Dear Brides & Grooms, Wedding Professionals, Friends and Family, and of course our faithful fans!,
Wedding myths... There are many myths surrounding weddings, and the planning of them. Let me touch on a few of the most reocurring, and share my two cents.
Myth #1: A Wedding Consultant is not in my budget, but I have a friend or family member who is going to run the day for me.
Myth buster: With the economy being as funky as it is right now, you can not afford to not have a Wedding Consultant! We can save you as much as you spend on us or more through our industry reputation with wedding professionals, our discounts with vendors, and our years of experience in planning. The comment I get from all of my clients after they have danced the last dance, and are hugging me goodbye is "we love you so much, we couldn't have done this without you!". It's not only the best part of my job, it's so satisfying to know that someone hired me, trusted me, and took advantage of my knowledge so that their wedding day could be on budget, on time, and stress free. Friends and family members should be guests.
Myth #2: DJs are cheesy and I'm just going to use an iPod and then have a friend MC the wedding.
Myth buster: It's the 2000's people! Good DJs are no longer cheesy, at least the ones I refer aren't. Ask your Wedding Consultant for referrals to high class DJs with nice equipment, and years of experience, and you will find your job in planning the wedding, and the flow of the wedding will be much much better than if you did it yourself. iPods are awesome, I think they are great tools for loading up your favorite songs to share with your DJ, or for making a cocktail hour or dinner playlist for your DJ to hook up to his sound system, but, the second you have an iPod, and nothing else, you have a mess. Think of it this way, your wedding songs, the first dance, parent dance, etc...can not happen exactly how you want, and when you want, unless someone pushes play on the iPod. That person, no matter who they are, has now become your DJ by default because an iPod doesn't just work on it's own, and whoever is running it, is the DJ! They could make a mistake and push the wrong button, play the wrong song, etc... And without a professional MC to make annoucements throughout the night to invite guests up to cocktail hour from the ceremony, then from cocktail hour to dinner, then from dinner to dancing, then to annouce the dances, and so much more, you end up with a tipsy friend of family member mumbling on a microphone, who can't be found half of the time an annoucement needs to be made. Also, the function of a DJ is not to just play music and make annoucements, think of them as your sound support for the ceremony, annoucements, toasts, etc... Also, if you are a dancing crowd, don't think it's as easy to keep the dance floor full by just hitting play on your favorite playlist, DJs read the audience and play music according to the age of the guests on the floor, how they are reacting from one song to the next, and are able to adjust and keep your party going all night long!
Myth #3: I bet it will be easy and cheaper if I just do my own flowers, or I have a friend who wants to do this for me.
Myth buster: There are many small things I can safely say would be places to save money if you do them yourself, but floral design is not one of them. Floral designers have experience designing, executing, delivering, installing, and breaking down wedding flowers. They have experience with what flowers are in season vs. not, approximate costs, they have the right tools to do the job. A good floral designer will sit with you, listen to your wishes, ask your budget, and help you create your dream within reasonable boundaries. They can't work miracles with un-realistic budgets, but they can tell you what is realistic, and this is invaluable. I've had clients tell me that they have Aunties who want to make their personal flowers, but that they want a floral designer to do their ceremony and reception flowers. Their Aunties should be guests, and should not be working, they don't have experience doing floral design, so their costly mistakes could end up breaking the budget. Also, my preferred floral designers worry that if they do half of the flowers for the wedding, and the other half is done by a novice, guests won't know who did what, and if they don't like the flowers the Auntie made, they could mistake them for the floral designer's work and give them a bad review, or just have a bad first impression of them. There are many many reasons to use a professional. I like to remind my clients that there is a wedding professional in each category that suits each type of budget, and chances are they will save more money working with a professional vs. trying to do it themselves.
Myth #4: I found a photographer who is a friend of a friend, they haven't done weddings before, but they have 20 years of photojournalistic experience, so I'm sure they will do fine.
Myth buster: Weddings are their own animal. You want to hire a photographer who suits your personality, fits your budget, and has a deep understanding of the flow of weddings. Finding someone on Craigslist who hasn't done a wedding before is a bad idea. Not that they will do a bad job for sure, but chances are, they will be practicing on your wedding, and the photos will not come out very well. Photographers who do weddings all of the time know the right shots to get, work fast during portraits, are great at getting candid shots throughout the day, understand the flow of a timeline, how to work with the other wedding professionals like the wedding consultant, the videographer, the site staff, etc... Again, there is a wedding photographer for each budget, and getting a professional is key to making sure that your memories are captured the best they can be. If your budget is tight, look for booking a photographer that offers a package with the correct amount of hours you need for getting ready photos, through the last major event of the evening (about 6-9 hours typically), that offers a DVD with the digital negatives on it so that you own the images. Then they can tell you good places to get prints done that will be high quality, and a year down the road when you've saved up, you can go back to the photographer and work on designing and purchasing an album through them.
Myth #5: We don't want a videographer because they shine bright lights in your face, and they are cheesy, they go around table to table and interview the guests, and they are just invasive!
Myth buster: Again, just like with DJs, today's good videographers break this myth. Ask your wedding consultant for referrals to good videographers who use high end equipment that doesn't require bright lights to be shone, and that only interviews guests if asked to do so by the client. Videographers that I work with are like ninjas! They don't disrupt the day and they are hardly noticeable. They work hand in hand with your photographer to be sure to capture the emotion, motion, and sound of the day that can never be recovered otherwise. If budget is an issue, look for a videographer who offers a package for raw shoot and eject at a bare minimum. That way you can get the entire wedding filmed in raw footage, and a year or so down the line when you've saved up, you can ask the videographer to work with you on editing a beautiful wedding film together.
There are so many more myths, and misunderstandings about weddings, hopefully this helped shed a little light on some of the most heard myths from a wedding consultant's point of view. If you would like to share more myths, or ask if something is a myth, myself and the other members of the Fab 5 would love to help you bust those myths, and shed some light on them.
Much love,
Nicole Lisanne
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