With engagement season upon us, I thought this would be a perfect time to share some insider information on what your lead wedding planner with SWAK will/can be doing for YOU! Having a skilled wedding planner is one of the most fundamental parts of having an amazing wedding day, but beyond day-of coordination, you may not even realize the full scope of a wedding planner duties with SWAK. Along with their expert wedding planning advice, guidance, and organization, a wedding planner can handle any other little thing you may need the day of the wedding. Below we highlight some important things that our lead planners with SWAK do to provide you and your guests an excellent experience, even more than just running a smooth wedding day.
1. Provide Budgeting Tips
In your google planning documents that all our couples receive, we provide budgeting advice on every budgeting line item. We provide a price range for what you may expect to spend on each line item based on general Bay Area pricing. This resource is YOURS when you work with us with any service. If you are seeking budget management directly with us, then you may want to consider our full planning service!
2. Communicate Wedding Details Directly with Bridal Party
Your lead SWAK planner will be sending an email to your bridal party about 1 week prior to your wedding sharing the final guest timeline and additional wedding day details. Our contact information is provided to them and they are encouraged to contact us with questions so to let our couples enjoy their last week of their engagement.
3. Offer Etiquette Advice
We love to provide our couples with resources on etiquette for invitation wording, table setting etiquette, most common ways to order the processional and much more!
4. Access to Our Room Block Partnership with JC Room Blocks, FREE to you!
When working with us, we connect you with our favorite ladies at JC Room Blocks and using them to secure your room blocks is totally free of charge! When your wedding gets closer, they provide weekly updates for how many rooms are booked within your room blocks and what is still available. We love them :)
5. Provide Our Action Item Wedding Checklist
Who doesn’t love a good to-do list?! All our couples receive a chronological action item to-do list containing every big to small detail that needs to be complete before the wedding day! Everything starts as “incomplete” and you will indicate “complete” once it is finished. This is a great progress tracker!
6. Provide Vendor Recommendations
Within your google planning docs, we provide all our couples with a vendor recommendation list. These vendors are ones we have vetted and worked with before! We provide vendors at various price points as well.
7. Nail Down Floor plans
For our month-of and partial planning clients, typically catering or the venue will provide the floor plans. We will review those and add all additional details to them such as ensuring we have info on guest book placement, signage placement, and any auxiliary decor is also indicated on your floor plans. With our full planning clients, we will be the ones creating your floor plans from the start! No matter what service is booked, we will make sure your floor plan is clear and detailed for all vendors!
8. Provide Guidance on Design
We love providing assistance on design for either our month of clients sending over a quick email for our opinion on a design dilemma to our partial planning clients booking a consultation call to discuss design for that hour to our full planning clients where we work from mood board creations to execution of all design elements, we are here to support your wedding design! We love to focus on creating a certain feeling or mood on your wedding day, beyond just creating a pretty wedding day. Email me if you would like to see a sample mood board that we create for our full planning clients.
9. First to Arrive
Your SWAK lead planner will be the first vendor to arrive onsite to provide appropriate communication with the venue contact person and your vendors.
10. Manage Transportation Day-of
Our team will be the main point of contact for the bus/shuttle drivers providing day-of transportation. We will have walkie talkies for our assistant to communicate the arrival and departure of transportation and will also ensure that end of night transportation is coordinated as well. We will staff with additional assistants to assist with transportation when necessary.
11. Bring an Emergency Kit
We will never show up empty handed! Your lead planner will come with a fully equipped emergency kit that continues to grow as we handle things at weddings each year. We will help problem solve anything unexpected that comes up!
12. Support the Guest’s Experience
Our team is there to greet your guests, answer any pondering questions, often point them towards the restroom (or bar!), and check in to make sure everyone is enjoying themselves.
13. Oversee Vendor’s Needs
Not only are we the go-to person for you as the couple and your guests, we are also overseeing the needs of your vendor team. We ensure vendors have power, access to water source, access to any needed areas, that their vendor meals are timely, and that the needs of the couple as communicated with them!
14. Manage Unruly Guests
The last thing a couple wants to deal with is a guest who has had a few too many and is causing a total scene. Our team will make sure any overindulgent guests get some coffee and kindly move them out of the spotlight so the bride and groom never even notice.
15. Organize and Pack Up of All your Personal Decor/ Cards/ Gifts
We will repack any of your personal decor, cards, and gifts for you at end of night and will provide labels for all boxes so that you can easily find what you need next day. We will make sure boxes are handed off or put in the trunk of the responsible family member. Cards and gifts will be handed to the someone safe at end of night as well.
