Business, From the Experts, Wedding Planning Tips
A Day in the Life of a Wedding Planner: What the Big Day Looks Like
If you’re thinking about becoming a wedding planner, you’ve probably daydreamed about saving the day time and time again like Jennifer Lopez in the movie, The Wedding Planner.
Well, your dreams are not so far off! The wedding planner is the bride and groom’s personal hero or heroine before, on, and after the day of the wedding. Step inside a day in the life of professional wedding planner and QC tutor, Athena DeVonne, as she takes you through the important duties you need to know about and how to keep your busy day organized on the day of.
Wedding Planner Duties:
Take a look at one of Athena’s timelines from a real wedding she coordinated. Here are the tasks that she and her staff will be completing on the day of the wedding:
- Completing setup: decor and layout
- Confirming weather status
- Meeting wedding guests in hotel lobby and ensuring everyone boards the Charter bus
- Welcoming and seating guests
- Assisting with bouquet toss
- Setting out dancing shoes for guests
- Gathering and transporting wedding gifts
- Ensuring guests are loaded onto bus to go back to the hotel
- Clean up
Be prepared for a long day ahead of you! As you can see from The Wedding Timeline, Athena’s day starts at 8am and ends at midnight! Make sure you have a good night’s sleep the night before so that you are alert and ready for anything that may come your way on the day of the wedding.
Let’s Review
Before the Big Day
As the wedding planner, you should schedule a Final Details Meeting at least two weeks before the day of. Athena’s personal preference is 30 days prior to the wedding. This is a time to sit down with your clients and go over all the details of the wedding and the timeline. You should go over the design, the payments that have been made to date and any balances still owing, discuss their expectations for the wedding, review the timeline, etc.
Meeting well in advance will give you time to adjust any last-minute details or requests by your clients. This is also a great time to show your clients that everything is on track and they should feel very relaxed and assure them that all is taken care of. After you’ve met with your clients, work out the final communications with your vendors and provide them with the timeline.
The Wedding Timeline
The Wedding Timeline is the most important tool that you and all your vendors should have on the wedding day. This will list everything you and the vendors will be responsible for and at what times.
Important notes about The Wedding Timeline:
- Include important details like the date and time of the wedding, the address of the venue, and your emergency contact details
- All of the vendors, the bride and groom, yourself, and your staff should have a copy prior to the wedding and with them on the day of
- Include the times of every activity and responsibility of everyone involved
- Color code the vendors for easy identification of duties
The Wedding Timeline is how you will be successful on the wedding day and ensures everyone is on the same page. This is not something you want to overlook or do last minute. Make sure you have communicated with your vendors in advance to know how much time they need for setup and preparations, to complete their tasks, and for clean up so that you can allot the appropriate amount of time. Giving your vendors a timeline will show very clearly what your expectations are of them and when they need to complete each task so that everything runs smoothly on the big day.
Great video Athena! Could you possibly in the future create a video on putting together a business plan 🙂
Great Video Althena! Very detailed and clear. Love the colored coded timeline! Makes it easy for everyone involved. 🙂
Thank you Athena! This is really helpful! In the next video, can you discuss about the positions and their responsibilities in your team? Thanks.
Wow, there is so much involved for the planner on the wedding day! I can’t imagine how disastrous it would be without a solid plan and timeline, and I think it’s a great idea to have things color-coded to make a complex timeline as simple as possible. Looking forward to the first time I get to do this!
I would love a video on how to present yourself to potential vendors to connect you business with for events. weddings.
Great Video….I love the timeline. I would like to know what are some example question ideas to use when sitting down with potential clients to discuss their big day.
Great video Athena this is very useful information, I’ll be starting the event planning but hopefully after I finish I can start wedding planning as well.
Every inspiring and informative !!!
Great! Nice to meet you, Athena. I like my tutor 🙂
This video was very helpful! Watching this makes me even more exited about finishing and becoming a planner!! 🙂
This is a nice video, very helpful! Could you make a video about your first meetings with clients, how you organize everything, if there is a particular order of questions you ask them, etc. Thank you!
That’s a great idea Kathleen! We’ll add it to the list for future videos 🙂
Color coding is one of my favorite things to do. I’m glad it was addressed in the video, because it is a really underestimated skill and hey, who wouldn’t love to do a little coloring at work? I would love to see the progression from consultation up to the big day, since the beginning of a client relationship is as important the end result! I am excited to have Athena as a tutor for two of my three programs and hope to learn much from her.
Very helpful video! Thank you for sharing. Perhaps a video on what you should cover in the first phone call with your client… or email perhaps?
This was very great video. Athena gave some very helpful advice on the final steps of planning a wedding. Some other topics she can cover are the first steps to take with a new client & how to delegate tasks amongst your staff.
Such a helpful and informative video. Thanks Athena!
This was a great intro video, Athena. I would love to see your initial consultation and how you delegate tasks.
Helpful video, will keep for future reference! Could you do a video on how you keep organised? I find sometimes that can be a difficult. Thank you 🙂
Might just do the same 😉
Helpful information with what a Real timeline for the day of the wedding looks like. All the information for that day all in one place!. Thanks for sharing Athena!
I RRRRREALLY LIKE ATHENA DEVONNE. I watched this video before I even decided to enroll, it was VERY Helpful. I have watched a few of Athena’s videos and she made me aware of some things as a budding Event Planner I would have never thought of, that’s why EDUCATION is important, you can learn so much from those already in the field. Athena was one of the reasons I did enroll in QC Event School, along with MANY other REASONS. Thanks Athena and QC for being soooo professional in what you do.
The timeline helps so much, and the layout is very simple but yet very easy to understand. Thank you for taking the time to make this video for us. I think making a timeline would definitely help in any sort of event, Thank you again.
I LOVED everything about your planning process! I am big on color coding as it is so your process speaks VOLUMES to me! Thank you so much for posting this! As another person commented, I would love to know more about the roles of your team. Also, as someone who will just be starting out…I will not have the resources (money) to build a team quite yet…Can you touch on what wedding planning looks like from the perspective of someone that does not have a team?
Thanks for the amazing video Athena. I really like the color coding idea. I would love to see a video on Partial-Wedding Planning. What are the expectations of a partial wedding planner? Thanks and I look forward to more videos.
Love this video! 🙂 I would love to know more about the initial meeting and how that’s structured.
Love the video! Short, sweet and thorough. Next vid do you think you can do one on how to handle “problems” or mishaps and maybe share a personal one and how you overcame the obstacle.