The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

-Thomas Berger

When choosing a wedding planner, coordinator, dreams-come-true maker- you want to ask all the questions. Your best fit will begin with “Are you available on this date?” and end with, “I’m so glad we’re on the same page!”

But let’s get into specifics. What should you be asking your wedding planner to be?

1. The Basics

Date, budget, services offered. These are the unofficial ABCs of wedding planner 101. If your planner is available when you want them and they’re in your budget, that’s a great start. However, every planner’s services differ even minorly. Online they may look the same, but upon asking you may find out that they are only involved in the month leading up OR they expect weekly meetings leading up to the wedding along with matching tattoos (okay, so maybe not THAT extreme).

You want to know all that is included with their price and passion for making your day special. Each personality comes with strengths and quirks you may love or not so much and this will be reflected through asking these major basic questions.

2. How will we be involved?

This may seem silly to ask because it is your wedding, right? But a planner is essentially you in your back pocket. So who makes the phone calls? What are we expected to do or leave to you? Do we give you a list of what we like or …? Do you see how this can be an important question? You want to know in what capacity you will be acting, how often you’ll be meeting with your planner, and what you can rely on your planner to do so that nothing goes unnoticed in your wedding planning.

3. How do you choose vendors and will you advocate for us to them?

Often times, a wedding planner will have a vendor list and some good vendor/planner relationships established. If they don’t- you want to know how they will make reliable decisions for you when choosing a vendor to match your vibe.

A good wedding planner is willing to step up to the plate with your vendors and be specific and assertive when conveying what you want. This type of communication is paramount if they will be conversing wit your other vendors.

4. Will you handle the invitations, from wording and ordering to the addressing and mailing? What about guest list coordination and RSVPs?

If no one invites the people, then the planning is all for naught. You may prefer to handle this yourself, or the thought of making an elegant invite may stress you out. OR you may have already sent out save the dates and want to keep similar style but can’t get it quite what you imagined.

You may also have simply expected this service of guest list an invite management to be included in “full-service” pricing, but again, that will mean different things depending on the planner.

These questions may seem small until we stop and think about them. The invites truly set an expectation for the wedding for each guest. These are important. Ask the question!

5. What type of wedding planning experience do you have?

This question is very different from ‘how many weddings has your business planned?’ I do NOT recommend the latter question. The reason you ask about experience over number is this. You can’t know their experience if they just started an official business that hasn’t planned any weddings yet, but they’ve been wedding planning as a hobby, gift, side hustle for 5+ years.

Many planners don’t get their start from wedding planner academy. It starts with planning friend’s weddings or as a photographer who offers planning services. This is why you want to know background. This question is a quick way to weed out the passionate planners from the ‘I figured anyone could do it’ planners *shudder* (wedding planning is not for the faint of heart).

These 5 questions should be asked first. They help you find the right fit in a your personal dream artist (sometimes referred to as a wedding planner). Next week we will discuss the questions that stress us out most- the things you want to know about the day of.