5 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Professional Wedding Planner For Your 2023 Wedding

January is here which means wedding planning season is in full swing! November and December are always big months for engagement and once you have that rock on your hand, it’s time to start planning the big day. 💍

One of the first things that people consider when they start planning a wedding is whether or not they will hire a professional wedding planner or if they’ll be a DIY bride that figures everything out on their own.

While you can absolutely pull off an amazing wedding by planning it yourself, hiring a professional wedding planner is almost always a smart choice for multiple reasons, so before you make the decision, it’s important to know why a wedding planner might be a good choice for your big day specifically.

And I know what you might be thinking… “Chalonda, you’re a wedding planner, OF COURSE you would say that!”

But hear me when I say that I wouldn’t encourage something that I wouldn’t do myself. My husband and I didn’t have a huge wedding, so a wedding planner wasn’t necessary, but I promise you that if we did I 100% would have hired help.

Planning anything on your own - whether that be a birthday party, Christmas celebration or even a dinner out with friends - is hard, much less a life event that usually only happens once.

So, before you choose the DIY life, just hear me out ⬇️

1. We have professional training that you can’t find on Google.

Did you know that many wedding planners receive professional certifications? This means that we aren’t just people who have mastered the art of wedding planning through piecing things together from Google and Pinterest.

As a master certified wedding planner through the Certified Wedding Planner Society, I’ve learned the ins and outs of wedding and event planning so you don’t have to.

While it’s true that you can learn a lot through your own research, there are just certain things that you aren’t going to find that are extremely important for making sure your big day runs smoothly.

So, if you want to ensure that you’re checking the correct things off your wedding to-do list at the right time AND make sure you don’t forget anything throughout the process, hiring a professional is the way to go. 

2. Your Pinterest board will be brought to life without you having to DIY everything alone.

Chances are you’ve been adding to your wedding Pinterest board since before you even started dating. You’ve probably imagined what your wedding day would be like for years - what style of dress you would wear, the color scheme, who would be in your wedding, what type of venue it would be at, etc. - and the time has finally come to really bring that to life. While Pinterest can be really amazing to help you create a vision, it also can be extremely unrealistic.

For example, you might want a champagne wall at your reception because you saw it on Pinterest, until you find out that that champagne wall costs $2k to rent… without the champagne. 😅From there you might go down a DIY rabbit hole to see how you (aka your husband or your dad) can make one instead. And while I’m all for a good do-it-yourself project, things like this can become just as costly and can take up so much of your time that could be spent on other things.

When you have a wedding planner helping you bring your vision to life, we can help you find budget-friendly alternatives to certain parts of your wedding and make sure that everything you want flows together smoothly instead of being randomly thrown together. 

3. You can trust that you’re staying on track with your to do’s AND your budget.

It’s no secret that planning a wedding can take a lot of time, cost a lot of money and be extremely stressful - none of which are what you should have to take on alone as a bride.

As a bride-to-be, you also have a normal life to continue living, so choosing to plan your wedding on your own can take up a big chunk of your time and add a lot of stress that really isn’t necessary.

Additionally, you can become so overwhelmed that you just start mindlessly swiping your credit card without paying attention to how much has already been spent.

The best way to avoid this is to hire someone to help you through the process from start to finish! It’s a wedding planner’s full time job to make sure you stay on track with all of your to-do’s and your budget.

One of the first things we discuss together is when you want your wedding to be, which will determine your to-do timeline, and how much money you want to spend. From there, it’s my responsibility to make sure that you meet all deadlines, including booking your venue and vendors, submitting your food and beverage order, choosing your playlist, etc. while also making sure that you don’t go over budget in any category.

When you’re the one doing all of this on top of living your regular life, it’s inevitable that something will be missed - you’ll forget to arrange transportation, order a cake cutting set, write vendor thank yous, etc. A wedding planner takes all of this on and manages it for you so that you can sit back and enjoy the ride!

4. You don’t have to be glued to your phone 24/7 for questions - we communicate for you!

One of the biggest complaints for brides when it comes to planning their wedding is that people are constantly coming to them with questions. And while these questions are typically out of love and people don’t mean any harm by it, it can be extremely overwhelming.

When you hire a wedding planner, you instantly get a go-to person that you, your family, your wedding party and your vendors can use throughout the entire process. 

If you have a random question that strikes you at midnight, you don’t have to stay up researching and problem-solving on your own. Instead, you can trust that I’ll help you navigate the issue and make sure it’s resolved so that you can fully focus on the fun. 

If your wedding party isn’t sure where they need to be and when they need to be there, don’t worry - I got you! Or if your Aunt Sue needs to know every single detail on wedding day, she can come to me so that you can enjoy getting ready with your girls. And you can bet that when your vendor is lost on their way to the venue, you won’t even know it’s happening. 

5. You’ll have a memory of a lifetime and remember the joyous moments, not the stressful ones.

Your wedding is a day that you deserve to remember for the rest of your life and those memories shouldn’t be filled with stress or things that went wrong. 

You should remember the special time you had with your bridesmaids while sipping mimosas and getting your makeup done. You should remember the look on your husband's face when you walked down the aisle. You should remember how you felt when you recited your vows.

You should remember how you felt when you were dancing with all of your besties at the end of the night. 

Those are the moments I want you to remember!

I don’t want you to think about how a vendor canceled last minute and we had to find a replacement. I don’t want you to think about how stressed you were leading up to the big day because you had so many things to do. I don’t want you to ever even know that one of the groomsmen spilled a drink on his white shirt 10 minutes before the ceremony.

When you hire a wedding planner, you can walk away from your big day with the GOOD memories and confidently know that everyone else did too!

Those are all things that you really want when it comes to your wedding, isn’t it? If so, NOW is the time to lock in your personal wedding planner for your 2023 wedding so you can have peace of mind and trust that your big day will go off without a hitch!

Here’s to your best day ever 🥂

Chalonda

Master Certified Wedding Planner