When The Wedding Planner Doesn’t

I worked as a wedding planner for a specific venue for a long time. I got to know a lot of the wedding vendors and more specialized planners who worked on weddings held there. One planner in particular reached out to me about doing some work for her company, and I thought it could be a great opportunity.

She had a scheduling conflict with a fully planned wedding that was coming up in a few weeks (red flag there) and needed my help to execute and oversee the day-of planning.

The timing was so tight I wasn’t able to do a walkthrough with the clients beforehand, but she assured me it was all planned and just needed hands on the day of.

When I dug into the timeline and order of events to prep myself, I discovered that she had contracted out to the lowest bidder for everything.

It was at a site not usually used for weddings, so there was no infrastructure or amenities for events; everything came from an outside source. She had ice delivered from one company, bartenders hired from another, drinks delivered by another, etc. This went down to things like serve-ware rentals from one equipment company and tables/chairs from a separate one.

This meant that there were a TON of moving parts to account for on the wedding day. The serving staff had arrived, but the caterer delivering the appetizer platters had not, so they had nothing to actually serve. The serve-ware rentals had been delivered to another part of the property, so they didn’t know where they were to set things up.

It was a logistical nightmare, and it took every ounce of my focus to get things more or less running so they could actually get married and have somewhere to sit and something to eat.

The worst part? She recommended they book vendors this way to save money on individual line items, but they probably paid three times more in delivery and service fees than they would have going with a full-service company that provided, delivered, set up, and serviced everything.