Remember this is your wedding!

I was given the link to a good article in the NY Times, entitled Taming the Runaway Wedding Planner. I enjoyed reading the article and found a few points for those of you who may be looking to hire a wedding planner.

• My fav quote was "...find a planner who wants to put together your wedding, not theirs". My number one responsibility as an event planner is to plan the event my client is requesting. I'm not planning my wedding or my party, I'm planning the wedding my client has been dreaming about since they were a little girl. If I am not fond of the color palette, so what? Like I always say remember this is your wedding.
• "Good planners should pay for themselves." With the average cost of a wedding being almost $28,000, a great deal of care should go into selecting vendors and making arrangements. That includes wedding planners. When you are investing that much money into an event it is imperative to have someone there to ensure that your $28,000 is spent with vendors that are trustworthy and professional. At the end of your wedding reception when you're on your way to your honeymoon reflecting on your beautiful nuptials, you should feel that hiring your wedding planner was the best money you've ever spent.
• "We just didn't connect with our planner on any level". Planning a wedding takes a lot of long hours and a lot of those hours will be spent working with your planner. You don't want to work with someone that you can not get along with. You want your wedding to be a pleasurable experience and so should the planning process (which is the reason you hired the planner anyway). I know you want to know how many weddings they've done or how many vendors they are connected to, but most importantly you need to know that you can work together.

Choose your wedding planner wisely and make sure they are capable of making your day exactly as you've envisioned it!