What Exactly Is Wedding Coordination?
If you’ve been looking into weddings at all, you’ve probably heard of a wedding coordinator by now. My guess is that it was most likely even in the same sentence or conversation as a wedding planner. You also probably thought to yourself, what the heck is the difference?! It’s actually a pretty easy distinction, so let me walk you through it.
The biggest difference between a wedding coordinator and a wedding planner comes down to the amount of time they spend with you prior to your wedding day. A wedding planner is doing just that, planning with you throughout the entirety of the process. Now, even this has varying levels of involvement that I’ll get to in another blog or two, but that’s really all you need to know for the purpose of this conversation. On the other hand, a wedding coordinator is stepping in closer to your wedding day to help tie up loose ends and coordinate final details with your vendor team.
The best way to think about this is to think about how much you want to take on yourself, versus how much you want to delegate. If you want to do one hundred percent of the planning and just need an expert to come in a couple of months before the wedding day to take the reigns from you and make sure everyone/everything is where they need to be and when, then a wedding coordinator is going to be your best bet. For everyone else, you’re looking for a wedding planner.
It’s important to remember that your wedding coordinator is also very different from your venue coordinator. I say this with all of the respect in the world for a venue coordinator, but their job does not focus on you. It focuses on the venue. I’ll dive deeper into this comparison in another blog because this one can be confusing. A wedding coordinator, on the other hand, is solely focused on you. Their job is to coordinate with your vendors/venue, yes…but it’s also to make sure that you are having an incredible day well before you even get to your venue.
Most wedding coordination packages include a decent amount of assistance as well. For example, all Sur Mesure couples who book the Wedding Coordination Package have unlimited communication with me starting 60-days before their wedding date, access to their entire planning portal from day one, vendor coordination, timeline building/coordination, and personal inventory management. That’s a lot of things!!
I will say, there are many many coordination packages out there that step in even closer to the day of the wedding and to that I say, to each their own. I personally don’t feel comfortable stepping in any later than the 60-day mark, because each wedding and each couple is so different! There’s no way to learn every nuance of your day and your vision in such a short period of time. Because keep in mind, your coordinator is your eyes and ears on your wedding day. In order for them to be able to make a decision and be fully confident that it is the same decision you would make, that’s going to take some time.
Bottom line, I truly believe in my heart of hearts that every single couple needs at the very least a wedding coordinator. I promise you, the very last thing you’re going to want is to be the one getting a million questions from vendors or guests leading up to your wedding (and especially on the actual wedding day). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen couples book wedding coordination less than three months before their wedding because they didn’t think they needed one, and then realized “oh crap!”. Don’t be that couple, book your coordinator (or planner)!