The biggest wedding planning mistake couples make, and how to avoid it!
As a Wedding Event Planner in the UK, let me tell you about the single biggest mistake couples make when planning their wedding!
Suppose I asked you to hazard a guess. In that case, I’m sure you’d take my previous wedding planning advice and tell me it would be either not setting a wedding budget in advance or perhaps failing to agree on the boundaries with those financially contributing to your wedding?
Well, you’d be wrong, my friend! The biggest wedding planning mistake you can make is failing to communicate effectively. Yep, it’s that simple!
No doubt you will have assembled a dream team of wedding suppliers, and presumably, you’ve chosen them because they are fantastic at what they do! No matter how good your wedding suppliers are, though, they aren’t mind readers and will need guidance, input and suggestions to deliver the wedding from your wildest dreams.
When you begin planning your wedding, and right throughout your wedding planning journey, you must communicate the vision for your wedding day. Whether it’s explaining to your wedding photographer what style of wedding pictures you’re hoping for or sharing the ideas for your wedding styling with a professional wedding stylist, being able to communicate what you’re aiming to achieve is critical.
For anything visual, using a tool such as Pinterest or images you find on Instagram is valuable and can quickly highlight the direction you want to head in.
For anything non-visual, being clear and concise with your requirements is essential. For example, explaining to your wedding caterer that you’d like a sharing menu isn’t enough; you’ll need to give direction about the number of courses and ideas for what you’d like to be served at each stage.
Knowing when to communicate with your wedding supplier team is also essential. You may make a booking for some suppliers and then confirm the final arrangements as you get closer to your wedding day.
For other wedding suppliers, you’ll need to work far more closely together, particularly when it comes to wedding design and styling or other critical parts of your wedding day. Establishing when the best time to communicate the latest plans with your supplier team will ensure you can be organised and leave a diary note to connect at the right time.
Also, having an understanding of the best way to communicate is essential. For lengthy discussions, I’d always recommend you follow up with an email summary to confirm the key points you’ve agreed on.
Planning a wedding is a significant undertaking, and it’s easy to miss the tiny but important details following an extensive discussion. Being able to outline the important elements in writing allows both you and your wedding supplier team to pick up any areas that aren’t entirely clear or don’t quite fit with each other’s understanding.
In summary, keep communicating! As a professional UK wedding planner, I always ask my clients to be completely open and transparent with me; if I don’t know about a worry or concern, I have no opportunity to fix it.
Trusting that your wedding suppliers are fully invested in your wedding day should give you the confidence to communicate openly and honestly; after all, they want to help you have the best day ever!
A bit of a strange one to raise here, but it is essential. In the middle of wedding season, your wedding supplier team will be doing what they do best, helping couples get married in style! It’s not reasonable to expect that a wedding supplier will be able to respond immediately to emails or phone calls as the vast majority of their time will be spent on-site delivering weddings.
As a professional wedding event planner, I advise my clients that there’s usually a 48 hour response time during the week. Any emails or communication received on Friday are likely to be picked up on Tuesday the following week.
As so many of my weddings are either marquee weddings or tipi weddings, I often spend time on-site with my clients to manage the de-rig on a Monday. Of course, if it’s something that I can answer quickly, I’ll always do my best, but for anything substantial, I’d rather be back at my desk to give you the focus and attention you deserve. The benefit here is that you’ll know by the time your wedding arrives, I’ll be focused purely on you and your wedding day!
So, there you have it, keep communicating – planning a wedding is a fluid process, but if you’ve got the right team of wedding suppliers on board, it should also be great fun!
If you’re planning a wedding in the UK and fancy chatting through the plans for your wedding, I’d love to hear from you!
You can reach me at [email protected] or 0800 772 0765.
