What to Look for In a Personal Wedding Planner

Choosing a personal wedding planner can be a frightening task.Finding someone you trust enough to plan one of the biggest events of your life is not something you should take lightly, but is something that will help you create the wedding of your dreams in an efficient and well thought out manner.Here are some tips to find your ideal personal wedding planner.

Certification

Look for a personal wedding planner with a certification in wedding planning.Certified personal wedding planners will have the knowledge base to skillfully plan and execute your wedding.They will know the ins and outs of the wedding business, and will have hands on experience in all aspects of wedding planning.  A certified personal wedding planner will take the guesswork of your preparation by approaching the process as a business transaction.As your personal wedding planner, he or she will be there to plan your wedding in a full time capacity.  Wedding planning may not be your day job, but it is for a number of highly talented professionals.

References

You wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive, so why hire a personal wedding planner without seeing their previous work?  Their previous events don’t have to mirror the type of wedding you hope to have, but if their clients express that they were communicative and attentive to the desires of the newlyweds to be, this will speak highly of their ability to plan the wedding that you want.

Ask for references of one or two former clients who have either given a statement for the personal wedding planner to use, or people you can call and speak with about their experience with the planner.Also ask to see some pictures of previous events just to get a feel for the spectra of things the personal wedding planner is capable of planning.

Connection

While your personal wedding planner is first and foremost a professional dedicated to the business of planning weddings, make sure you choose someone you are comfortable working with.  You will be working with this person for an extended period of time, and feeling a connection with this person as a trusted party to act in your best interest is crucial.You will want to have the comfort of knowing that your personal wedding planner is listening to your desires and is someone you can envision yourself working with in great detail.

Photo by SWBatzer

When you Should Fire Your Wedding Planner

Wedding planners are professionals that are supposed to work with you on your wedding, and they are supposed to give opinions but not be overbearing, and the most important factor of all is that they are supposed to always remember that it is your wedding not theirs, and so even though they may have a multitude of ideas to bring to the table, they should still hear and listen to your ideas first, so that your wedding will be for you.

There are certain times when you should fire your wedding planner, and although this may sound harsh, you need to realize that you only have one wedding, and so you certainly want to be satisfied with the results that come from it. Especially if you are paying to have a wedding planner, then even more so you do not want to be unhappy with the results.

Why you Should Fire Your Wedding Planner

All too many times, you are too afraid to fire your wedding planner, and although this is mean of you in a way, or so you may think, you have to realize that if they are not listening to your ideas, not taking your feelings into consideration, or simply not working hard enough on your wedding, then you truly do have the right to fire your wedding planner and find a new one.

If you already know that you want to fire your wedding planner, but are just unsure about how you can go about it, then just remember to be polite, and even though you may feel bad you really should go through with it because your wedding is the most important day of your life, and you should not feel as though you got ripped off or as though none of your ideas got heard and thus that your wedding is nothing like what you expected, and in a negative way.

Basically there are many different ways that you can go about it, but just make sure that you let them know that you are not happy with their ideas and with the results that are being shown so far. They should understand, and most certainly should not put up a fight, as any good and decent wedding planner will be most concerned about your feelings and about you being happy with your wedding and so if anything they may even direct you to another wedding planner that is more in sync with you.

The Essential Traits for Becoming a Wedding Planner

Wedding planners have a very demanding job as they are responsible that everything goes according to plan on the most important day of a couple’s life; a day which they hope to remember and cherish forever. Therefore becoming a wedding planner is not an easy task but definitely a very rewarding job, which will bring you great satisfaction and monetary benefits.

Here are some of the requirements and points to ponder before you decide on becoming a wedding planner.

Your Personality and Qualifications

There is no specific qualification required by law in order to be a wedding planner. However, it is highly recommended to train with local wedding planners or wedding consultants before you decide on becoming one. Training with a local wedding consultant will cost you between $750 and $1500 depending on the company you are training with but it will be very helpful in your future activities and be a contributing factor in your success.

Becoming a wedding planner however requires a very strong character and the ability to work under pressure as there will be more than one occasion when things will not run as planned. You will need to make the right decisions fast without panicking and also without altering the wedding plans.

In order to become a successful wedding planner, you need tremendous organizing skills and coordinating abilities. You need to be able to foresee what may go wrong and most times have a back up plan for it. After all, you are dealing with the most important day of a couple’s life and if you ruin it there is absolutely no way to rectify your mistakes, and therefore, there is no place for error.

Things to Prepare as a Wedding Planner

Becoming a wedding planner will require you to let others know that you are offering these services and the only way to do it is to prepare a portfolio with the services you can provide and in due course the weddings that you have organized as well as references of the couples as well.

Advertising will in the end be key to your success and even though the word of mouth is what will get you the most amount of jobs it is important that you have a professional approach and provide as much data as possible to all those interested through a brochure and if possible a website too. The key to becoming a wedding planner that is successful and thus, in demand will require tremendous people’s skill, professionalism and ensuring that all jobs are done exactly as per the requirements of your clients.

photo by hulk4598

Make Writing Your Wedding Thank You Notes Easy as 1-2-3!

Every bride is touched by wedding or bridal shower gifts. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to see just how many family members, friends and loved ones care enough to give you something special. And then a bride realizes that she must send thank you notes to each person. For some brides this can be 75 to up to 400 thank you notes! This is a lot of thank you notes to write for any single person to do.

But thank you notes should be written and they are an important bridal task to be accomplished. Bridal etiquette says that you actually have a full year to write your thank you notes – but we’d like to think you get them in the mail a bit earlier than that! What brides need is a bit of a system for writing their thank you notes. Try some of our tips to writing your thank you notes and you’ll be writing them as easy as 1-2-3!

Set aside certain times to write thank you notes. Schedule an hour or half hour each week to write your thank you notes. Having a certain time to do this is very useful. Knowing you will do it during this time takes a lot of stress off of you and you’ll know you will get a lot done. Many brides admit they multi-task and write thank you notes while watching television or getting other things done. You could write them on your lunch hour at work if this was convenient for you.

Consider setting a goal to write a certain number of thank you notes each day or time period. This is especially ideal if you are pushing yourself to write these thank you notes and get this task done. Knowing that you need to write at least 10 thank you notes will help you work hard to write them. You’ll get at least 10 completed, if not more.

Take notes as you unwrap gifts of who gives you what. This is an important bridal tip many brides have used for years. To remember their great aunt gave them candlesticks or their old college roommate gave them an espresso maker. Using these notes can help you write personalized thank you notes.

The best thank you note is thoughtful and to the point. A thank you note doesn’t have to be long, it simply needs to be thoughtful. Thank the person or couple for their gift and say how much you’ll enjoy it. If they came to the wedding thank them for coming and that you enjoyed seeing them there and hope they had a good time.

Get your stamps and thank you note supplies all together in one place. A savvy bride knows to stay organized with her thank you note writing she’ll need to keep her thank you note supplies all in one place. Get plenty of stamps, a good pen and lots of thank you notes. You don’t need to be ready to write thank you notes and not have what you need available to you. Keep it all in a box or bag, right on hand.

Have a list or file of thank you notes to write. Cross of the names as you go. This will keep you from writing two thank you notes to the same person. It’s an easy mistake to make, but any bride wants to avoid this.

See! These thank you notes for brides can be as easy as 1-2-3! Happy writing!

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