At The French Bee, we get this question all the time. What is the difference between a wedding planner and a wedding coordinator. Actually the wording that these two titles have, makes practical sense. A wedding planner is someone who plans your wedding and also helps execute it. A wedding coordinate, is just that someone who coordinates your wedding. Still confused? Let me try to explain a bit better.
A wedding planner, or full service planning is the more extensive of the the two services. When we first meet a full planning client, we will want to really get to know them as much as possible. We will ask questions like, where did you meet, what was your first date, what fun vacations have you taken together. The reason we are so nosey, is that we want to design a wedding that really reflects their story , personality, style and their budget. For our full planning clients, we will then mock design boards, swatch samples, color palettes, and different layout suggestions for our clients to go through and start to pick out the different ingredients they want for a really amazing wedding. I did want to jump in at this point, and say, stop rolling your eyes. I know you are thinking yea, right, this is great if you have a huge wedding budget. At The French Bee, we work with a variety of budgets and we will be candid with you as far as you budget expectations are concerned. That is also another aspect of planner vs coordinator, a planner will help you with your wedding budget, where coordination does not.
After design meeting is finished and the ingredients have been chosen, we get to work putting the right vendors in for the right job. We only work with vendors that we know well, and that only produce an excellent level of service. We also will start providing our clients with save the date and wedding invitation samples. In the meantime, we check just to make sure that everything is being completed either by us or client in a custom time line checklist that we have created for client. There countless other task that we help the client with, such as fashion consultations, custom gift box or party favor creations. We help with the guest list and seat assignments and so on………………
So all of the above information is what we as wedding planners do. From here on out, both wedding planners and wedding coordinators perform these tasks.
Wedding coordination is just a service that we also offer. We call it event management. Once a client books The French Bee for wedding coordination, we will give them a wedding info packet, in which they will find a list of preferred vendors, which they are to pick out their vendors from They are responsible for contracting their own vendors and providing their own design. During this time process, we still check in with the client to make sure everything is getting done and there aren’t any gapping holes in the planning process. But go time is usually about two months before wedding. We will want the contracts from all the vendors that you have hired and all their contact information, if we don’t already have it. We will work with you, and your vendors to come up with a very detailed time line. (remember this also happens in full planning as well) We will make sure all your vendors are very educated on the time line, and we will know what time they are showing up, what they are expected to do and what time they are leaving. We also will call and confirm all this with your vendors.
For Full planning clients we also will arrange delivery of welcome gifts to hotels for all of your out of town guest.
The night before we will run your rehearsal and provide wedding parties with an itinerary for the weekend, so that they know where and what time to show up.
The day of, we tell you not to even where a watch. We will make sure things happen, when they are supposed to happen. We will have someone at venue to make sure things go smoothly there. We also have someone checking on wedding party to make sure all their needs are meet as well.
We will make sure everyone is in the correct seats for the ceremony and make sure our client is walking down the aisle exactly at the time the invitation stated.
Meanwhile we have staff at the reception, making sure everyone is ready when your first guest walk through the door. We make sure that no one waits in lines and everyone feels welcome.
During your entire reception we will be in the background running the time line. We will make sure that the transition from cocktail hour to dinner being served is at the right time and it is a very smooth transition. We will know who is expected to make toast and have the microphone ready for them. We also will know when cake cutting, first dances and whatever other events are supposed to happen and we will make sure that they happen on time and in a smooth manner. Any issues that may arise, you will never know about, because we have years and years of experience and will know what to do if anything should happen. We help with your grand exit, make sure you have a little picnic basket of food to take with you and We dont go on the honeymoon, but we stay to make sure everything is taken down and closed up properly.
We also get calls for a “Day Of” planner. Really? This is one of the biggest days in your life. I use the analogy of a coach for a sports team, who has reached tournament level, but the coach has never met the team and is expected to know how to coach this team to win. I personally do not think it can be done. I think it is a recipe for disaster. There are so many moving parts to a wedding and so many opportunities for things to go wrong. How can someone possibly manage all this, when they are brought in the day of the event. Obviously The French Bee does not offer this service and many people will ask me to recommend someone who does. My reply is, that I don’t believe in it, so I have no idea of who to recommend. I would be very wary of someone who tells you differently.
The best thing about the way we do wedding planning, is we get to meet people that are in Love and we get to share such an important part of their life and we feel very close to them by the end of the process. I get thrill when I go onto social media and see one of our couples welcoming a new little one into the world. How lucky are we?