Weddingbee Blog

OK. I know what you’re thinking. Hiring a wedding coordinator? C-R-A-Z-Y. Expensive. Unnecessary. This is also what I thought. I thought that I was the wedding-DIY queen and that since we have two brides and only one wedding, we’d be fine. We have double the organization. I thought, “We’re totally under control!”

Wrong.

Image via The Bridal Blog

Fiancee Eagle, with every DIY project I bookmarked and vintage teapot I bought, started getting nervous. The way she described her feelings were that of feeling torn—being so enamored with all of the cute little details I’d been finding and wanting to incorporate into the day, but being so damn nervous and scared that we were taking on too much, that we wouldn’t be able to actually get ready ourselves on the wedding day because we would be getting the venue ready…and feeling that she would go crazy before we actually got married! I didn’t really understand why she felt like this, but she’s my fiancee so I had to defer to her wanting to discuss outside wedding coordination. I agreed to hiring someone to set up our linens and centerpieces, but I honestly didn’t think that we needed a day-of-coordinator (DOC) or even more frivolous (I thought), a month-of-coordinator.

We started looking around online for a DOC, and the prices were what I expected: expensive. Most of them were around $2,000 and they didn’t include “month-of” coordination (which is something Fiancee Eagle really, desperately wanted). Some of the things we wanted a DOC to do were the things we would have to ask our family to do: set out the linens, place the centrepieces, direct the band where to be, show the cake baker where to set up the cake, coordinate with the caterer and catering staff…but how much was this worth?

Yikes. That’s a lot to ask our families to do. I realized that asking our families to not sit back and enjoy our wedding, but work at and organize our wedding wasn’t what we wanted. We want our families to be able to attend the wedding and be treated like the honoured guests they are. We want them to be able to enjoy the cocktail hour in the cocktail-hour area, and not be setting up the reception area. We want them to be at the event, not running the event.

So Fiancee Eagle convinced me: we needed a DOC, at least. Maybe month-of-coordination. And my budget-bridal-brain was convinced we could get this for under $1,000 if we looked in the right place. So I was off for my next bridal mission: finding a DOC for under a grand, and finding them fast before they booked up!

Did your SO convince you that you needed something you didn’t/wouldn’t ever consider for the wedding? Did you hire a DOC, too?