true. Typically, a wedding planner sits down with a bride way in advance of the wedding and goes over all the bride’s expectations to determine how much help she actually needs (and where the help is needed). This allows couples to pay only for services they aren’t able do themselves (putting to rest the additional myth that wedding planners don’t give a bride any say in her own wedding).
This vintage bike that we planned for Karina and Hamish greets guests at the front gate at Bendooley Estate. Image courtesy GM Photographics
Wedding planning packages start from just one hour of service
For example, we offer planning packages with as little one hour of pre-wedding help to be used any way a bride wants. So if all a bride needs is for someone to find the best caterer for her Hunter Valley wedding, or run around picking up last minute items for the reception, then paying only for what you need is a reassuring way to make sure those tasks get done.
And if you’re thinking you can do all that yourself, well, yes, that might true, however, you have to ask yourself, “How much is my time worth?” Most likely you’ll have to take off from work to do everything that needs to be done, and even if your pay is not docked, being away from the office still puts you behind in your job, which just adds more stress. So in the long run, paying for a few hours of a wedding planner’s time can yield bigger savings when you consider the lack of interruptions to your daily life.
Plus, wedding planners know the wedding industry better than you do because they deal with it on a daily basis. They stay up on the latest and greatest in trends, fashions, florists, photographers, caterers, venues, vendors, as well as a million other details that can drive a bride crazy. Not to mention wedding planners make a career out of finding the best deals for their clients, which totally debunks the myth that they recommend only big expensive companies to fulfill a bride’s needs. In fact, just the opposite is true. Wedding planners can put you in touch with independent, hard-to-find artists and vendors who might not be that well known, but have some unique product or service that adds that special element you’ve searching for.
Tables are set at Bendooley Estate for Karina and Hamish. Image courtesy GM Photographics.
Don’t you want to savour the moment?
Regardless of the misconceptions, however, the real reason you want to use a wedding planner all comes down to one thing: You want to be as stress free as possible on your wedding day. You’ve been waiting for this event your whole life, so why not savour each moment? There’s nothing worse than looking at your pictures later and saying to yourself, “I don’t remember that,” all because you were attending to some seating chart snafu.
The radiant Mr and Mrs at Bendooley Estate. Image courtesy GM Photographics.
So put the wedding planner myths aside and listen to your common sense. Hiring someone to make sure your wedding is perfect is not only economical; it also gives you peace of mind knowing you can completely enjoy your day. Consider it your wedding gift to yourself.
