I got married in July, 2019.
I thought planning my wedding would be easy.Turns out, I was WRONG.
The Summary: Make decisions when you are ready, pay attention to responsiveness (or the lack of it), and seek out experience. SO MUCH experience.
DECISIONS: If you aren't ready to make a decision. DON'T. For me, I wasn’t ready to shop for a dress. I wasn’t looking forward to it, frankly, I was dreading it, but I went anyway. The dress I chose was lovely, the shop amazing, but as the weeks passed, I knew the dress was not ‘me’. I felt so wasteful and because it had been my own decision to buy it, I wanted to just suck it up and just wear it, but I told my fiancee about it and he said, ‘just get the one you want, it’s fine.’ So, I ordered the dress I’d seen online months prior. It was perfect. It was ME.
RESPONSIVENESS: I am an extremely responsive person. To an email, to a text, to a phone call. It’s in my nature and it’s how I am in my personal life as well as my business life. It’s hard to then think that others might not be similarly responsive, especially when your conversation with them began in a responsive way. If they aren’t very responsive, they likely will remain that way. This leads me to the tough advice of LISTEN TO YOUR GUT. If you have amazing vibes with someone, run with it. If, even after you’ve paid a non-refundable retainer, you have weird feelings, DO NOT ignore them! I ignored my gut and regretted that later. You should feel great about your vendors, from booking until far after your wedding. You should feel like they care about you and your day. You should have an amazing experience! Do not settle for anything less.
EXPERIENCE: Experience is KEY. Thankfully I had it around me in spades. Having vendors who are on your team and truly want you to have the best day ever, makes all the difference. One of my vendors made up cute bathroom baskets (tissues, hair spray, band-aids, you know, all that good stuff). Our venue coordinator drove one of our guests back to our airbnb because we forgot our rings and because we began with cocktail hour and most people had been drinking, we could not get them ourselves. And the woman who designed our cake insisted on driving 3.5hrs (each way) to ensure our cake arrived in perfect condition. These are the types of vendors you want at your wedding. Treating you, literally, like family.
Since planning my wedding, I have an entirely new level of empathy for my clients as they plan and ask for advice. I have a new understanding of the value vendors can bring to the table who are responsive and those that go far above and beyond. I have a newly realized motivation to serve my clients by being responsive and showing them that I truly do care about their individual wedding, because it is important, it’s such a special day and I want every couple I work with to know through the entire process of working together that I have their back and will do my best by them.
<3 Nicole
