The Bride’s Survival Guide: Questions To Ask A Wedding Planner Before Hiring Them

A wedding can be very demanding. There are so many things you need to do to ensure that it will be perfect. Even how good your wedding dress is, if your wedding is not planned well, you cannot say that you have had a perfect wedding.

To make this traumatizing and stressful wedding planning, smooth and easy, hire a professional wedding planner. Some may not agree, as this service comes with a cost, but hiring a planner is a necessity for a wedding. The wedding planner will help out throughout the process and will take a huge chunk of work off your back.

As you are decided to hire a wedding planner, it is important that you ask them important questions to make sure that the professionals you will hire can provide the best kind of service you need.

To help you get started, below are some of the basic questions to ask a wedding planner:

• Is your calendar available at my wedding?

This is one of the first things to ask a wedding planner. You would not want to lay all your cards to them and end up going to a different planner because their schedule is full.

If you are planning to hire a popular wedding planner, it is best if you schedule their service ahead of time, as most of these planners are fully booked years before.

• Can you work around my budget?

It is best if you are honest with the wedding planner about your budget. This can help them determine whether your dream wedding is possible or not. They can also tell you upfront things that they can offer around your budget. You may or may not agree with it, but needless to say, these questions must be asked to know if the business will pursue between you and them.

• What kind of wedding services do you provide?

Do they offer full service, a month before the day coordination, on the day wedding coordination or a la carte? This is important so you know whether they can provide you the service you need. There are some couples who prefer to arrange everything for their wedding and only seek help on the day of their wedding.

• How many times do we have to meet?

Whether you are planning full service, a month, a day, or a la carte, you have to know the frequency of meetups and agenda for each of the meetup. They should be able to present to you an outlined plan, including their involvement in every part of the planning process.

You can also ask if you can create the time table for them to adhere to.

• Will you contact all suppliers on our behalf?

Will they work as the middleman for all the vendors? Will they speak to all the vendors, from the time you sign a contract with them, up to the delivery of goods and the payment process? How much involvement the coordinator would take part of?

• How many of your staff need to be at the wedding?

How many people will they dispatch to work with you at your wedding? The number of staff is highly dependent on the size of the wedding. If the wedding is huge, expect that they may need to carry on a big gang.

• If the main wedding coordinator can’t be at the wedding because of an emergency, is there anyone who will represent him/her?

One of the things you have to make sure of is their backup plan for unforeseen events. How is the continuity of the plan if one didn’t work out?

Moving on, apart from the basic questions above, there are other questions you also need to ask when assessing the capabilities of the wedding planner.

To help you with the process, below are some of the questions to ask:

• The number of weddings they planned

Their experience says a lot about their expertise. The more weddings they planned, the more advantageous it is for you. Their experiences gave them different opportunities and problems that, hopefully, they resolved. With their experience, you are guaranteed that whatever problems come their way, they can solve it.

• Can they provide you with some references

Asking them to provide you with references is also a good idea. This can help you in determining the quality of work they provide and how competent they are with their work. Once they provide you with a list of their clients, feel free to call them. Make sure though when you give their previous client a call,  introduce yourself immediately, and do not go around the bush. Let them know the purpose of your call and do not ask irrelevant questions.

• How many weddings are you handling, same time as mine?

This is an important question you also need to ask if they say 2 or 3, make sure you know how they plan to handle their schedule. Would the schedule of the other weddings impact yours? Can they still focus on your wedding considering that there is a wedding they also need to handle the same time as yours? You would not want your wedding plans sacrificed.

• Have you ever planned a wedding in the same location as mine?

If they do, this can give you a better advantage as they know something about the venue, but if none, it is still okay but you need to know how they plan to make it work considering that it is their first time working on that specific venue.

• Do you have some sort of warranty?

In the event that the wedding was not executed as planned, do they have some sort of warranty, perhaps a refund? Even how reliable the wedding planner is, knowing their warranty guideline is a must. You would not want to pay for something that made your wedding a major disaster.

There are a lot of other things you need to decide on for your wedding, to know more about it, follow this link: Ultimate wedding day checklist.

Photo by

Micheile Henderson
Frans Hulet