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Anyone else miss Saturday morning cartoons?
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I love planning and organizing events, but I am usually at my best behind the scenes. When I have to be in the scene, I may or may not have a tendency toward a frenzied state (that I would like to avoid experiencing during our wedding weekend), so we decided we should look into a day of coordinator. I searched and searched, and found that many of the DOCs in the Kansas City area get pretty decent coin (well earned) for their hard work—more coin that we had budgeted for a DOC. So I started looking into a few newer people to the industry, and one day while I was reading Good Earth Florals’ website I stumbled upon “I Do Savvy” and Jen Meyers. In my research there were a couple of seriously glowing reviews from other vendors and from couples that really peaked my interest. So I sent her a pretty detailed email. We talked on my (cough cough) “lunch hour,” which turned into two hours…
OK, girls—I’ve made you wait for three whole posts to hear the final verdict! I told you last time that we found Perfect Day Ventures on Kijiji and liked what we saw on the website. We arranged to meet with the very sweet owner, Louise Muller, at a nearby Starbucks.
We were pretty much sold in the first 10 minutes of the meeting. We kept giving each other looks like “OK, we’re booking her!” throughout the meeting. (Don’t you love those looks where you know what your partner is thinking without saying a word?!) Louise was so professional and well put together, and was genuinely interested in our wedding. She had a strategic plan for wedding coordination, and her DOC services were actually more like MOC services. This was a big plus with Fiancee Eagle.
So: We DID book Louise the very next morning, and Fiancee Eagle was so relieved—bridal pressure diverted! And I can add more DIY projects without getting the side eye.
Image via All Star Pics
With our Perfect Day Ventures package, we got a lot of services! For under $1,000, we get:
When Fiancee Eagle brought up hiring a wedding coordinator, I thought she was crazy! I thought we could definitely handle our wedding on our own, and it would be a waste of money. Whenever I think of wedding planners, I think of the Rich Bride, Poor Bride TV show. And while Fiancee Eagle and I love watching it and poking fun at their wedding mishaps and overspent budgets…I didn’t want the whole “production” feel that the wedding planners on the show tend to create during wedding planning.
Image via Slice
We want our wedding to be intimate and authentic. Natural and heartfelt. Effortless and beautiful. OK, those descriptions sound a little nondescript. Truthfully, we want a highly detailed wedding without the “production” feel. But, as I told you all in my last post, I came to see Fiancee Eagle’s viewpoint of needing a wedding coordinator. We needed someone to run the show. Weddings have evolved since our parents’ time: nowadays, you can have as many as 10 vendors working together on your wedding day! With that many people running around, there is bound to be confusion if there isn’t someone directing them all where to be. I knew in my heart/brain that we needed a DOC, at least.
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
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All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
“Make an elegant invitation statement without the fuss. Stylish invitation sets with matching envelopes, reception and response cards included.”
Early on in my wedding planning, I started thinking that I needed an event designer. I had so many ideas in my head about the look and feel of our wedding, and I wanted someone to help me navigate through all the great inspiration out there. I wasn’t thinking about hiring a planner. I was excited about the planning and didn’t want anyone to take that off my hands. I just wanted someone to help me establish a vision.
Lynn Easton Andrews, Charlottesville wedding planner / From Easton Events blog / Photo by Jen Fariello
We still haven’t chosen a DOC or a florist. But, we are making progress on the solutions Momma and Mima Kettle came up with.
We met with a third DOC on Monday. Mr. Kettle and Momma and Daddy Kettle came with me to this meeting. By this third meeting, we were old pros. We laid out what we had planned so far, and gave her the information she needed. From all three meetings, I’m starting to see that it is the rule of thumb that DOCs get involved before the actual day-of.
They come in anywhere from immediately to 30 days prior to the wedding. They help for a detailed timeline for the day. They try to get to know the wedding party so there’s no confusion as to who’s running the show on the wedding day. They go to the rehearsal, and of course, they’re at the actual wedding.
The DOCs all offered to take care of making sure deliveries are on schedule on the wedding day, making the sure musicians are on time and set up, and taking care of day-of vendor payments. Also, they all seem to have teams they work with (especially for a wedding the size of mine).
So how will we choose between people who seem so similar?
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Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I’ve had meetings with vendors and HAVE known right away if I wanted to sign on the line. I could just tell that they were right for US. It hit me like it did when I knew Mr. Kettle was the man for me. That awesome feeling I felt about my dress and our wedding venue was felt with a couple vendors.
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| Image via The Gloss |
But then… nothing. No pangs of love drawing me in and letting me know I’d found the vendor for me.
Okay, complete honesty.
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Alternative title: “Why We Decided Not to Hire a Day-of Coordinator”
I can almost hear the gasps through the internet. You read that correctly—we are not having a DOC for our wedding day. There are a couple of reasons why not, and I wanted to share them in case anyone else is struggling with this decision too. I am not saying not hiring a DOC is right or wrong, but here is what Mr. CS and I came up with. You should probably take it with a grain of salt, though, because only the wedding day will tell if this was a good decision.
1. Our venue comes with a fantastic wedding coordinator. If I could make the word fantastic 10 times larger I would. She is just that good. Daniella (the wedding coordinator) deals strictly with weddings at our venue. I believe this makes her slightly different than just a regular venue coordinator. Starting from about three months out, she has been at our side the whole way. She has gone over every detail with us and even made some great suggestions of her own. I am fully confident that she understands our vision and the Congress Hall team will execute it to perfection.
What does this have to do with no DOC? For the wedding I am subscribing to the philosophy that too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth. I think if too many people are “in charge” it will just lead to confusion and mismanagement. I think there should be one point person on wedding day, and having a DOC along with Daniella might be dangerous.
There’s a day-of-coordinator option that was available to us through our first florist interview. She works at the gallery and she’s pretty amazing.
In spite of my natural urge to sign on the line with the first person whose offer sounds good, I resisted. Momma Kettle made an appointment with another day-of-coordinator for this week. Her prices are waay better than the first lady, but we’ll see how the meeting goes. I’ll be happy to report back to the hive, if only to help people in the Chicago area who are looking for coordinators.
I started thinking about why we really needed one, though. I know for a fact that we definitely want one. But why? Here are the reasons I came up with:
There is a little piece of information I feel I should share with you upfront. I used to work as a wedding coordinator’s assistant. Now, given the period of time I did this (nine months or seven weddings), I would hardly call myself experienced in the field, but I got my feet wet. I loved my boss and I would have kept working with her, but at the time I thought I might be moving out of state (instead Mr. Ticket moved here!), and rather than have to bail on her once she had weddings booked I informed her of my situation and stopped planning. (I now have a very different full-time job working in accounting.) Incidentally, when I found out that Mr. Ticket was in fact moving here I wanted to go back to wedding planning, but unfortunately by this time my old boss had actually quit doing it herself.
So here I would love to share a few things I learned while working in the field. What I learned as an assistant, I now know as a bride.
1. Relax. Today is going to be a wonderful day no matter what goes wrong, because all that really matters at the end of the day is that you just married the love of your life. It may sound cliche; I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but it’s extremely true! If you can remember this your day will be infinitely more special and less stressful.
Image via Pala Casino
“Stay busy.”
That is the most common piece of advice I was given after Mr. Marmalade deployed. “Keep yourself busy, don’t sit around, time will fly.” You know what? That is absolutely true. But I didn’t need to try very hard!
If our lives develop in phases, I would say that I am living through the marriage phase right now, as it seems that all of our friends are getting married. And oddly, it seems that everything is happening at the same time this year.
I had yet another wedding-related dream recently wherein our wedding day had arrived, but the planning and preparing had not progressed past what we currently have completed. The vases were still sitting on the shelf in the basement, waiting to be washed and packed, we had no flowers to put in the vases because I’d never made up my mind on what to do about florals, I didn’t have enough plates for all the guests we invited because I hadn’t bought enough, etc., etc. In the dream, I was running all over the house trying to get everything done and epically failing to do so.
Image credit: Wayward Weddings
I was like her, but with crazy eyes. And a better dress. Sorry, image.
Before I get into our consults, I wanted to backtrack a little and show the flow of events of how this process went down.
Like I said in my previous post, I decided to check into day of coordination (DOC) in my area just to get a ballpark idea of what it would cost to have someone there on the day of to run things.
Image via ProjectWedding / Photo by Robert Sukrachand Photography
“We don’t need a wedding planner.”
When we first started to plan the wedding, we agreed that we definitely wouldn’t need to hire a full wedding planner. I wanted to be heavily involved in planning the wedding. And I have to say, this process is outrageously fulfilling and rewarding to me, so far.
Aside from that, if there was some manageable, affordable way to hire someone just for the day of, that would be a wonderful bonus.
“Well, maybe we can do a day of coordinator!”
Day of coordinators (or DOCs) often do more than just show up on the day of. Their services usually include preparation in the weeks leading up to the wedding, running the rehearsal, and coordinating the entire wedding day. In case you are wondering, here are the types of things a DOC takes care of for you:
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We talked about not having a DOC, and instead having family take care of the vital pre-wedding tasks. To be honest, I’d been waffling about this decision. In theory, having family take care of everything could have worked, if not for one little issue: we had no one to meet and direct the vendors when they arrive at Downtown 202 after the family leaves to get ready for the wedding.
I talked to Mom Hyena and FMIL Hyena, and turns out we all kind of felt like we needed one of these:
image via IMDB / The Wedding Planner / Columbia Pictures
Where the heck is Jenny’s other arm?!
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