Grand Rapids Wedding Photographer // Wedding Planner vs. Onsite Coordinator!

I have been thinking about writing this post for quite some time.  As more and more weeks go by, I photograph more and more weddings thinking that everything would have went much smoother with a wedding planner or someone working for the couple helping coordinate the day’s events.  Because of that…here are some more thoughts!

Five reasons why a Wedding Planner is different than an Onsite Coordinator!

1 – Wedding planners act as a neutral third party to everyone involved in making a wedding day possible.  Their number one objective is to make sure everything is perfect for the bride and groom, where an onsite coordinator mainly is looking out for the venue making sure their end is all taken care of.

2 – The wedding planner is there with you from beginning to end and knows all of the details in between.  At some venues, the person that you have been communicating with throughout the process isn’t even on duty during your wedding. (I know a specific example of this that happened to one of my past brides.  Maybe someday I will get her to guest blog 🙂  )

3 – A planner would contact all of your vendors and confirm your contract details to ensure everyone is on the same page, this includes arrival and set up times.  They would then take all of this information and prepare a wedding weekend schedule to be distributed to the vendors as well as the bridal party.  This is typically not something an onsite coordinator would handle, and most likely then would be something you would have to do yourself.

4 – Hiring a wedding planner comes with the ability to email or call them with any wedding questions that pop up from the moment you hire them until the event is complete. Whether it is on timing, logistics, etiquette, decor, etc., they would be available and willing to help you. While they do work with other clients, they purposefully try to limit the number of weddings that they handle during the summer in order to ensure superior service.  Onsite coordinators typically have a wedding they are working for almost every weekend during the summer and therefore have a lot more clients to juggle at a time.

5 – Even with an onsite coordinator, you still need lots of help from other people during your special day.  While the o/c is making sure the venue is setting things up properly, etc…you will still need someone answering my questions, making sure the bouquets are in the right place, keeping everyone on time, helping stitch up the flower girl’s dress, etc, etc etc.  Many brides have Mistresses of Ceremonies to help with these things….but that doesn’t always seem to quite be enough.  In my opinion, it would be more beneficial to hire someone’s help and let your friends and family enjoy the special day instead of running errands and helping clean up, etc.

Hopefully these reasons helps at least one bride out there!  Lots of onsite coordinators are awesome to work with and are quite an asset to your special day…but one that would be able to replace an actual planner would be hard to come by!

**All of this info was kindly borrowed from Red Heels Events.  Read her full blog post here!

 

 I don’t really like posts without photos…so here is a random one 🙂  Addy with her two BFFs camping over Memorial Day Weekend!