Questions to ask a wedding planner

This is what I asked mine:

-What is the average budget of weddings your produce?

-Do you have vendor contacts that you receive discounts for bringing them business?

-How does the selection of vendors work?

-How do you communicate with your clients & what is the average response time?

-What are you general hours of business during the day, weekends, etc.?

-Would I️ be your only event that day or would there be another?

-Do you have any assistants to help you?

-How does payment work & what forms do you accept?

-How does your timeline planning work? Will I️ get to review and tweak it?

-How often will we meet to discuss design & how we want the day to run?

View Quoted Comment Thank you for this information!

And Thank you Laura for asking it!

I hired an event coordinating company. Questions I asked were:
-Had they had events at my venue before?
-Had they worked with any of my other vendors before? (This worked out well since the owner of the company and the banquet managers had a 20+ year working relationship).
-How many assistants would be there for set up?
-What do all their services include?
-How many years of experience did the team working my wedding have? I wanted those with at least a few years of experience.

The other thing I asked for was a coordinator that had a calm demeanor, that was very important to me since the first coordinator the company matched me with was loopy, erratic, and was shortly demoted 😐. And it was important that they were calm, and self assured and good under pressure because I wanted to be calm and not work on my wedding day, or worse yet have a debilitating panic attack .

Forgot, I had to let them know the different aspects to my wedding we were doing-like walking together to the altar, no introductions, etc. So questioned them as to if they've had weddings like that before and if they had any suggestions.

Important questions we asked our DOC:

-Have you worked with the venue/other vendors before?

-How many assistants will you bring for setup?

-How many hours is a typical contract for? What is the pricing rate?

One thing I wish I would have clarified:

-How much input do you have into coordinating the ceremony/rehearsal? Will you be leading, or will the officiant lead?

Our DOC was great at getting everyone organized, but they definitely did a little more than I was expecting at the rehearsal in terms of coordinating everything. It was mostly fine, except when they tried to insert a "giving away" part into the ceremony, which was not in our rather detailed script the officiant had. It was really awkward to have to loudly/firmly say "NO-I do not want to do that" in front of everyone. I definitely thought the officiant would be leading, not the DOC, so that was surprising.

Some other things...
1. On assistants- will they be your primary contact or is the owner/principal the primary contact? You want to know who you will actually do most of the planning with in the months leading up to the wedding. Also, I would ask how long the assistants have been with the company (try to find out if they have high turnover and the chance that the person you start working with will be the same person still working there on your wedding day).

2. I did all my interviews via phone, so I never met my planner face to face. If you are in the same boat, somehow find out if your wedding planner is pregnant. I hired mine, sent a $10k check to her, then sent an email confirming she got the money and I got an email out of office that said she was on maternity leave for 4 months... SHE NEVER MENTIONED IT DURING THE INTERVIEW OR AFTER I HIRED HER. In the end it was fine, we had more than a year but I didn’t like finding out by an email bounce back.

3. If they are helping plan, design, and coordinate- will they review all contracts first and make sure they are accurate/fair? Will they track deposits, balances, and due dates (I.e. are they going to help track the financial management and make sure you stay on budget and pay vendors on time... this is more challenging than it sounds since there are so many vendors and they all have different timelines).

I asked a ton of questions but here were my big ones:

How long have you been in business?

How many weddings do you typically do a year?

Is wedding planning your full time job?

What's the average cost of weddings you plan?

What is your backup plan in case of emergency?

I also added in one fun question which I thought told me a lot about each planner! I asked them all "If you could make every couple do one thing, what would it be?" Their responses were all really interesting and gave me a great feel for them. One planner said she'd make everyone do a signature cocktail because she thinks it's fun and festive and sets the tone early on, and said she'd insist on passed champagne as guests enter cocktail hour which I thought was awesome! 🥂 Another planner said she'd make everyone do a first look, and one planner said she'd make everyone hire a videographer.