By Kathy Kepler, Certified Wedding Planner at Weddings by Kathleen (http://www.weddingsbykathleen.com)

Planning your dream wedding is a huge task. It requires many, many hours of your time and exceptional organizational skills. Hiring a wedding planner can save you time and money and, most of all, can help take stress off the bride and groom. Here are five reasons hiring a wedding planner can be one of the best decisions you make in your planning process.

A wedding planner will help you stick to your budget. Couples spent an average of $30,000 on their weddings last year. A wedding planner will talk with you and get an understanding of what’s most important to you for your big day. Then, based on their knowledge of the industry, your planner can help guide you on ways to cut down on expenses and how to allocate your budget.

A wedding planner can recommend excellent vendors. Wedding planners spend lots of time communicating and coordinating with vendors—florists, photographers, caterers, DJs, and videographers. Wedding planners know who does a great job and who doesn’t. Your wedding planner wants everything to go perfectly for you on your wedding day and can recommend the best vendors for you based on your wedding style and budget.

 A wedding planner will take care of the nitty-gritty so that you can enjoy the planning process. A wedding planner knows the process from experience and will make sure everything on that very long to-do list is checked off. Having someone there to handle the countless but important details, such as handling contract negotiations, managing the venue setup process, and creating the wedding timeline, will make the planning process much less stressful for you.

A wedding planner will make sure everything runs smoothly on your big day. A wedding planner will orchestrate all the details of your wedding day; manage your vendors; create a timeline for your wedding day (and make sure everyone sticks to it!); set up your décor and make sure everything is where it needs to be; collect your wedding party and family for photos, entrances, dances, and toasts; and take care of many other details so that you don’t have to worry about them on your wedding day.

A wedding planner will go above and beyond the services offered by a venue coordinator. It is important to understand that banquet managers or site coordinators are not wedding planners. Although they can be super helpful, they are hired by the venue and are not there to assist the bride in the overall wedding planning process. Your wedding planner works for you and wants your day to be everything you dreamed it to be.

Let’s face it—no one wants to look back and think about how stressful the planning process was or how terrible their wedding day went. A wedding planner will give you the freedom to enjoy every minute of your wedding day, and hiring one will be money well spent.

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