Once you start planning your wedding you will quickly start to hear these words being used –Wedding Planner, Wedding Stylist and Wedding Day Coordination. We often hear couples confuse and interchange these terms so we thought we help explain what exactly each role-plays in your wedding.

A Wedding Planner is a responsible for planning the logistical elements that bring your wedding to life. Your Wedding planner will assist you with your budget creation and management as well as venue selection, supplier procurement and management, wedding day timelines, seating arrangements, and so on. They can also act as a trusted advisor on everything wedding related and a shoulder to lean on. At Couture Wedding Planning you get all 3 elements Wedding planning, Wedding Styling and wedding Day Coordination as part of your Full Wedding Planning Package.

A Wedding Planner is often responsible for organising the following elements for your wedding:

• Ceremony Venue
• Reception Venue
• Wedding Invitations & Save the Dates
• Make Up & Hair
• Photographers & Videographers
• Transport Celebrant
• Ceremony
• Music
• Entertainment such as a Live Band or DJ
• Cakes
• Photobooth

A Wedding Stylist is responsible for the overall visual aesthetic of the wedding and how the wedding looks and feels. A Wedding Stylist curates all the wedding design elements for the day and created a personal style guide as part to their service. At Couture Wedding Planning we offer a Wedding Styling Package perfect for couples who have organise a lot of the elements above but would love help with the Curating and Design a day that reflects their style and personality. 

Stylist will often source the following elements:

• Flowers –we work closely with your florist to bring you concept to life
• Décor Hire such as centrepieces
• Specialist Dance floors
• Luxury Linens
• Specialised Cutlery
• Signature Charger plates 
• Furniture Elements
• Special Glassware
• Candles, Votive and Candles Sticks
• Lighting
• Stationary Elements such as welcome signs, seating plans, menus, place cards

A Wedding Coordinator is not deeply involved with planning of the day –they are often hired by couple who would like to plan their own wedding but would like to have a professional look after their day. This way the couple can have a magical and stress free day knowing all the intricate details are being looked after. At Couture Wedding Planning we offer an advisory service as part of our coordination package so that if the couple needs help during their wedding planning they can email us and we can help point them in the right direction.

We will start to meet with our couples and their key suppliers about 3 months out from the wedding such as your venue, photographer and florist and then develop a detailed wedding day timeline which is used to run your wedding day. 

A Wedding Day Coordinator will be involved in the following elements:

• Finalize the last minute details such as your seating plan
• Create your wedding day timeline
• Communicate this timeline to your suppliers so they know exactly where and when they should be on the wedding day.
• They ensure the ceremony and reception venue are set up exactly as discussed on the lead up to the wedding
• Main point of contact on the wedding day so we can address any of your concerns and find solutions to any challenges that may occur. But be aware that wedding coordinators/day-of-coordinators are very different from a venue coordinator.

A Venue Coordinator or Venue Event manager is hired by the venue to ensure your wedding follows the rules and regulations of the space. They may help with your reception timeline but will mostly likely not help you with the wedding set-up or sourcing any of your suppliers. Most importantly, a venue coordinator works for the venue; their job is to answer your questions about the venue and assist you with your venue layout. They are someone you may contact if you need extra reassurance about the details of your wedding venue; however, their loyalty is to the venue. Their job does not include all the other details that go into planning your wedding.

In summary, Venue Coordinators help you with the following:

• Venue Floor plan
• Venue Banquet or Event Order (a document used to communicated all your wedding details to their staff) 
• Reception Timeline (this timeline will not be as comprehensive as the one you develop with you planner as it will not include any of the morning timings such as when you hair and make up artist arrive etc.
• Menu Tasting and Selection
• They may suggest a list of preferred supplier but will not contact any of these supplier for you or obtain quotes from these supplier for you, this is what your wedding planner and stylist will do. Often Venues will claim they have included your personal wedding planner in their package but please note this is merely a venue coordinator who will not provide a detailed service like your Wedding Planner would.

Photos by Siempre Weddings and GM Photographics