In the last few years, the notion of a day-of wedding coordinator has become popular among couples looking for some additional help on the day of their weddings. However, anyone who is considering hiring a coordinator for a single day should be vary wary of what they’ll get.
When it comes to single-day coordinators, event planners agree—they don’t exist. While there are people who will be willing to attempt to manage coordination for a single day, their help will actually be quite minimal.
The truth about day-of wedding coordination is that it isn’t really possible andcould be a drain on an already tight wedding budget.
Lack of Experience
Experienced event planners know that they wouldn’t be able to go into a wedding blindly and still provide quality work when it comes to wedding coordination. For that reason, experienced coordinators simply don’t do day-of wedding coordination. Those who offer this service are almost always individuals who lack significant experience and the quality of their work will suffer as a result of their inexperience. The biggest day of your life is worth so much more than bargaining on inexperience.
Coordination Takes More Than One Day
The reality is that coordination takes a lot of work, and that work, even if it doesn’t encompass the entirety of the wedding planning stage, is going to take more than one day. For example, coordinators should be on site for things like theceremony rehearsal and dinner. The rehearsalis an important part of ensuring that everything is in order for the day of. It takes a lot of coordination and if your one-day coordinator is not present at the rehearsal, she won’t have context for how the day should unfold according to the practice runs.
Foreseeing Problems
Preventing potential disasters happens way before the actual day of your wedding. When you work with a coordinator in advance of the actual celebrations, the coordinator knows what to look for in terms of things that could go wrong.
The majority of day-of problems come about because of disorganization. A day-of coordinator is not going to be familiar enough with the prior preparations to do much in the way of preventing issues from arising. Because day-of coordinators aren’t involved early on to identify issues before they arise, the most they can hope to do is smooth over problems once they have happened, but by then it might be too late.
Familiarity with the Vendors
One of the most important tasks a coordinator can handle is dealing with the vendors for you. It’s absolutely imperative that anyone involved in the organization of your wedding is in contact with and very familiar with the vendors that you are using. An experienced coordinator should have access to the vendor contracts, have access to the floor plans, have seen the venue you’ve chosen and met with other vendors beforehand, and have the ability to personally contact a vendor should something go wrong.
A day-of coordinator wouldn’t have this sort of access, and that can be a major problem on your wedding day.
Understanding Your Vision
One of the biggest reasons why day-of wedding coordination is not a good idea is because these coordinators will never be able to carry out the vision you have for your big day exactly as you imagined it.
When you have a specific vision, working with an event planner over a significant period of time can help ensure that it comes to life. However, when a coordinator only has one day to familiarize herself with what you want out of the celebrations, they best she’ll be able to do is approximate that vision as best she can.
You’ve spent months planning this wedding, pouring over every detail to make sure that it is perfect—there’s no way a coordinator will be able to effectively carry out those plans with only 8–10 hours of work.
