What Wedding Planners Bring to Your Event Design
When thinking about your wedding planner and event design, I want you to imagine your wedding planner as an octopus. Yep, you heard me, an octopus. Each tendril represents a relationship with someone or something integral to your celebration. We have tendrils that connect to you (the couple), the vendor relationships who make things happen on your wedding day, and perhaps even your most valuable players (support systems like friends and family). Our job is constantly managing all those relationships and bringing them in towards the central goal of a cohesive, well-executed event. Our brains live in the balance of creative and logistical. Our finesse is taking ideas and talent and aligning them so that they coexist and cooperate with each other. Let’s break down what that looks like a bit further…
HOW PLANNERS CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR EVENT DESIGN.
Let’s start with the event design itself. Most planners will create collateral that represents the ideas that you and your partner like best. This is often put in the form of a mood board, or a set of slides that show the key characteristics of other events that light you up and inspire you. We take the copious notes on event values and ideas discussed thus far and incorporate them into this visual tool. We break down ideas by category so that it’s easier to digest. Venue, floral design, attire and style, reception service, and many more get their own page to illustrate how ideas will look in real life.
We consider the overall theme or vibe of your event to ensure there is a cohesive look and feel for you and your guests. We present color palette ideas to further help unify the event and the vendor’s contributions. We check our ideas against the venue’s characteristics, contract, and boundaries, and test the feasibility of these first draft ideas against what is available and allowed in the space. If there are permanent features or space constraints, we work around them. If there are rental assets included in the space, we consider using them to their greatest advantage. If there are elements missing that would better support the guest experience, we imagine how to bring them in.
AFTER A MOOD BOARD, THEN THE VENDORS.
We begin brainstorming the types of vendors who will make this vision come to life. Planners pull inspiration for each of those services, paired with our knowledge of local vendors and artists, into the mood board pages and our planning process. We are thoughtful when it comes to matching up your expectations with the budget allotted in each category, being careful to present achievable ideas within the range of your spending expectations. In our opinion, the best planners paint three-quarters of the vision for a creative vendor, streamlining the scope of work and making that vendor’s job easily understood. We then leave the remaining 25% of that vision up to the creative, giving the opportunity for that vendor to bring their ideas and special touch to the collaboration. Preferred vendors, or the professionals who we have our strongest working relationships with, will always step into that space enthusiastic to brainstorm and customize with our clients.
At Tapestry, we tackle your vendor hiring needs in waves of three at a time. We recognize that it’s incredibly challenging for non-professionals to balance the vision for the end product with the wish list of features and vendor requirements. We take note and discuss your wish list alongside your mood board to create a complete vision for your vendors. We chime in when an idea is or is not a match for what is possible in your event space, and are the first people to inject creative energy into an idea that is possible and excites you.
Certainly, your draft mood board is not a perfect, standalone deliverable. It’s the brainstorm that has big vision and kicks off the various creative conversations we need to have in order to build a team. The draft created in collaboration between the planner and couple will be about 80% accurate to the final picture. As other vendors lend their creative ideas that help shape a one-of-a-kind event, we keep our collateral updated.
The role of your octopus, I mean planner, is both visionary and logistical. We harbor what your celebration will look like and help you pick your path to get there. We use our community ties and tendrils to bring vendors into your world that can contribute significant, creative ideas to the vision. We keep those vendors tapped into the central theme while working in conjunction with one another. And most importantly, our brains govern the overall game plan, ensuring that the design comes to life in a smooth timeline of events, within the rules and boundaries of your venue, and in a way that looks and feels effortless to you and your guests.