Choosing Your Wedding Planner

How do you choose a wedding planner?

Wedding planners are such an important part of your wedding day, and I truly believe that every couple can benefit from hiring one. If any level of service is in your budget, I highly recommend hiring one! In fact, some venues, photographers, and other venues have even started requiring planners in their contracts. Okay, let me take a step off of my soapbox! This blog isn’t intended to sell you on why planners are so wonderful- it’s simply to help you figure out how to choose a wedding planner! Typing “Kansas City Wedding Planner” into Google is going to yield a ton of results (like 10 million at the time of me writing this…), so how are you supposed to choose one? Keep reading to learn exactly how!

Decide what level of service you’d like

Most planners offer a variety of services. In Kansas City, you’ll most often see full-service wedding planning, partial wedding planning, and wedding management (sometimes called day-of coordination or month-of coordination). Your level of service should be determined based on your budget, how much knowledge you have on the wedding industry, and how much time and energy you are reasonably willing and able to dedicate toward planning your wedding. If you have plenty of extra time, love to plan, and have a decent amount of knowledge about the world of weddings, you may want something closer to wedding management. If you’re super busy, not a huge fan of planning, and/or don’t know much (and don’t care to learn) about the wedding industry, you’ll likely want a higher service level like full-service wedding planning.

Determine your wedding planning budget

If you’re following the steps from our How to Start Planning Your Wedding post, you’ll already have your overall budget set. Within that, you’ll want to determine how much you are going to spend on a planner alone. Planning costs vary widely depending on the service level and company. In Kansas City, wedding planning typically costs between $1,500 and $6,000, which is obviously a huge range!

Figure out your priorities

What is important to you when it comes to planning your wedding, your wedding planner, or both? Do you need a shark of a planner who can be direct with your sometimes intense family? Are you looking for a bubbly planner who can cheer you up when planning gets stressful? In the planning process, do you want to be hands-on and make decisions on your own? Or would you rather hand your vision off to someone else for them to execute? All planners and service levels offer slightly different processes and perspectives, so keep your priorities in mind during your research!

Start researching wedding planners in your area

Reach out to married friends who used a wedding planner and any already booked vendors for recommendations. Beyond that, you can start searching Google, Instagram, etc. for wedding planners in your area. Begin to filter out planners who seem like they may not be the right fit or who are way out of your budget. As a heads up, you may need to fill out contact forms in order to get pricing information from some planners.

Schedule calls and/or meetings

In order to talk through the details of your wedding, what service level is right for you, and to get a better feel of what a wedding planner is really like, you’ll want to schedule a phone call, video chat, or in-person meeting with any prospective planners. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to meet with so many humans, so try to schedule a maximum of three meetings. If you still don’t think you’ve found your wedding planner after three meetings, go ahead and schedule one or two more.

Go with your gut!

With vendors like planners and photographers, who you spend a lot of personal time with, personality is such a huge determining factor. Pros and cons lists can absolutely help you figure out which planner meets your needs, but ultimately your final decision maker should be whether or not your personalities mesh. Once you’ve decided, go ahead and let your planner know so that they can do a happy dance and get you set up with a contract and next steps!

Have you made it to the research or scheduling portion of your Kansas City wedding planner search? Feeling confident about how to choose a wedding planner? Check out our services or contact us to schedule a phone call!