Free Wedding Planner

When it comes to wedding planners, is there really anything free under the sun? Probably not.

A good wedding planner can actually save you money. A wedding planner worth her salt knows how to book wedding sites and ministers and musicians for less than what clients will often have to pay if they go directly to the service providers. In reality, if a planner saves you money, AND does all sorts of work for you which you don't have to do on your wedding day -- they just might be BETTER than free.

Here on Maui there are many wedding companies who give a "come-on" wedding special offer to do your wedding for just $300. Basically that includes $200 for the minister and $100 for coordinating. By the "coordinating" they mean setting up your license appointment and calling to book a minister -- two phone calls. They won't actually show up at your wedding, so they are actually charging you $50 each for two phone calls -- nice savings! We do make those two calls for free when people book minister-only weddings with us for $200.

We've shot photography for some of these couples who booked thes "discount" packages, and when they add up what they spent on all the different things they wanted, they actually paid much more than if they had just booked our small "Aloha Package". And what they don't get -- which we always include in our regular packages -- is onsite coordinating to make sure everything goes as planned. But these couples are usually happy, because they assumed they had gotten "a really good deal."

Remember that old adage, "you get what you pay for." It's so true. When you try to save money by cutting out the middle man, in the end, you might have less service and bargained for. The best way to get a "free wedding planner", of course, is to do all the planning yourself. Our experience with people who are trying to do this is not good. (Usually they call to pick our brains, but then don't book with us). We also see weddings border on self-destruction when couples try to coordinate a large destination wedding using this do-it-yourself approach.

For example, last year I was hired by a mother to coordinate her daughter's wedding. She had done a lot of browsing on the web and it was immediately evident that she would be very heavy handed in her choices of vendors, and that she wanted me and everyone else to work for less than our normal rates. She seemed to be a control freak and was very quick to criticize anything I did that didn't meet her standards. After working many hours on her behalf, providing many of my professional connections to her (that she lacked), she rudely fired me. Apparently she had convinced herself that she no longer needed my help -- and figured it would be no difficult task to coordinate all the details of the wedding by herself once she arrived.

Although I did not attend the wedding, I did receive feedback about how things went because I had hired several different vendors for her (the photographer, musicians, the DJ). Everyone who had a part in this wedding had been "worked over" by this woman in an attempt to get lower prices. Most vendors might be willing to work for less compensation, but when you are also berated, it can end up leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth. It really didn't surprise me to hear how badly things went on the day of the wedding, all due to this woman's heavy hand.

For starters, the mother had all of the coordinating information with her about what was supposed to happen at the wedding site and she ended up getting stuck in traffic (behind an accident); she was 45 minutes late. The bride showed up and left her underwear on the bus, which left before she could retrieve it. She didn't know the name of the company to call and get them to return with her undergarments and she also had no dress to wear, because -- you guessed it -- Mom had it with her! They finally managed to reach the Mom in traffic and she gave them the name of the bus company so that they could call and get the bus to come back!

There were not enough chairs for the guests (to save costs) and no one would sit down because there was no coordinator performing crowd control. The photographer finally had to take charge and herd everyone to the chairs so that she could get her shots. Her photography package had been cut to the bone by Mom, and with so many guests, there would simply not be enough photos to cover such a large wedding. All of the delays caused by such poor planning meant that the wedding was very late. That meant they were in danger of not having enough time for the sunset photography. So in the end the mother had to belated authorize the photographer to shoot whatever extra rolls were necessary to make certain that she got the required pictures.

This is the kind of stuff that often happens (usually on a smaller scale) to people who "hire" a "free wedding planner." So beware of "free", especially on your wedding day.