What Exactly Is a Wedding Planner?

Weddings are exciting, and they tend to be events that almost borderline on a festival. For centuries, back when weddings were new and young and the rituals and traditions we go through today were still being put in place, the task of setting up the event and subsequent celebration was often left to the bride and her female relatives, friends, and servant girls/women. But now, many brides and their friends are often too busy working to spend night and day sewing the bridal attire, making the food to accommodate all of the guests, and anything else needed for a proper wedding. But someone still is needed to make sure everything gets done before the big day; and that is where wedding planners come in.

Wedding planners (or wedding coordinators) are, essentially, the personal assistants of the wedding field. They are the ones who do everything in their power to keep the wedding going smoothly from that morning until the reception is over. (Really, the only thing they can't control is making sure both the bride and groom show up and say "I do.")

Wedding planners arrange just about everything, from dress fittings to deciding what kind of cake to get and by whom, to floral arrangement picking, to seeing and deciding on venues for the reception.

If the parties involved can't decide where to hold the ceremony, the wedding planner helps them choose. If the bride and groom want a theme wedding, it is the wedding planner's job to get them what they want, within reason, of course -- all the while sticking to the budget placed by the people paying for everything.

A keen eye is important as the planner is the one overseeing all the various areas involved in a wedding, so making sure everything is as close to perfect as possible is important, as is a good understanding of how to match colors and styles.

Not only do wedding planners often come up with wedding themes, they also often help choose wedding colors, which then need to be matched in correctly, because not all blues are the same, and that goes for every basic color out there. And without properly matching colors, weddings don't always look their best.

It is also the job of the wedding planner to get the best quality for the best price. And since the average wedding costs almost $20,000, the people paying for the ceremony appreciate the lowered costs tremendously. And when the stress becomes too much to bear, the wedding planner is often an impromptu therapist and motivational speaker to make sure that nothing -- or as close to nothing as possible -- goes wrong on that day.

In the end, it is the wedding planner's job to do everything in their powers to make the wedding the bride and groom have always dreamed of. If they succeed at that on a regular basis, they will be swimming in offers to plan weddings. If they can't, they won't last in the wedding planning business very long.