Planning a wedding is hard. You’ve probably never done this before, and you don’t know what you don’t know. Rather than making mistakes and potentially forgetting something major, why not bring in a professional? Here are all the reasons why you should consider hiring a wedding planner.

A Wedding Planner Saves You Time

You would be amazed at the number of hours that go into planning a wedding. The number of emails. The number of phone calls. There are a million and one details, and a team of vendors to communicate with. Having a wedding planner be the point person for all of that can save you loads of time and headaches.

Finding Wedding Vendors

Do you know all the best wedding vendors in the city where you’re getting married? Probably not. But your wedding planner does. She knows their work, their styles, and their personalities. She can save you the trouble of meeting with the wrong vendors by connecting you with the right vendors off the bat.

Scheduling Meetings

It takes a surprising amount of back-and-forth communication to set up meetings and discuss wedding-related items. You have a job. You can’t always be available for a call with one of your vendors, and your boss would appreciate it if you focused on your job during working hours, instead of planning your wedding. It is literally your wedding planner’s job to handle scheduling meetings and playing phone tag and doing those things that you shouldn’t be doing while you’re supposed to be working.

Doing Research

While it can be fun to browse Pinterest and pin lots of ideas to your wedding board, when you need a specific item or you need to know the answer to a specific question, Pinterest is not your best bet. Your wedding planner can track down the perfect wedding favor, or figure out how many bottles of wine and beer you need, or find the best place to create your online honeymoon registry.

Tracking Details

To have a wedding, you first need to create a budget. Then you need to track all your expenses to be sure you’re staying within budget. You need a guest list, and then you have to track all the responses and maybe even what everyone is having for dinner. You need a wedding website where you can post all the relevant information about your wedding so you’re not fielding 101 emails from friends and family with questions about the best hotel to stay in, or what there is to do in the city where you’re getting married. Your wedding planner can help you with ALL of those things!

Designing Your Wedding

Maybe you’re not in love with Pinterest. Maybe you don’t have a million ideas about what you want your wedding to look like. Your wedding planner will have tons of ideas. And even if you do have lots of ideas of your own, she can help you narrow them down into a coherent design scheme. Wedding planners live and breathe weddings. They know what’s been done to death and what’s on the cutting edge. Let a planner put her knowledge to work for you.

A Wedding Planner Saves You Money

Yes, you have to spend money to hire a wedding planner, but they can save you money too. Wedding planners have access to special discounts that couples working without a planner do not. And some wedding vendors (like DJs and photographers) will even give you a discount if you’re working with a planner because they know their job will be so much easier with a planner handling the details.

Some planners have special relationships with vendors they work with often, which results in special pricing for you that you wouldn’t be able to get without working with that planner.

Furthermore, you won’t make costly mistakes or overspend on something if you have a wedding planner guiding you through the process.

A Wedding Planner Saves You Stress

This point cannot be overstated! Having a professional by your side goes a long way toward easing your mind. There’s so much to keep track of and so many things to do. If you have a wedding planner, the burden is lifted from you, and you can actually have fun with the planning process.

A Wedding Coordinator is the Bare Minimum

Even if you can’t afford to hire full-service wedding planning help, at the very least you should hire a wedding coordinator. Note: I said “wedding coordinator” not “day-of coordinator.” There is no such thing as a day-of coordinator. No one can show up on your wedding day and make your wedding run smoothly based off a timeline that you prepared yourself. Trust me, you have forgotten to think about at least two dozen items that can make or break your wedding day.

A wedding coordinator will begin working with you well in advance of your wedding (at least a month, if not more) to iron out all those details and make sure your plan for the day is well-crafted. A coordinator will also be there on your wedding day to do all the work and answer all the questions. You don’t want to put your family and friends to work—you want them to have fun! And you don’t want to be answering questions all day—you want to have fun too!

So if you want to have a fun and relaxing wedding day, hire someone to help you. Preferably a full-service planner who can do the heavy lifting for you, but at the very least a coordinator to make the day go well.

TL;DR here’s a video link

This post was written by Sacramento wedding planner Risa Weaver-Enion. If you're feeling overwhelmed by planning your wedding, we are here for you! Read more about what we do on our Welcome and Packages pages. Email risa@risajamesevents.com if you have questions or want to inquire about getting help with wedding planning. And if you'd like to have future blog posts delivered to your inbox, please join our Insider’s Club on the Welcome page.