One of the reasons a bride hires you to be her wedding planner is because she wants you to take care of all the details and emergencies that may come up on her wedding day. As the wedding planner, you want to take care of all the details ahead of time so you can avoid the emergencies that can turn into disasters.
Here are 7 ways you can prepare so you can avoid disasters:
1) Create and follow a detailed timeline
You should have all of the wedding details in place a month before the event so create a very detailed timeline of everything that will happen, and what time it will happen, on the wedding day. Break out information about the vendors’ schedule and give it to your vendors – call to confirm they have received it and understand their commitments. Give your bride and groom and the entire of the wedding party copies of their schedules – they don’t need information about vendors. Be sure you also review the timeline with your staff and be sure they understand their job is to keep everyone on schedule.
2) Know who you need to contact and how to reach them
Have the names and cell phone numbers of vendors and all members of the wedding party and make sure they know how to contact you. If someone is missing, call them immediately to find out their estimated time of arrival.
3) Make sure you have a full tank of gas
Your car, and your staff’s cars, should be in excellent working order and filled with gasoline. Even if a wedding is in your neighborhood, you need to be prepared to pick up a missing item, or a missing member of the wedding party, at the last minute.
4) Fully charge the batteries of all of your tech gadgets
You need to to be reachable on the wedding day so make sure your phone is fully charge. Also, if you keep your information on an iPad or another type of tablet, it has to be ready for a full day of work.
5) Have a well-packed wedding planner emergency kit
I’ve seen many lists of what wedding day emergency kits for brides should include. You should have all the things the bride needs along with things she might not think of (such as chalk or talcum powder to hide a wedding dress stain or a set of fake wedding rings to use in case the couple forgets the real ones), items that might help the groom and groomsmen (such as dark socks, shirt buttons, and cufflinks) and items that you and your staff might need (such as energy bars for a snack if you don’t have time to eat).
6) Know where you can get supplies
If the wedding is not in an area that is familiar to you and your staff, be sure you know the locations of the establishments below in the event you, your staff, a vendor, member of the wedding party, or guest has an emergency.
- Supermarket (not enough or forgotten food or drinks)
- Florist (repair or enhance an arrangement after the florist has left)
- Pharmacy (forgotten prescriptions)
- Electronics store (phone chargers, extension cords)
- Clothing store (socks, undergarments, shirts)
- Seamstress or tailor and cobbler (last minute repairs or alterations)
- Hospital
You might also add the phone number and location of a nearby dentist. On the day actress Hilary Duff married Mike Comrie, celebrity wedding planner Mindy Weiss had to find Hilary a dentist because she had loss a tooth.
7) Walk through the ceremony and reception sites the day before the wedding
Although you have already visited the venue many times, don’t hesitate to do a quick visit a day or two before the wedding to make sure everything is how you remembered it to be. Venues do repairs, move furniture, replace plants and flowers, and make other changes that may cause you to have to alter some plans.
