How to Pick a Wedding Planner Who Can Make Your Dream Wedding a Reality

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Seeing your dream wedding become a reality starts with choosing the right wedding planner. You can expect any wedding professional to take your needs seriously, but that’s not exactly the same thing as them sharing your vision and dedication to build out your dream event. Those kinds of planners are hard to find, but not impossible!

Finding a wedding planner who wants to truly build a custom experience for you is simply a matter of taking the time to get to know them. You want to watch for the attention, curiosity and instinct that mark them as the perfect person to trust with all your dreams. Here are some of the ways you can spot a wedding planner who is truly ready to turn those dreams into reality.

Start with planners that offer complete customization

Some planners try to save on their own costs by diverting clients to a small list of vendors that they have special arrangements with. For example, they might try to push you to choose from a list of three food vendors, but if you don’t like any of them you aren’t really going to feel like you have a choice. A planner trying to build off a list is not going to pay much attention to the fine details of your dream wedding ideas.

Instead, focus on arranging second meetings with the wedding planners who don’t try to push you in any direction before they’ve heard about your ideas for the theme. Great wedding planners find vendors after they’ve heard your ideas, so that they can choose the right food, music and decor that all play into your dream wedding theme.

Schedule a full consultation before hiring

If possible, try to book in a 1-2 hour consultation with your potential wedding planner before you decide to hire them for the wedding. This meeting is a chance for you to really get to know the planner and what motivates them.

Pay attention to how closely the planner follows your needs and ideas. Do they seem interested? Are they asking for insight into your choices? Do they want to know why you dream of having your wedding a certain way? If the answer is yes, you’re talking to a planner is going to take your dream ideas seriously. This is someone you can choose as your permanent planner, but there are a few more steps to take before making the final decision.

Don’t just check references, ask for photos

You want someone experienced and reliable, so make sure you do your homework before you sign any contract. A professional wedding planner will be proud to offer references. Contacting references is a little more difficult than it used to be, as few people answer calls from unknown numbers anymore. However, you can get around some indecision by asking for photos of past projects.

A wedding planner’s work can speak for itself. Every wedding planner should have a portfolio of designs and arrangements that they’ve produced for past weddings. It will be apparent if they are someone who simply tries different variations of the same thing, or if they are someone who truly tries to live in their client’s head to create a unique experience.

Discuss the design and atmosphere as early as possible

Your dream wedding may rest on one aspect in particular; this could be the theme, the food or the location. But no matter what it is, the design needs to be discussed as a first priority — everything has to fall in behind the look for a dream wedding to come off right — so make sure that you and your wedding planner are both on the same page right from the start.

Start with the easy design issues like colors, wall decorations, set pieces and dishes. As you build outward to other design choices, you and the planner will both gain a lot of insight into how the dream wedding should really look. Once all of this is figured out, the right choices for food and entertainment will fall into place a lot more easily.

Remember to communicate with your wedding planner

As the wedding day gets closer and closer, make sure that you don’t leave your planner out in the cold with unreturned calls and cancelled meetings. Some planners offer a very hands-off experience, but that’s because they want to be free to choose the most efficient wedding for their business needs. The kind of wedding planner who can build your dream wedding is going to be more like a partner, and hungry for input at every stage.

If your big day becomes the perfect wedding of your dreams, it’s going to be because it was a partnership between you and your planner. As long as you remember all of the important rules for choosing and working with one, you’re certain to have a wedding you’ll remember forever.

About the Author:

Ariel Chiu is the Principal Planner and Owner of Wonderstruck Weddings & Events, a corporate event and wedding planning company located in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ariel Understands how special life events can be. She believes that these important memories should be cherished. Ariel feels honored to have been involved with successfully organizing and coordinating weddings in any season, and bringing dreams to life through her confessions.

This is a guest post courtesy of Ariel Chiu, Principal Planner and Owner at Wonderstruck Weddings & Events.