Do you really need a wedding planner?

Do you truly need a wedding planner? If you or your fiancé have a full-time job, your bridesmaids have a full-time job (or aren’t that hands on), you are planning a destination wedding, don’t have key vendor contacts, are easily stressed, have a guest list of 100 or more, have a very clear idea of what you want but don’t know how to bring it to life or you don’t have a creative bone in your body then yes, yes you do! You truly need a wedding planner and I only know this because I am a very organised person who thought they had it all under control (lol) until I started getting stress pimples, losing sleep and was on the verge of a meltdown half way through planning our wedding. It was at that point I knew I had to call in the experts, Rossini Weddings.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT WEDDING PLANNER

Make sure you choose a wedding planner that you click with from your first meeting. They should be prioritising and eagerly conceptualising your big day. If they aren’t, they won’t change after you have paid them. You should leave your initial meeting / facetime / skype call with your potential wedding planner feeling excited and less stressed knowing that you both share the same overall vision. If you leave there feeling anything less, then continue your search.  They aren’t the one.

We had a small, destination wedding with 48 guests on the Amalfi Coast. Our wedding venue came with an in house “wedding planner”. While we were trying to find out about the venue and eagerly trying to get details confirmed she was incredibly rude and unhelpful. I brushed this off and thought once we had paid her the wedding planning fee she would be eager and excited to plan our wedding. She wasn’t, she was just as unhelpful and rude, and I was made to feel like every email or question I had was a genuine nuisance to her. After a few months of getting nowhere I realised I couldn't rely on her and needed a proper wedding planner to help plan our perfect day.

If you had asked me if a wedding planner was worth the cost before our wedding I would have said a definite no. However, now that we have gone through the experience and worked with the most incredible wedding planners in Italy, Rossini Weddings, I couldn’t recommend using a planner enough. They saved my sanity on more than one occasion.

WHAT DO WEDDING PLANNERS DO FOR YOU?

Everything or anything you need. Wedding planners will help bring your ideas to life, present ideas that you hadn’t even thought of, liaise with vendors and deal with all the stress of planning a wedding and the stress on the wedding day itself when something goes wrong (something will always go wrong) so you don’t have to. I am sure there are still things that went wrong on our wedding day which I don’t even know about because our wedding planners handled every problem before I was even aware there was a problem. If you are getting married in Italy, Rossini Weddings are the ultimate, dream wedding planners. Sarah and Lisa are a dynamic, creative duo. Australian born friends who lived in London for many years and have now made Milan their home. They are the cofounders of the newly established Rossini Weddings and offer full wedding planning services. They have this beautiful calmness and creative flair that they bring to your wedding and they truly make sure that your day reflects YOU as a couple.  What is also great about them is they liaise with all the local vendors in Italy and you can have all your meetings in English, so nothing is lost in translation. As we had a destination wedding and had guests flying in for all over the world they not only planned the wedding day itself, but also planned a full week of activities and secured all the reservations so all we had to do was arrive and begin to soak up the pure magic of the Amalfi Coast. There is so much they arranged, so I will be doing a separate blog post all about the build-up and wedding day itself, keep an eye out for that soon!

WHAT DO WEDDING PLANNERS COST?

This can vary between wedding planners, but I would suggest you set aside 10% of your wedding budget then meet with the wedding planners you have narrowed down and discuss their costs. Be realistic about your budget. Remember you get what you pay for so don’t expect to have all the bells and whistles with a beer budget and champagne taste.  The great thing about Rossini Weddings is they have 3 packages available: pre-wedding planning, day of coordination and the ultimate Rossini package (which covers both preplanning and on the day coordination). They charge a flat rate so you know exactly what you are paying for upfront and the pricing is customised for each wedding based on the amount of work required.

PROS VS CONS OF HAVING A WEDDING PLANNER

Pros

• You will truly love planning your wedding when you don’t have to stress over all the details because that’s no longer your job.
• They will make sure you have with the best vendors in your price range.
• They will stick to your budget (and make you stick to it too).
• It ain't their first rodeo. Wedding planners are the experts, they have done this before.

Cons

• It’s an extra cost. However, having gone through this, your wedding planner will be worth every cent. I couldn’t have paid someone enough not to be a stressed, nervous wreck in a foreign country. You will have so many emotions to deal with on your wedding day, trust me that last thing you will want to deal with is what to do when it’s suddenly raining, and you need a plan B pronto. 

All images are shot by Vanilla Photography