Yep. Miss DIY, Bonnie Projects, Martha wannabe hired a wedding planner.
I think it’s because of the way I make decisions. Pretty much every decision I make is based on laying out all the available options, carefully weighing the pros and cons, and coming to a rational and well-thought-out decision. If you apply that to the twenty bajillion decisions a bride has to make when planning a wedding, it gets overwhelming very quickly. Come on, it took me six weeks just to pick out my last car!
The sheer multitude of options available was becoming completely overwhelming for me, and sucking all the fun out of wedding planning. So I called around, talked to a handful of planners, and picked an energetic, organized, experienced young woman who grew up in Charleston, where we’re having the wedding, and is also an alum of my university!
I still have oodles of decisions to make, but she’s been doing a great job of narrowing the choices and providing the necessary information to proceed logically. Just today, she sent me four recommended photographers in varying price ranges and with varying styles, and I picked one! No endless internet searching, no calling around, just checked that decision off the list!
On top of that, she’s also skilled in negotiating prices for her clients, and I get the impression she’ll probably save us enough to pay for herself.
Aside from saving me from drowning in decisions, she’s also going to make sure my family gets to relax and have fun on the big day. Rather than subjecting aunts and friends to slave labor on my wedding day, she’ll do all the set-up and headache-inducing stuff, and we’ll get to let go and have a great time.
What this means long-term, aside from being able to maintain sanity, is that I’ll be able to focus on stuff I actually care about, like all the fun projects I already have brewing in my head : )