Brides who are short on time be­cause of work com­mit­ments, who are plan­ning a large-scale or com­plex wed­ding or those who sim­ply want to ease their stress lev­el, may will­ing­ly ac­knowl­edge that they need a wed­ding plan­ner. How­ev­er, it's im­por­tant to recog­nise the de­gree of help that you need.

Here are some op­tions and the types of brides who need them the most:

Full-ser­vice wed­ding plan­ner–This is most suit­ed to the bride who has a vi­sion of what she wants but doesn't feel the need to mi­cro­man­age the wed­ding plan­ning process.

This type of arrange­ment re­quires a great deal of trust on the part of the bride to­wards the plan­ner. The plan­ner has the bride's over­all bud­get to work with and gets quo­ta­tions, does site vis­its, and re­views sup­pli­ers' con­tracts in or­der to make rec­om­men­da­tions for each type of wed­ding ven­dor for the bride. The bride is charged a co-or­di­na­tion fee by the plan­ner, which is part of her wed­ding bud­get.

Bridal con­sul­tant–Brides who pre­fer to do most of the leg­work dur­ing the plan­ning process but who may still need some guid­ance or brides who do not have the bud­get for a full-ser­vice plan­ner will ben­e­fit most from us­ing a bridal con­sul­tant. This type of ser­vice al­lows brides the flex­i­bil­i­ty to get a paid con­sul­ta­tion based on the hours of as­sis­tance need­ed with wed­ding plan­ning. A few ex­am­ples might be a bride who is un­sure about which wed­ding ven­dors to choose or how to analyse wed­ding ven­dor con­tracts. Con­sul­ta­tions could even hap­pen in terms of as­sis­tance with gown shop­ping, in­vi­ta­tion/pro­gramme word­ing or theme de­vel­op­ment. To ac­cess bridal con­sul­ta­tions, you can vis­it this link: www.trinidad­wed­dings.com/TWC

Both plan­ners and con­sul­tants have con­tacts and ex­pe­ri­ence that are all aimed at sav­ing you mon­ey and time. They al­so have a good rap­port with many wed­ding venues, which can give you an added ad­van­tage when it comes to is­sues such as: giv­ing you ex­tra add-ons and lee­way on ac­cess time to the venue pri­or to the wed­ding.

"Day of" co-or­di­na­tor–A "day of" co-or­di­na­tor will be there on the day of your wed­ding to en­sure that all the el­e­ments you've planned come to­geth­er seam­less­ly. In or­der for this to hap­pen, how­ev­er, the co-or­di­na­tor of­ten works any­where be­tween two-four weeks with the bride, pri­or to the wed­ding, to work out sched­ules and fol­low up with wed­ding ven­dors. This arrange­ment usu­al­ly suits the do-it-your­self (DIY) brides, since they can have a large in­put in­to the wed­ding plan­ning but still be cost-con­scious.

If you're still un­sure which type of plan­ner/co-or­di­na­tor you need, please drop me a line at si­mone@trinidad­wed­dings.com