The Planner is make or break for your wedding! Make sure you choose the right one.

Wedding planner is a person who will make your life much easier! Especially when planning a destination wedding, the help of a local planner can really make a difference in overall experience. 

Fun fact, our services cost but at the end of the day we are saving you  much more than you paid for our service.. how? By getting you the best possible deals with our trusted suppliers,by negotiating all the contracts and simply advising you what’s worth doing and what’s not. Not to mention all the logistics that you may not even be aware of. 

If you are about to contact a planner or a few to interview them and pick the very best person to help you with your big day, continue reading. 

I will give you a few tips on what YOU should know about your wedding before talking to a professional about it. Having a clear vision will help save time and money on both sides. Here are a few tasks/ points  for you and your fiance to go through together before speaking to a planner.

1. Location. Please use Google to narrow it down. It’s important. We get it that sometimes couples really don’t know where they want to get married or what scenery they want.. but they know where they and their guests can fly to. Please do your homework and see what destinations are actually within easy reach for your guests before you ask your planner to provide a location list. We have couples from places with flights to and from Palermo daily so when we research venues we focus on this side of the island. We had couples who did not check that at the beginning  so we ended up making proposals that had venues that were difficult to access for them. One quick flight search would have saved weeks of work for us and then in their planning journey. 
2. Know your numbers: it sounds obvious but it’s the most common mistake. You should have a minimum number of guests that you know will 100% attend like your parents, siblings and best friends and the maximum number of guests, all the invitees and trust us: you guests count will be somewhere in the middle. If you invite and book a venue for 60, you will likely end up with 35/40 guests. The average dropout rate for weddings is 20%. For destination weddings it can get to 40%. People need to take holidays off, book travel, plan well ahead, spend more than usual when attending the wedding. In general it’s a big investment. Some people will decline at the invite stage, some will try their best to come only to drop out at last minute/ two months before the wedding but one thing is sure, there will be a group who cannot make it. Have it in mind when choosing the venue. The bigger the wedding the bigger drop out rate will be. If you are planning for 30 people you will probably end up with 30 or 25. When planning for 300, consider a location big enough for 250. 
3. Have an idea but don’t set your budget before talking to a planner. Simply because you don’t know how much things costs. Unless you are an event professional you don’t realise all the costs that come into planning a wedding. So the best thing is to explain your vision to a planner and let them propose solutions for you. They have done it many times before so they know what to look out for, what’s possible logistically and what the most cost effective solutions would be. 

4. Local or international planner? Most of the couples are worried that a local planner may not be able to grasp  their vision as much as someone who lives in their city. International planner is great if you go for locations they offer, but if you want something off the beaten track they may not be able to direct you as they simply don’t know the area. Their expertise is limited to locations they offer and they work around them. Also, with big productions international planners will bring over their team for lights, flowers, building the stage etc so as you can imagine costs will result drastically higher as if using local suppliers. Ideally you will find a local planner with international experience- like us at Dazzled.
5. Logistics and the costs are very important indeed but you should also consider the human factor. If you don’t click with someone don’t book them. There needs to be a lot of trust between the couple and the planner so if you don’t have that feeling with your planners don’t book them. If you don’t appreciate their personal style don’t book them. You will struggle to trust their taste when styling your event. It really is very important to have a great connection with your planners. You will be on the phone and emails with them for a year or two so it’s really important to get the right people on board and make it a beautiful journey. 

Do your homework and book a few interviews with planners that work in the area you would like to get married in. Speak to them and let them prepare proposals for you. Book the one who you like the most, even if they seem expensive at first they will be worth their money. Their expertise will resolve many problems on the way which will prove great value for initial investment. Once you book your planner, trust them. They are experts, they have done it before. They know what they are doing and probably have satisfied unique requests like yours in the past. You are paying the professional for their expertise. Ask all the questions you need but let them do their job. It’s also their priority to make your wedding legendary.