Weddingbee Blog

Miss Pancakes’ post “Wedding Planners are your Friends” inspired me to share our process for finding a planner! It look a lot of research, a few interviews, and a couple of budget conversations, but we can already say that hiring a planner was ultimately the best wedding-related decision we’ve made!

How we knew we needed a planner:

We always knew we wanted a day of coordinator, but I also really wanted someone to help us choose our vendors. Living in the Washington, DC area there are a lot of vendors, and making a wise decision can be difficult. We figured it was better to pay a planner, rather than overpay two or three vendors we knew nothing about.

We also knew we needed someone to help us pull off a wedding ourselves. We realized this when we postponed our wedding after being engaged for more than 6 months due in part to a lack of planning.

What we wanted in a planner:

I can’t say we really knew what we were looking for in a planner except that they be experienced. I don’t know about you, but after getting engaged it seemed like everyone and their brother was a planner in their own right! Everyone wanted to help!

“Oh! Let me plan it!” Um, no. It’s great people want to help, but we wanted a professional—someone who had done this before, since neither of us have.

Finding someone creditable:

I researched planners for a long time before we finally decided on someone. I contacted various event planners for quotes and did not feel compelled by anyone we had heard about or met—not until I stumbled across this post on Weddingbee.

I quickly looked up {Invited} and prayed they were within our price range. Like many other sites, their prices were not listed, so I sent an email and anxiously awaited a reply.

I was thrilled to hear back from the founder herself, Pavaune.

The moment it became meant-to-be:

OK, this might sound kind of lame, but there’s one more thing I absolutely have to tell you that really, really gave us the go ahead to hire Pavaune, which was knowing she cared!

We invited her to our engagement party with two days notice. We hadn’t paid her the deposit and we really didn’t expect her to come, but we were so excited about the event, we figured, why not?

Would you believe she made an appearance? We were floored! She obviously wanted our business if she was willing to spend her Saturday evening with our family, before we paid her a dime!

That’s when we knew she was the one for us.

Here’s a picture of her from our party:

Notice her cute name tag that reads “planner.”

There’s no way we would be as far along in the wedding planning process if it weren’t for our planner!

Did you hire a planner? How did you decide on one?