Choosing vendors can be a very daunting task, especially considering that they will have a huge impact on how your wedding day runs.
The first thing my fiancé, Matt and I did after celebrating the announcement of our engagement with our friends and family (make sure to do this before diving right into wedding planning – I promise that it is worth taking the moment to relish this exciting new time for you and your fiancé!) was to sit down together and make a list of vendors we would need to hire for our big day and prioritize where we would be willing to spend more money from our budget and where we were okay scaling back.
The list of vendors we knew we needed to be part of our day was:
- Wedding Planner / Coordinator
- Venue
- Caterer (depending on chosen venue)
- Rentals (depending on chosen venue)
- Photographer (we decided against a Videographer, but it may be something to add to your list for consideration!)
- Officiant
- Florist
- DJ (or Band)
- Bridal and Bridesmaid Dresses
- Tuxes/Suits
- Hair/Makeup Stylist
- Hotel Block
- Transportation
- Invitation Designer
- Wedding Cake / Baker
- Wedding Rings
For Matt and I, the most important vendors were the venue, photographer and officiant. These were the areas we were willing to designate the biggest percentages of our budget. Had our venue not included an On Site Wedding Coordinator, or if I wasn’t comfortable researching/booking vendors on my own, a Wedding Coordinator would also have been included in this group of top priorities.
Having a Coordinator really ensures that Matt and I will be able to enjoy and make the most of our wedding day, and because of my industry experience, I felt confident in my ability to orchestrate the smaller details that an Event Management and Coordination or Full Planning Design and Coordination package would assist with.
We also knew, when starting to research, that we wanted to keep our vendors as local as possible so we could really get to know them as well as have them get to know us, as a couple. For this reason, a majority of our vendors are independent businesses or self-operated businesses.
In the coming blog posts, I will go into more detail on how and why we chose our vendors.
-Becca
