
A "full service coordinator" will manage your theme, budget, vendors and venue for you throughout the planning process. This type of professional works to match what they do to your personality and desires. Their contacts within the industry allow them to get special deals for you, and to be sure everything coordinates well.
A "day of coordinator" is one who meets with you before the wedding, visits the wedding site with you, checks to be sure all your contracts are in place, and runs the show for you from the rehearsal through to the very end of the reception.
Neither of these is the same as a venue coordinator, who is concerned only with what the venue has agreed to do for you and being sure that is done impeccably. But if the limo driver is late it won't be their responsibility to iron that out for you.
Both types of coordinators will facilitate the wedding rehearsal, cue the music, keep the photographers on schedule, and be sure everyone in the wedding party is where they need to be at the right time with everything they need to have. They will make sure that at the end of the wedding everything goes to the reception that needs to be transported, and that everything is properly packed up and sent where it needs to go at the end of the reception.
Why would you want to spend money on a wedding coordinator? I have heard and read a number of good selling points. I have also officiated at many more weddings without coordinators that with them, and none of these weddings had any insurmountable problems.
- You don't have time to sort through all the possibilities and make calls and visits yourself well in advance of the day to reserve needed services and venues.
- You are having a destination wedding and you're completely unfamiliar with the place you'll be going for the wedding.
- You have more than 100 people coming to your wedding.
- Your mother, or your beloved's mother, is pushing you hard to do things her way and it's not what you want for your wedding.
- Your mother or a friend agreed to do this and now she or he is having a melt-down.
- The Coordinator has no friends or competing interests at your wedding. The entire focus is making that day perfect for you from beginning to end.
Whether you coordinator your wedding yourself right up to the magic day, hire someone to do it, or involve one or more friends in the process, do a little research so that you remember and do all that needs doing to bring your dream wedding into being! And remember to keep breathing...it will all get done!