You know now how to select your wedding planner, and after some reseach and meetings, you and your partner have finally accepted the assigment. Congratulation! Your wedding organisation has officially started: you can sit comfortably in the passenger’s seat and enjoy the view. All you need to do is to come to the appointments, meet deadlines and give information as specific as possible to your wedding planner.

However… Can you really stay cool while you give the entire management of your wedding to a third person, if you don’t know exactly how he/she does his/her job? Have you ever wondered what does wedding planner mean, and what happens exactly before the actual big day? If you answered “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second, keep reading: we want to dive deep in this subjetc.

Planning a wedding is such a complicated job, it easy to get confused or believe to some false myth. That’s why even though we already talked about what does a wedding planner do, today we’d like to tell you something more specific about the job “behind the curtains”. We’ll find out more about the first phases of the organisation process, and a specific service that adds a great value but is rarely considered.

What does the wedding planner do before the event

The first job in the timeline and for relevance, as it’s done again and again throughout the entire planning, is to collect the couple’s idea under one common denominator.

But what does this mean?

Usually future brides and grooms have many ideas about what they want for their wedding, and probably some of those ideas are quite good and unique… But when you have too many inspiration and enthusiasm, you may not know how to handle it. If ideas are good but you don’t know how to properly select and put them togheter without damages, the final result can be chaotic and incoherent (unfortunately you can’t always choose them all!).

Having a wedding planner helps you with that. You have an external, critical, neutral and professional point of view that puts together all your ideas in the best way possible. This way, it’s going to be easier to search and select the vendors that best meet your wedding’s style and your requests (such as guests number, season, special needs, etc.). This is another important task the wedding planner can accomplish thanks to his/her experience in the field.

There is one more practical point linked to the selection of ideas, something that makes the difference when planning an event but it’s usually missing in a weddig without wedding planner. Can you guess what we are talking about?

Wedding planner VS wedding designer: the graphic project

See it, don’t just imagine it. Part of the wedding planning service is dedicated to create handmade or digital graphics, to let the couple see how will a set table, a mise en place, a certan food station or floreal setting look like.

Sometimes this project is developed by a specific person that works together with the wedding planner – an external collaborator or an employee. In this case, while the planner strictly handles the organisational aspects of the event, the wedding designer takes care of its most creative side.

Actually many wedding planners already have good graphic and/or drawing skills, so they can offer their couples a proper wedding design service on their own. That’s a huge added value, as not many couples has enough time or competences to create specific graphics on their own (unless they are passionate about it).

So every project is carefully studied to make it quite realistic: from freehand drawings to digital sketchs created with specific softwares, from tangible to digital moodboards, from seating plan’s schemes to outer’s graphic renderings.

All of this to anticipate what the couple will actually see on their special day, their dream became reality. And to avoid surprises: everyone knows what’s happening, because every detail is fully discussed looking at a real picture and not only talking about abstract ideas. The graphic projects change and are refined as the wedding day comes closer, to meet the couple’s desires at their best.

The cost for a wedding planner’s graphic project

Don’t worry: usually this service is already included in the planning projects, if the wedding planner manages every aspect of an event’s organisation and not just a part of it. This is way it’s better to choose an expert that can take care of the whole wedding project. Type and number of sketches (and how many the newlyweds receive as gift) can depend on several factors:

  • Time available. If yours is a last minute wedding with few guests there might be no time to analize each single detail of every set, of course. If that’s your case, talk to your wedding planner to discuss your priorities.
  • Couple’s requests. Some couples really care about having the perfect mise en place – so it’s important to show them precise and detailed sketches of this specific set. While others may care less and would rather have an overall view of the church or the restaurant entrance. The wedding planner will therefore focus her/his graphic work based on their preferences.
  • Wedding planner’s tools. Is the professionist you choose able to use many graphic softwares? Or would he/she rather use paper and pencil and give you more “traditional” drawings? Or has a specific expertise in some niche software? Each wedding planner works differently, depending on skills and abilities. If this matter to you, make sure to ask which tools is she/he using before hiring! 

If you want to know more about our working process’ steps read this page, or write to us.