Do I Need a Wedding Planner or Will a Wedding Planning App Do?

We’ll be honest: this is a pretty hefty topic, and the answer is one that will be different for everyone. On the one hand, you can’t really compare the role of a wedding planner with a piece of tech such as a wedding planning app, but there are some areas and instances where the two might overlap. Areas such as looking after your wedding budget or keeping plans on track with a wedding planning checklist, to name a few.

The biggest thing to consider, though, is your wedding budget, as the size of your wedding guest list, the venue location, and how much time you can dedicate to the wedding planning process will have an impact on whether you hire a wedding planner or whether you opt for a wedding planning app to guide you along your wedding planning journey.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at both options in a little more detail…

What is a Wedding Planner?

Let’s start with the basics. In a nutshell, a wedding planner is a professional who can assist and support you with the overall design, event planning, and project management of your wedding day. Due to the work involved, they often don’t come cheap (as they shouldn’t!), and they do a LOT more than you might expect, too. Most wedding planners are happy to take on as much or as little of the wedding planning as you wish, from full wedding management to simply managing the wedding day itself. Think of them as industry experts and mentors who will support you by removing some of the burden and stress of planning a wedding. They are also often incredibly creative people and can help source the very best wedding vendors and décor items for your special day whilst ultimately bringing it all together in the wonderful and seamless way they do! As well as being creative, they often have impeccable organisation skills and attention to detail, loving lists, spreadsheets, and timelines! They are trustworthy and hardworking and should come with extensive experience in planning and managing weddings which is helpful if this is your first rodeo!

Finally (and probably most importantly), they take on the responsibility of the big day so that you can let go, relax and truly enjoy the special event you’ve spent so much time, effort (and money) planning!

A professional wedding planner's role can be extensive and quite complex, though. Firstly, they can help you refine your wedding style; they can create a wedding website for you (complete with stylish wedding invitations), and they can help plan and execute pre-wedding events such as a rehearsal dinner or engagement party). They can also liaise with your wedding vendors, handle conversations and contracts with everyone, AND keep your wedding budget in check, likely all through the help of a wedding planning checklist (AKA a wedding planner’s best friend!).

What about a Wedding Coordinator?

It’s also worth mentioning a wedding coordinator’s role here, too, because whilst they are also helpful to have with you on the wedding planning journey and on the big day itself, they are different to a wedding planner. In fact, your venue may have a wedding coordinator in-house who gets allocated to you and will help guide you through the planning process (note the word guide here). Wedding coordinators don’t provide a full planning service and are often available towards the end of the project to pull it all together. They can help tie up loose ends though and assist with the running of the special day, but they won’t necessarily help with researching vendors, managing your wedding budget or organising your digital RSVPs.

If you’re already concerned that you can’t hire a wedding planner with your restricted wedding budget, or as we mentioned, you’ve already been assigned a coordinator through your venue, you might benefit from a proficient wedding app to help guide you through each stage of the wedding planning journey. This leads us perfectly on to the next hot topic…

Do I Need a Wedding Planning App?

As soon as the just-engaged-joy has died down, you’ll soon realise that planning a wedding is basically a never-ending to-do list and includes a lot of new information to organise, action and remember. It's important not to underestimate the power of online wedding planning tools, which can serve many purposes for wedding planning couples, from creating your dream wedding website to sending your save the dates and wedding invitations to your guest list and managing your digital RSVPs too.

Your wedding website will end up picking up a lot of the time-intensive jobs that a wedding planner might do. Tasks such as ensuring your wedding style is cohesive across everything from your wedding website template to your wedding e-vites and any other wedding stationery that you might choose to have. They can also organise your wedding guests’ RSVPs, the plus ones and record any dietary requirements - a huge task taken off your hands, believe us!

But that’s not all. Signing up for a wedding website through Say I do also means gaining access to our bespoke wedding planning checklist. This time-saving tool is designed to keep you on track and flag any tasks that you need to complete in a timely manner. You can also tailor the platform to your wedding date and edit your wedding checklist so that it’s completely personal to you. Whilst you do have to complete the checklist tasks yourself (or delegate to a family member or close friend), it’s not quite the same as having an actual wedding planner by your side; wedding planning apps like Say I do soon become an essential tool in every couple’s kit and can save you a lot of time and money during the planning process too.

Destination Wedding Planners

It should come as no surprise that organising a destination wedding, whether it's across the nation or the globe, requires more planning than organising a local celebration. Since you'll be organising your wedding virtually, it's likely that you won't have many, if any, in-person meetings with your vendors. With this in mind, it's critical to schedule any phone or video calls with vendors in good time and carefully account for any time differences. It's understandable that couples planning destination weddings on their own could easily feel overwhelmed by additional considerations like local customs, language challenges, and foreign currencies.

With destination weddings, you are typically planning for more than just the major event. The secret to a successful destination wedding is being an excellent host. This means that as well as arranging for several days' worth of events, you'll probably also help organise accommodation, transportation, and maybe even flights. It goes without saying that there are several moving parts. A simple way to keep your head above water is to enlist the help of an expert. Destination wedding planners will assist you in creating the wedding of your dreams while handling all the organising.

More often than not though, your chosen wedding venue will give you a main point of contact who you'll be able to liaise with during your wedding planning journey. They will be able to provide a certain level of wedding planning services, but if you hire an external wedding planner, then they will communicate with your venue and suppliers directly, leaving you to concentrate on the fun parts!

The Choice is Yours!

So, you might have guessed that there really is no right or wrong answer here, but if you do decide to hire a wedding planner you must make sure that you genuinely really like the person. Over the coming weeks and months, you’re probably going to be communicating with them more than your closest friends and family members, so you need to make sure there is a connection! Not to mention the fact that you’re trusting them with one of the biggest days of your life, so it’s crucial that you can depend on them and want to have them in your dream wedding planning team! But whether you’re going it alone or working with a brilliant team of wedding vendors, utilising a handy wedding planning app such as Say I do helps couples stay inspired, accountable, on top of their guest list, and so much more.