Your Friends and Family Don’t Want to Work on Your Wedding Day! Here’s What They Aren’t Telling You.

Your wedding date is set, and friends and family are excited! Now the planning starts, and even though it’s fun, it can quickly overwhelm you. Well-meaning friends and family offer to help because of course they love you and want your wedding to be an amazing day for you!

Here's where things can go wrong; when you ask them to do a job on your wedding day. Weddings are once in a lifetime events, and as coordinators, we are doing a lot of behind the scenes work that no one sees. We are working with other vendors, adjusting timelines gone astray and making sure the show goes on. Have you ever heard the phrase “Too many cooks in the kitchen”? That’s what can happen when non-professionals are tasked with helping on a wedding day. Without having a professional coordinator to help the day go smoothly, everyone can be going in different directions and that can mean chaos and confusion. If your friends and family are helping with wedding day tasks, detailed instructions and a professional in charge, is a must!

When wedding day issues arise, people typically go to the couple to ask what they want to be done. This can cause stress as they’ve never coordinated anything like a wedding before! It can even mean they miss out on parts of their day as they try to correct problems.

People are busy and have full plates, but they don’t want to disappoint you. They may say yes because they want to help, but that can backfire on everyone. They may say yes to doing that speech, even though public speaking terrifies them, and the speech will be stilted and awkward. They may agree to bring your florals to the reception site, not understanding how flowers need to be transported.

And, if you’re inviting someone who is in the wedding and event industry, we can tell you with certainty that we want to be a guest! We get to do fun things like eat at the cocktail hour and dance!

Helpful Things That Friends and Family Can Do

There are so many things they can help with before the wedding! It also gives people a feeling of pride to have helped make the event come together.

Recommend Vendors: Who’s got the best cake in town? Did you love your photographer? What about flowers? All of these recommendations can be a great place to start. Vendors love referrals! Working with friends or family of former clients is a treat for us, and we treat them well.

Loan Décor and Accessories: All those little items add up! Borrowing décor for the shower, the rehearsal, or the wedding day can save you money and personalize it for you.

Drop Off/Pick Up: Bringing home gifts from the shower, decorations from the rehearsal, picking up décor items, not to mention helping to pick up and drop off elderly friends and relatives for all the events. Any time you can enlist help for these things, do! When time is at a premium for you as a wedding couple, let people do some of the heavy lifting for you.

Pick a Point of Contact: You probably know exactly who this is! Someone who knows you well is calm and balanced and can help us on the wedding day. As coordinators, our primary goal is that everything goes smoothly and so the couple has a beautiful wedding day. If questions do arise, having a point of contact person is an excellent idea because we can ask them about small decisions that you know they can answer for you.

Your friends and family should be honored guests at your wedding, being able to be fully present for you and your commitment! At the very least, work with your planner to provide a detailed agenda for their portion of any wedding day setup, and then let them ENJOY the rest of the day by your side!

Let’s chat about wedding planning services for your upcoming wedding in the Southport area. We’re always happy to brainstorm with you and help you find the perfect job for friends and family before and after the wedding while we take care of the wedding day for you.

Call us at (919) 616-6911 or get in touch here.