Planning

I did. I paid $12,000 in an extremely high cost of living area. I have friends in lower cost of living areas that paid closer to $5,000. It was 100% worth it and I highly recommend it if you are like me and don’t want to hire vendors or pick things out. But if you have a small budget it probably wouldn’t be worth it.

As a wedding planner and bride planning my own wedding, I feel this. As a bride, I just want to sit back, enjoy our engagement and let someone else do all the work while I tell them exactly what I want! There’s a lot of options, it will be cheaper for a day of coordinator that full service. But if you want someone to take care of everything from start to finish then full service is what you want. Some can really work with your budget. And may offer discounts if you go with their preferred vendors like hair and makeup, so that will save, as well.

We are on a small budget. So we would probably do the day of coordinator cause it would be the cheapest.

We’re using a month-of coordinator. The package we chose was $1800 and I can call/email her whenever I want (our date is in December). She’s always available to help with vendor recommendations or ideas if I’m stuck. The month of the wedding she will be the one to contact all vendors and coordinate set-up, timeline, etc. We’re also paying an extra fee to have her set-up and take down all of our ceremony & reception decor ($350). Basically all I have to do is find the vendors I want and get my decor together and she handles the rest. Totally worth it, especially since we’re doing a destination wedding and we don’t want anyone to have to stay behind and clean up!

I’m not sure if a day of coordinator will be the best option if you are not enjoying planning at all. DOCs are great if you have done all the planning and need someone to just help with the last steps (finalizing wedding day timeline, helping with ceremony rehearsal etc...) and to be there day of the wedding to make sure everything runs on time, to set up and tear down decorations.
If you need someone that helps you find the decorations you want, helps with guest lists, helps keep track of RSVPs, helps finding venues etc then a full on wedding planner will be best. I think those range around $5000-$10000 depending on where you live.
I’ve also seen some that offer their services for a few months before the wedding, so longer than a DOC but shorter that a full wedding planner.I would recommend looking up wedding planners on the WeddingWire Vendor tab or on google and then checking out their pricing/description of what each planner option is so you can figure out if it’s worth it to you

We hired a wedding planner in LA who is absolutely amazing and it was around $2k. He’s been so wonderful, especially through all of the COVID postponement issues! I couldn’t have done it without him!

Midwest and paying around $3500 for our full-service wedding planner. She had different packages (full, partial, and month-of), and we initially had her for just partial planning, which involved 6 meetings or phone calls with her, unlimited emails, and she prescreened vendors in our budget, gave us the top three, then we called and selected our vendor from there. As someone who is pretty organized, I thought that was more than enough, but I ended up getting stressed and upgraded. Honestly, I think my planner is better at the partial and month-of planning, but it's so nice to have someone else deal with problems (especially with the pandemic) and just let me know the solution.

I had to have one, way to type A to try to do this on my own and not go bonkers. I interviewed a few and found an amazing one in Nashville who in just the venue search has been amazing!! And taken so much of the little things off my plate with venues. So I think if you can find it in your budget it is totally worth having!

We were required by our venue to get a day of coordinator. While I’ve loved the process, I could see the benefit. If it’s in your budget, go for it. There’s no point in stressing over the planning. It’s your wedding and you should be happy when you think of it. Not stressed.