Questions You Could Ask a Wedding Planner


Amanda. The best of the best when it comes to wedding planning. Brock challenges her with some deep questions about hiring a wedding planner. Like, what is a wedding planner? How do you spell wedding? – the “Top Questions You Ask When Hiring a Wedding Planner” provided by The Knot.

*Below is the automated transcript of the above video

Hey, I’m Brock with Brock Entertainment am Amanda with Amanda Reed weddings. And this is the IDOIQ Podcast, where each and every week we’re gonna be discussing the latest in wedding and event trend. And we’re going to let you know all the things that you need to know in order to make your event the most special. Yeah, and Indian, you will have the best wedding and event experience ever. And something tells me we’re going to have a little fun along the way. I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty serious guy, man. And this is a serious topic. So only seriousness, serious business. This is the IDOIQ podcast. Let’s begin. Hey, it is Brock. And this is the IDOIQ podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. We got a great show for you today. Because we are talking to you. You got to interview me a couple of weeks ago I know and that was terrifying. But now you talking you interviewing me has got me a little bit Jim. Yes. Scary. Well, you went to the knot, which is you know, the big website where people go to plan weddings, right and I have like 20 something questions ask you. We’ll get to that. Okay, but I want to know, what are you obsessed with right now? You’re gonna have lots of wedding season is kicking back into gear. You’re planning weddings. I just did a huge wedding over the weekend and more weddings to come. So what are you obsessed with? Well, it has nothing to do with wedding. Oh, it’s not. It’s not exciting. All I’m doing right now is rearranging and so I’m like, yeah, reading anything new. I’m not watching it. I feel like there’s nothing really that’s fascinating. But I have been on a serious tacos for life kick. Oh, yeah. There’s Southwest chicken bowl is like to die for I’m looking for a recipe for it sometimes. It’s so good. Taco fresh. Oh, that’s it’s not a very wedding II thing, but it’s really delicious. It’s like my favorite. Okay, my favorite meal. Oh, yeah. I like that. Yeah, I don’t I don’t get real excited about food very much. There’s not like yeah, foods and I’m like, Oh my god, I gotta have that but that’s something I’m like, Oh my god, I gotta have that. I gotta have that like, yeah, I’m kind of thinking how can I work that for dinner tonight? But I’m trying to I want to find a recipe to like make it at home but I don’t think I’ll be able to copy it very well. No, it’s never gonna get the rice right I want to get to it just won’t be good. Yeah, yeah, that’s my thing. It’s not that great. But it’s delicious. And I would love it if tacos for life wanted to throw some tacos are away at super bars for life. I do i q brought to you by tacos by taco give a taco. Do you like how I set you up for that? I do. I’d like you’re welcome. No, but I do I love what that company car obviously. But I mean, you know, whatever. How about you? What are you obsessed with? Do you want performance? Oh, are you now? Do you want performance? Biggest sponsor of IQ iQ? Yeah. I mean, it’s opening in, in Lowell Rogers area. Yeah. Coming up, hopefully a month or so. I hope so. They’ve been postponing. Yeah. And it’s all about performance. Of course. You know, I am a former professional athlete. Yes, yes. Yeah. Several sports. That was I understand it. Yeah. That was man before my my days of DJing. I was I did football, basketball up on the professional level curling curling, a little bit of baseball and to have D one performance in Northwest Arkansas is crazy. It actually really is. And it’s the biggest one out of all of them in the country. Did you know that? I didn’t know that. Yeah. My friend Jim had told me that he and I think a guy sounds familiar. He’s a hunk. Yeah. So no, but really, it’s gonna be a very cool facility. It is so excited. I really am excited. So I say D one performance because I talked to your husband in length about it recently. Yes. Got me pretty pumped about it. Did he really? Yeah, that’s cool. I think it’s he’s he may have tastes like all on board with it. I really did not know that your husband went to college for football. Really? I didn’t know that. Oh, yeah. What was his position? He actually played quarterback in high school and moved moved around a little bit. There was some coaching changes when he went to college but moved around a little bit and ended up playing linebacker. He was an inside linebacker, oh, he was an outside linebacker, just I don’t know what it was. It was a linebacker. It was one of them inside of the big ones. I think Are you a cheerleader now? No dance. Not in college. I thought you were I could have swore you were Thank you. But you were dancer in high school but like did you not do anything in college sorority? Oh, because my life yeah, that was that was pretty hardy girl. No yamalube said that we don’t have drinks today. Last week we had Khun saloon in here. We had some drinks now we’ll have to I don’t know. Get jumped in here and have squats or something. Doesn’t sound fun. Yep. No, but that sounds exciting. And it’s gonna be really cool. It’s gonna be really neat. I’m excited. I think it’s actually gonna make me Are you gonna actually work out now? I’m gonna have to I’ve been so bad if your husband is he running the facility? Yeah, yeah, so you have to be a fit lady if you’re gonna stand by side from nella fix this is crazy. Like I have been in excellent shape in the past but I just I’ve gotten busy and I’m not happy with lazy you’ve been lazy. Um, yes, I am very lazy. So let make excuses for myself. I’m all about the excuses. And I’m started running again, which I hate doing but I’m just Trying to get myself back into some running. And I, you know, that’s the hard thing is like I know he knows how to train. Yeah, he knows what he’s talking about. But it’s hard to listen to Oh, yeah has been like, I don’t want to listen to him. I don’t want him to be right. But I know if I listen to Him and do what He tells me to do, I’ll get the results. Yes, you will. I need to take advantage of that. Both my kids he’s he’s been working at both my kids for a couple of years. Now. Your kids are awesome. And their moms lagging behind mom’s wagon. Alright, let’s get into today’s topic. So you asked me all the questions that I’m working on here. And I haven’t went up through all these. So we’ll do this together. So these are on the knots, questions. It says all the questions to ask potential wedding planners. Wonderful. First one, are you available on my wedding day? Yes, I am. Now I’ve got a great first question, because you don’t want to go past that if they’re not available. Yeah, great. No, that’s a really good question. And typically, the answer is going to be yes. Because I’ve got an amazing team. Don’t be me saying, but I do have an amazing team of people that I work with who I trust, who I have vetted and who who work with me and they they’re available. If I’m not, there are a handful of dates that were just maxed out, though, right? You know, we might take four or five weddings in one weekend. A lot. So it’s possible that we might not be but pretty rarely it how far in advance Do you usually book? You know, we’ve booked some I’ve had some that booked two years out? Yeah, that’s not the norm. I would say normally nine to 12 months. It’s kind of its sweet spot. But then, you know, I’ve had some really amazing weddings booked six months out, you know, you just never really means you have to work harder, you have to work harder for a shorter period of time. That’s exactly right. Can you work within our budget? question you just said yes. Okay. So it really just depends. So, yes, so yes, is typically the answer. But I would say I, I get to the point where when we’re talking budget with a potential client, it’s not fair for us to command that portion that much of your budget, or if you’re talking about spending $2.5 million, then yes. No, is gonna cost you 2 million just for Amanda. Yeah, you can have the point five for the wedding. No, it really just depends. It really just depends, right? Yeah. Most people with a reasonable budget, yes. But when you are booking a venue that already costs, you know, six, or $7,000, and you’re booking a photographer that we know cost $5,000, like we want to spend $20,000, where’s one DJ? And then food? And then yeah, he spent a big chunk of that, and there’s probably not a lot left for for our services. And that’s hard, because I feel like everybody should I do believe everybody should hire a planner. But sometimes, if they’re not allocating the funds, like the right way, necessarily, or they’re, you know, we have 500 guests coming, but we want to spend $250 on food. I mean, there’s just some places where you don’t have the money to So that would mean Yeah, so that leads into the next question, say they can’t afford the full service. What kind of services do you offer? Do you like month of coordination full service planning or all a cart planning? I love that. Okay. Yeah, yes, we are We definitely order order offer it’s typically known as weekend I don’t like that term, though. Your your otherwise day? Have you get some time? Yeah, day of weekend. So you their wedding planner on that just shows up that day? Right. Yeah, I understand. Mostly, I don’t like that. Even calling it that. Because I feel like any planner who would literally just show up and walk into the Firestorm that he there, I don’t think that’s why it can be dangerous. It’s very dangerous. So we don’t do that we do what we call event management. And that typically, you know, we might, we might book it six months out, but we don’t actually start service until about two months. Okay. You know, we’ll give you contacts, you know, say yes, you call Brock called it, you know, here’s the here’s who you should call. But we’re not going to be the one managing the contract until about two months out. And then we’ll pick up and put it all back together at that point and kind of fill in the blanks and figure out what’s missing. But I can’t do that. I don’t do weekend, quote or event management because I can’t draw the line. No, you want to do everything I want to do. And this is gonna be the best. Yeah, the best wedding. Yeah. So I cut myself out of that equation probably five years ago, like, I’m just not going to offer that service myself anymore. I’ve got team members who do and they do a great job with it. I just can’t cut that. I just can’t cut that line. Right. And I’m constantly crossing it. So I don’t. So when we hire you, how many meetings will we have? And how will we as a couple be involved such a good question to you. And these are really good questions so far knowing it not knowing it. Typically, our contract includes about six meetings. That doesn’t mean that at meeting number six, and these are in person meetings, yes. sometimes not. We work with a lot of clients who don’t live in our area, but phone meetings and meetings would count as well. Doing a ton of zoom right now, obviously, but you’re always available via email. I know you get a ton of a ton of emails, but obviously that’s the preferred method because that way it just getting through the information. But yeah, so typically about six meetings, our initial meeting our first date, we do a lot of fact finding we do a lot of gathering information, just kind of getting into their heads and finding out what is it you want and just and it still takes a few more meetings to really figure them out but that’s a really good first start. So then we move into typically the actual first in person meeting like really planning the wedding. More than just fact finding is invitations. I want to I feel like that sets the tone for the event. It’s the first thing the guest receives, it kind of lays the groundwork for everything else we’re going to be deciding on throughout the process. So that is one of the, if not the very first meetings meeting that we we start with to kind of just get a start on the overall design. Other meetings will be floral rental cake tasting menu tasting, well, we’re already at six right there, five right there, I can’t count. And then there’s at least one other just like general kind of touch base, like where are we kind of meeting the factors into that? lots of emails, lots of back and forth with that. And a lot of times when we are working with couples from out of town, we we might lump two or three of those meetings together into one weekend or one, not a weekend. We don’t typically work weekends because work weekend, right? But it might be like a Friday and a Monday. If you’re coming in town for this weekend. We might work on Friday and Monday and do some things. And so six meetings is about what we include in our contract. But we’re not also not like okay, well, good luck. That was good luck. I mean, we definitely if it takes a couple more meetings to make that happen. We do it but within reason. Like you don’t need to have six meetings to talk about invitation. No, it doesn’t, you know, I don’t like taking people to multiple cake tasting. That vendor has spent time and energy and resources preparing that that tasting, right? So I don’t think that’s fair to do to those vendors, either. If we know that that’s not a legitimate I mean, there are definitely people who are like, I just want some cake. I don’t wanna taste free cake, which is super fun. But I would say go buy a cake. Yeah, I don’t know, waste people’s time. Now I don’t think that’s fair it in there. I do the same thing with clients that like, Well, can we meet two or three times? Why like, what’s the reason for this? Because we can usually take care of it right over a zoom call or over a phone call or even over email. Right? You know, I’m a little I mean, I’m more hands on obviously, then even right in the process that we do feel like we’ve got to give them a little bit more than than that. But yeah, I have to be really careful with the amount of meetings that we allow. I mean, I had clients years ago that wanted to get together and talk about hotel room blocks. And I was like, email. That’s not Yeah, that’s not an in person meeting, I’d be happy to meet and talk about other stuff. But you know, probably not, or, you know, they want me to go dress shopping with them. And I’m like, Well, I’m flattered. But you need your sister. And you know, that’s not you. That’s not that’s not a but I’m happy to do and I’m happy giving my input. But that’s not typically something that you’re contracting me to do. So do you handle professional services, contracts and payment processing? Do you handle those things, we oversee the contracts, we help make sure that those contracts are in line, because a lot of people don’t know to look for if you’re hiring a band, they might require 10 meals and they might require hotel accommodations. And they might require travel arrangements. I mean, I’ve had weddings that thought they were getting a band for x price didn’t really read their contract properly handle it on their own, didn’t want us really involved in that. And then all of a sudden, they’ve spent four times what they were thought they were spending on the entertainment because they hadn’t factored those pieces in and they didn’t load. They didn’t look at the rider. They signed off on it. And then they were like, Oh, yeah, I begged you to let me look at that contract. I begged you to let me see it. But dad wanted to handle it. So you know, it’s only I didn’t get to handle it. And so so yeah, it kind of skewed the budget. So I don’t know that I answered the question. Yes, we do things but we don’t sign for it. You get people paid at the end of the night. That’s the goal. Yeah, we do. We try to we try to oversee those contracts and make sure because I know what a cake should cost. reasonably. I know what a DJ service should cost reasonably. Now, there’s always an exception to that. But I think it’s very important. We like to take a look at it and make sure that we’re we’re seeing it contract is always between the client and vendor, we’re there to assist. We’re not the person signing the contract, and typically not the one paying the bill. There’s a fee, I pick up a tab on a few things and then reimburse, but typically all that handle is handled through the vendor, but you do find out at the end of the night, Hey, have you been paid? Yes, I do still need to be paid. And I like that we actually, like try to handle that before the event takes place. I’ll get an email saying Hey, have you been paid yet? How much does the client owe you that how can we pay when we send out that that master timeline? You know, a week two weeks out double checking if you’ve not been paid? Let me know. Last call let me know right? Because I did have a photographer one time come up to a client New Year’s Eve wedding came up to the client and asked for his check. And I was like, You have all people yeah, have the collateral like you’re you’re their photographer, you’re gonna have something to give to them at the last you know, and I asked you had you been paid. Don’t ever go out to a client asking for money at the event. Like go to me, I’ll handle it. We’ll deal with it. I can go to dad but why would you walk up to a bride you don’t go to the bride especially you know, and I was like, never see you again. No. And I mean, when I was first getting started I would ask the families get paid tonight I’m sure now it’s all digital. They do it the day before and if they don’t pay the day before there’s a penalty, so well I’ve even I’ve switched my billing even because typically, you know yes, I would say it was due like a week before or two weeks before because but I have pushed it to where they they pay our final final payment out three months out. Because it’s when we’ve done the majority of the work that’s true and at that point I feel like they trust us enough to know that we’re gonna be there but also to know that I don’t want them thinking about the fact that they paid us oh no the end of it. I want them to just be like happy go lucky and maybe there’s some reimburse. Yeah, the fact but I don’t want to you know, slap them with some giant bill who they weren’t right expecting. A lot of times I am the last one getting paid, and everybody else has been paid. And then I’m waiting and two or three months later, we’re still waiting on our final invoice. Yeah, that’s really difficult. Just because you know, we’ve we’ve paid everybody else out, and we’re kind of out some money on some things. Yeah, it’s never good. So can you walk us through the process of selecting other vendors and how we would be involved? Okay. Let me think about that. How do I want to answer that really just depends, I think, yeah, I think it depends on client to client. So some clients maybe say we trust your your vendor choices? Who do we want to start with? Yes. Tell me a lot of times, I will say even in that first couple of conversations, do you have any vendors you know, you really want to work with and almost always, they’ll have one or two, they’ve picked the venue already, or they know they want to work with this DJ right now, a few little details like that some clients come to us with a full list. They’re like, this is who my sister used. I like everybody on there. Cool. But we do often get the opportunity to, to present a few different options. And so what I’ll usually do is, okay, forget looking at Forest, here’s two or three if you don’t have a preconceived notion of who you want to work with. Or if you do, and it’s I know it to be someone who maybe isn’t a great fit for them. I’ll say, Well, here, take a look at these three or four, usually given their Instagram, you know, and that’s, that’s become such a tool, but I usually give them the Instagram accounts of, you know, a few options here and look, look over these, tell me what you think. And they’ll go through and they’ll see, I mean, because I feel like that’s where you’re putting your best work, you know, and you’re not able to use Instagram quite in the same way. I think it’s not you’re not as visual No, right? It’s not good. Unless we get the pictures from photographers, videographers, you guys looking cool in a suit. That’s the right picture. But yeah, so we though are able to and florists and catering staff like those people are those vendors are all able to utilize those images from a photographer. And so I feel like what you’re putting on your Instagram obviously speaks to the type of client that you hire and your best services. So I’ll send them to their Instagram and take a look and see and kind of rank them. Tell me 123. And then let’s meet with the first one. I’m not saying we should meet with three different florists. I’m saying let’s meet with your first choice. And if you don’t fall in love during that meeting, then we can go to the next one. But my gut tells me that you’re right, you’re gonna find somebody based on just what you like, I know, here’s my track record with a good experience with them. Moving on from that I think you’re gonna have you’re gonna feel really good about it. If you feel like you really need to have another meeting after that. Great, but I think by and large, we can knock it out in that first meeting. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. And it takes less of all of our time, right? Yeah, I hate wasting a meeting. A vendor, knowing that this client is most likely not gonna hire them. Yeah, breaks my heart. It’s just It feels like I’m lying. No, right. You know? Yeah, it’s not fair. So are you willing to step in as our advocate conveying our visions and desires to pros when we can’t? Absolutely, that’s a very delicate situation, though. Because if there’s ever a little bit of a rub between a vendor and a client, yes, I try to kind of, I have to walk a fine line and try to keep people happy with each other. And even you know, with the the weekend of the wedding, we end up a lot of times, again, having to kind of cater to the client cater to the client’s family, to all the clients guests, and cater to the venue and the vendors and all that try to make sure everybody’s happy. And we just kind of keep this perfect little, the word, bubble, not bubble or perfect little in the symbiosis or something like that. I don’t know how to just keep a perfect little happy environment forever. There you go. And then as far as like, sometimes people just can’t, like, I know, I like pink. But I don’t know how to describe pink, right? What do I like? Do I want pink chairs? Do I want just pink flowers like, so a lot of times clients can show me an image, but they can’t really tell me why they like it until we kind of really start dissecting it and figuring out what it was. Pinterest is super helpful for that reason. But also kind of difficult because it’s it’s a Pandora’s box, right is I can help convey those ideas. And you know, I find it very important to find a common thread that’s going to run throughout this entire event. Maybe that is the invitations. And we chose gold as our metallic accent and it’s on a crew paper. So we know that that’s going to be the common thread that runs throughout this. We don’t want to choose something later on that completely contradicts because most clients have interest boards that they’ve had for many years. And it’s the craziest mishmash of stuff you’ve ever seen. What does it mean? Well back like this, like this and get married at the beach, and then we run a barn and then I went to this hotel, so it’s all over the place. And so we try really hard to kind of hone in as is. So what is it about this that you still think is super important? Oh, yeah, I don’t like that anymore. I don’t even know why that’s in there. All right, let’s get rid of it. don’t even want it. Yeah, and I mean, we really don’t rely very heavily on Pinterest. But it does kind of help us a little bit peek into somebody’s brain and see where they are. And you’re really good at design work in general. So that’s, I think where you shine a lot is taking those ideas and making them work and beautiful. And sometimes you have ideas that don’t necessarily work in the venue that you know, they love this suspended huge, amazing floral arrangement, but the venue doesn’t only like it can’t do that can’t do that they don’t allow that was something that would fit that kind of resembles that gap. Yes. Or, you know, it’s a super rustic look. But we’re in a country club, like how do you blend those two ideas together? And I honestly I think I thrive in kind of the unexpected. How can we How can we take this what could be pretty pretty pedestrian and make it really unique and and unique to that couple? All right, next question. Will you handle the invitations? We’re just talking about that from wording and ordering today addressing and mailing. What about guestlist? coordination and rsvps? The guest list is the bane Yeah, couples, the hardest thing. And it’s that’s also, yes, get all the addresses, but it’s so hard. Okay. There’s a little tip here that I’m going to share. There is a website. It’s not an app, I thought it was an app for a little bit. It’s not an app. Okay. postable. Yes, you may have gotten a text from somebody using it. But it creates a guest list for you. And then it will ship out the stuff right. I think they can ship I don’t use it for that purpose. Because I think it’s actually a card mailing service. Yes. But it’s a way to actually pull all your addresses together into like a CSV file. So you can pull all this into like an Excel or go this nice, super helpful. So especially if you’ve got like, I’ve got all these people’s cell phone numbers, but I don’t have I don’t know their address, especially for people who like you know, college haven’t maybe established the Christmas card yet. Yeah, Christmas card list. So a lot of times encourage it. They’re just like, I don’t know where to get all these addresses. That’s one place we’ll start so there’s a one little tidbit I’ll share who’s at postable postable. I do IQ brought to you by postable downloaded today. I walked into that one too did. What was that again? Anyway, but so so starting that guest list, though, that determines everything we’re choosing from then on how many invitations are we ordering? How many chairs do we need? How many people refeeding? How many drinks? are we buying all the choices that we make reflect back to that guest list? So yes, we create, we help you create a document, people ask me how to weed out the guest list that I can’t handle that when I can’t even touch because I yes, I think if I looked at my guest list, I had a very giant wedding. If I were to probably do my guest list now, it would be a fraction of that size people I just haven’t seen in years, it was all my parents friends. I think if I were to get married again, to do the wedding, now, it would be a fraction of the size mine. I guess I would say I look at all of it. Who’s gonna bring the best gift? Obviously, obviously, and who are the people you know, aren’t gonna come but we’ll send a gift. It’s also important. I mean, I wouldn’t I don’t regret having had a very large wedding. You know, obviously what we learned when we were with our friends and all that, but I just feel like the the number of people that we socialize with, compared to what we did know, right, just very different, different. But yeah, creating that creating that guest list is super important. So we have a hand in that we help obviously we can’t really that’s very personal. We help with that. And then we we help select the invitation. We have been known to assemble invitations stuff stamp mail, all that we will even do RSVP service if Wow. And that is an extra charge isn’t sometimes okay. I think it depends on the client. Depends on the client, just everything we do is super customized. So if it makes sense for us to be the one collecting, yes, a lot of times the client wants that they want to touch and feel every single card that comes back in and they want to you know, they they want to like you can easily handle that. It’s all you. It’s not the worst thing in the world to handle. I don’t mind doing it. I don’t mind doing it at all. So okay, yeah. Did I answer everything? Yeah, that was perfect. Do you handle rentals and we coordinate delivery, arrival and setup times with the photographer, the florist, the musicians, and the caterer, banquet manager? I think you know the answer to that very well. Yes, yes. So we build out. Why are you emailing me so many times. We send I mean, multiple emails, phone calls, text, just making confirming details, making sure certain vendors we’ve worked with multiple times, we know roughly when you’re going to need to show up, we have a pretty good idea of that. But we try to communicate especially when it’s a wedding that’s very detailed, like very specific ins and outs, some flip, if we have to do a flip or anything like that. We’re very communicative as far as like how’s that work? Big Master Master timeline, usually between six and eight pages long, a lot of detail that you don’t care about. And honestly the thing is, and I know you don’t know it’s fine. I mean, it’s we’ve got to have it all in one. Yeah. Because otherwise it’s all over email. It’s good. Check the timeline 90% of the page. Do I need a page? Okay, and we’re good. But it is helpful because it gets everything in one place. It helps the client even though it’s more information than they need it helps get everything into one place so we can watch the flow of this event but yes, we handle every bit of it. We work with rentals, we help select all those items go to the point of having you there. So yeah, now I don’t think all planners are designers. Those are no that’s true. We definitely can Venn diagram that out. Yes. All planners are not designers. All designers are not planners, I think it takes the perfect storm to be both able to do both successfully. But coordinating and handling all the rentals is one of the main things of hiring a wedding planner, so you don’t have to worry about it. Now you shouldn’t be thinking about that you shouldn’t be there checking off and seeing that they’re 25 dinner plates short. That’s your problem. That’s our problem. Let us handle that. Let us figure out how we’re going to solve that problem. So now and today of logistics work question 10 is all mercy. How many people on your staff will be at the wedding depends on the wedding. Okay, there are some weddings where it can be one contract includes one staff member okay. additional staffing is usually brought in because of extra play settings. Somebody has to do that one person cannot physically do all that. No, you’re paying for the service of the planner that is going to be there with you start to finish making sure that things are done. We’re not furniture Movers. Don’t worry dragging a sofa across the, you know, across the venue, you know, I mean, yeah, definitely don’t want that, you know, we we will drop linens, we will help with play settings, you know, we can do all those things, but there’s only so many hours in a day. That’s the bottom line, we can only do so much. So we do have to bring in additional staff a lot of time. So yeah. So here’s the next question. Can you create a timeline that tells everyone involved in the planning process all your wedding pros what to do and when to do it? And how will you make sure that everyone sticks to that schedule? We look at that timeline as our Bible for the weekend, like everything to a fault, everything is included? Yes, some stuff, you don’t care about all the details, right? caterer doesn’t care about all the details. But collectively, it’s all important. So because sometimes I think the cake Baker has to know how her delivery fits into the grand scheme of things. If it’s not there at the right time, then we can’t move forward with the next step. Right. So, you know, knowing that floral begins at this time, you know, we have to have the dance floor set in place long before that happens. Or if you know if there’s going to be you know, items going up in the ceiling that has to happen before we get everything. We’ve we’ve had to step back over each other. And we just end up spending so much more time if we don’t carefully think through that stuff. So yeah, we definitely build that out. Sometimes it bites us, it definitely happens and things don’t go as planned, you know, trucks break down, and deliveries are late. And that always happens. You know, the more we can stay, the better we can say to our timeframe to our timeline, the more successful the day is going to be overall. So how do you make sure that the pros are sticking to that and on people the best we can like if I think everybody in the industry respects each other to the most and because they they know their piece. I know if I don’t get this done, then I can’t move on to my next job. Because there are some that might have three or four setups in one Oh, right. They gotta get in and get it done. So if they’re not in place, ready to go ready to get set up. They may miss their window. Yeah. So they’ve got to get their job done. So I think mostly, they really are very careful about that. There are some companies that we’ve had difficulties with and it’s just hard to work with them because they won’t follow a timeline. Like there’s a reason I need that delivered at that time. Because everything else that happens after it is built. Yeah, built based on that. And if you’re a vendor that is hard to work with, then know that you’re probably not getting as much business as you could straight I mean, because as vendors we have to work good together have to and the people that you recommend the most of the ones that you’d like working with. So well if you’re supposed to admire if you’re supposed to be there at 745. Like if you’re not there at 745. Let us know so we can you know, because I’m like holding another train. Yeah. Because I’m like, No, no, they’re supposed to be here somewhere. I’ve got to get this in first before you come if you’re three hours late. I can’t know much about that. Now that’s on you. So what happens if you’re sick or otherwise unable to be there on the day of the wedding? Okay. Knock on wood that has not happened yet. Yeah. I do get migraines. Yeah. And you are a migraine. That’s what your husband calls you. I get migraines. I never know when they’re coming. I’ve never been able to pinpoint like, what my triggers are. I don’t know. And I’ve had probably three or four weddings that I can think of off the top of my head. I’ve had three or four that have just hit me all of a sudden I’ve got a migraine now and it’s not and I don’t know, I don’t feel like they’re stress induced Do you get as a sick migraine or what it’s an optical so Oh, vision for a little while. And it looks like a flash ball was gone off. So I’m like, it’s like I can’t see Oh, wow. It’s awful. I can usually get through I mean, I can I’ve got some medications that I can take that’ll at least subside. Knock on wood. I’ve not been sticking up I’ve had to leave I have had to go lay down for a little while until the medicine kicks in. And that’s why I don’t want to be by myself. I like to aim there to make sure things get done. How long does it take for cocaine to work? That’s the medicine you’re talking about. Right? Very unsexy. Cocaine not my drug of choice. I would be much skinnier I guess if I if it were with cocaine, we’ll do all the work for you. Yeah, so that is definitely I mean, that’ll knock me down sometimes for a couple of years. And I can’t I don’t have a couple of hours to afford on a certain on a wedding day. So no, there definitely been times where I just have to pop my medicine the quickest I can and just get back to work and just like tronic Ray to God that make it through I mean, really know the truth. And it seems to happen a lot of times later in the evening. Thankfully, I’ve only had a few times where it’s happened early in the day, but it’s I mean, it’s possible. Yeah, but I used to get ill. I mean, when I was younger, I started having these I was about 13 when I would get like at school or something. I would get motion sickness. Oh, and so I would have to go home I would vomit and Oh man, it was bad. I agree with that. Thankfully, yeah, now I just can’t see and then my face for a little bit. It’s not great. But I mean, it’s you know, it’s something I’ve kind of learned a little bit and I’m not to the point they’re not bad enough or consistent enough that I am on a preventative because they’re so inconsistent. Right go six months and not having the last one that you had not last week, I think okay, now before that, though. I couldn’t tell you. Yeah. Four or five men feel like you’re having one right now. Because you’re looking at me. It’s kind of funny. I’m over here. bouncing around. So if I mean if Yeah, if I were to be sick and not able to be there, I would definitely I’d have somebody there. I’ve got Yeah, I’ve got people who would jump in and handle it. I guess if my only instance where I found the hospital. I know. I’d have somebody there though. The job would get done right. It was my best friend. just reading from the list like okay, this is what happens next. Yeah, make it happen we make right then. Yeah. So a couple hydrive getting into your experience in the wedding business and planning, how many weddings have you planned? Do you think? I don’t even know the answer to that, because we kind of talked about this on the first episode. I mean, I guess I can, you know, do the math and figure it out. But it’s a couple 100 100 pounds. Yeah. How many weddings Will you be working on throughout the entire process? And on the day of at the same time, do you think that’s a really hard question to answer to because they’re all on a rolling basis? You know, so I start, I start one and I work with somebody for, you know, 12 days. Yeah. So at any given time, I’ve got probably 15 weddings on the books. Yeah, any different stage in the process? The rest of my team also has probably that many as well. So you know, I mean, I could possibly have up to 60 weddings and multiple stages. Not that’s probably a little high, but probably, you know, that’s it could be though, never No, never, no, on a wedding day. I personally only take one. But I might have three different team members at three different event, right? Occasionally, I’ve been in a situation where I kind of bounced between the three if I don’t have something personally scheduled that day, I might bounce between the three just checking in on things. It might just be a text or a phone call. But I yeah, I don’t take more than one event on a weekend. But the person you’re working with has your full attention. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes. So have you planned any weddings at our site? And I know you’ve planned weddings at almost every site I’d say just about every venue I mean yeah, the big names in Northwest Arkansas and and you know, Central Arkansas I’ve been at most of those times. There are a few that I’ve not gotten to work out yet for just whatever reason. Do you go beforehand and look at him? Definitely. Because you need to know the layout and how to map everything out and rightly you know, because I do I build out a master floor plan all the details in it and I obviously need to see it in person in order to you know, get measurements and like typically, I can get a lot of those measurements digitally. Yeah, so then I don’t have to go out thankfully and handwrite the whole other out would suck. But David I can get the floor plans and build those out. And then but yeah, definitely at least once will go to the venue, especially if it’s an out of town and you have not worked out if it’s a venue I’ve been to dozens of times. Yeah, there’s no need. There’s no need. Why do you do destination weddings? Yeah, love destination. What’s your most fun destination wedding you’ve ever been to not done a ton? I’ll be honest, I just got i think i bragged about this 1000 times but Charleston, South Carolina. It was Oh yeah. That was last year, wasn’t it? No, it was it feels like a year ago. It was February was in February. Oh, it was crazy. It was like yeah, I mean, that was that was before the floor fell out. Have you done any weddings out of the country? No. I’ve done one. Have you? Yes. It’s hard. That isn’t your thing for me to do because I have to source so many things true. So I have to do some serious like on the ground work in that area. Yeah. And I’m working. It’s not a problem. It’s something that’s totally Well, maybe they’ll fly down there. I know. I did one in what’s the below California Mexico. Yeah, but baja Santa or a New Mexico? There’s no there’s no is in Mexico. Okay, Mexico. What are some places to go in Mexico? I just like not Cosmo Cabo. Okay. I didn’t Cabo Cabo San Lucas. See, I think it’s like way down. And then a couple of flew me down there. Yeah, got to stay a week. Awesome. I had to rent the equipment from the area. And it was great. It was perfect. It was really warm outside. Yeah. Well, but it was it was fun. They had a blast. Yeah. I think being a planner for destination weddings is kind of its own animal. So there are you know, when you’re going to Mexico, there are companies at most resorts that handle those type of events? Yes, heck, yeah, I would do it. But it requires at least one meeting, you know, visit beforehand, do it right. And then and then, you know, it’s just hard for me though, because, you know, kids, it’s hard to be to plan on that kind of travel, right, because I end up being gone for so long. So it’s so much fun. I wish I could do more than that resort was like, we’ve never had a DJ like this. How can we get this guy back? And you’re like, here’s my car. Yeah, like, I would love to do weddings here. Yeah, I do. I do love traveling, and I really enjoy getting to do destination weddings. It just is not. I just haven’t for whatever reason been reached out to you for that. But I’m all about it. I love it. Oh, yeah. I’ve got a couple of this year. I mean, I’ve had a few we need to get into photography. That’s that’s that’s what it is. Pack that camera. On your way. Yeah. So what was the most unique wedding you ever planned? I mean, there’s a lot of them because you’ve done some pretty amazing weddings. Like you did one at Crystal Bridges a few years ago. That was pretty intense. You did miss America’s wedding that was pretty savvy. Her wedding was pretty amazing. I don’t know most unique. I mean, I’ve had some pretty cool thing. I mean, I have I’ve had couples that have you blending to different cultures. That’s always really interesting. I had a couple who the bride’s dad was from, I think he was he was Indian. Okay. And so they did his beautiful he did a Mehndi party for the bride the day before the wedding. And so her hands were Oh, yeah. So there were a lot of details and touches and the groom was from West Texas. And so we had a lot of details that kind of blended together in Crystal Bridges. It is one of those unique Yeah, it was really cool. So we had Have some elements from a lot of different things. That was interesting when we had Bollywood music like during, oh, forgot DJ dance, did you dance? And I was like, did they do celebrate in the Bollywood’s, though? No, I don’t think. No, I don’t, I’m sure it does, we can make it happen. What are some ideas you have for pulling off our vision? And I think you kind of have to know their vision. First off, yeah, you got to kind of dive into that. And I think I Excel when we’re trying to blend together things that maybe don’t necessarily go together. You know, if you love something, your guests are gonna love it too. Right? So typically, I mean, you know, getting to work with a client throughout the process, you see all their crazy ideas. And you see, as you start to, you know, break down and kind of hone in more on more, what more and more what you’re planning on doing, you see what’s not going to work and what is going to work. And so I think that things just sort of happen organically, I think you kind of weed out some of the riffraff the things that don’t necessarily work. And I think the cream just kind of rises to the top like you find what’s the best idea that you know, you hone in on what’s the you know, we have four different ideas for floral, we like these ideas, these don’t work at the venue, but this one really does. I think this could be really successful. So it’s just kind of a it’s, it’s a constant evolving process. And like you said, You are good with with creating, appreciate that. Well, and I work with really awesome people who can create those things. Right. You know, I feel like when I walk into a meeting for for floral, I’m relying on that designer, also. I’m a designer, but so are they and I want to give them the opportunity to shine as with any vendor, you know, yeah, caterer. Here’s some ideas. You do you though, like what do you suggest? I’m not I’m not a foodie. I’ve seen this. I think this would be cool. They like this. What can we do? I did have one though, where we we tried to kind of go off the map at a well known hotel restaurant, huh? They’re known for this type of food. A couple kind of wanted to go this direction. food tasting was a flop it was bad. Oh, not that they didn’t do it. Well, but that’s not what they do. Right? And at the end of it, we were just kind of like, Yeah, let’s go back to what they do. We need to go back. There’s a reason they’ve created exactly menu, we need to go back to what they do. Well, so sometimes it doesn’t work. But at least they tried. Yeah, yeah. So here’s a question for you. What’s your secret for staying calm under pressure? And how do you deal with day of disasters? Knowing that there are many many many eyes on me I think is a secret You know, I think it’s because I’m able to it is it’s it’s business, I’m able to take a step back and be like, Okay, how are we going to solve this problem? Often before the client even finds out that they don’t right? Like how am I going to go to them and say and most of the time they never know there was never No There are times when they do know for example, I had the power go out in event who What happened there? Yeah. But we had to figure out a solution. Yeah, client knew about the problem. Everybody knew about the problem. And we just went to every table hi guys just checking on you ever pick good? Everything is fine. You just keep the smile on your face that’s all you can do you know Rome is burning, right? We’re gonna keep smiling and and we’re gonna figure it out. Nobody that’s on site wants this to fail. No, every one of those vendors is going to do everything they can to help make this a success. I’m gonna keep it light hearted you got to keep it light hearted even in you know, bad scenarios where like something falls on grandma. It’s terrible to happen. Yeah, happen. What a ballast and a light on grandma. Yeah, ballast and a lightning fell on grandma’s shoulder. Oh, and of course, the venue came into care. And I just was like, you know, Oh, hi. Oh, just making sure you’re okay. We checked on her throughout the night. It’s grim. Oh, look like she’s okay. her arm is broken her shoulder. She’ll never be the same as she was not actually injured. You know, it was an irritation. Yeah, thankfully, she wasn’t injured. But yeah, like stuff. You just kind of have to smile. And remember that this too shall pass. Because day will end. It seems like it won’t at the time. Sometimes it will go on and on. But yeah, for sure. So we’re at question number 20. Do you have any references? Nope, you don’t? That’s easy. And they’re on your website? Our website has lots of reviews, Facebook, Instagram. Instagram doesn’t have reviews? No, not Instagram, unless you posted them. Exactly. I don’t do that. But Google and Bing. There’s lots of places for reviews on there. We ask clients to do that after the event. I’m not great about following up. I haven’t done that. I want to get better about that. But as a former client, the best thing you can do for a vendor is give them a review. Now tell everybody else how great the service was. If it wasn’t great, I would say go to that vendor and say hey, you know I want to review you couple issues with this. Talk to them. Maybe you don’t know the whole story of why things maybe weren’t as great as they were. But yeah, I guess we’ve got references. Okay, we’ve got lots and lots of clients you were like please let us let us refer you to questions left two questions left scared no one question. Okay. So one of the stinker Okay, last question is how do payments work? Great. Okay, payments to my company like a percentage of the budget a flat fee? Will there be additional expenses on top of your base fee like travel, parking, food, all that so there are companies who work off of a percentage of the total event? I don’t feel that that’s a fair way to do it. Because then there’s the question well, aren’t you just trying to get us to spend more money so you make more money? Yeah, so I’m very adamant that are a flat fee. Okay, you hire us for this job. We do this job. We manage this piece of the job, additional staffing. Yeah, that’s extra things that we might have. You know, a lot of times we Pick up things will pick up the tab for some certain things. So we definitely there can be additional fees afterward, but never something that the client doesn’t know about. Right? We keep a master budget as we go through this and we refer back to it constantly. We’re always pointing back to that budget. Okay, got the pricing for those lamps that we talked about. They’re in the budget they’ve been ordered. You’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna reimburse and it always says, final bill, like it’s going to be on their final bill, as a reminder, just that this is coming. Don’t forget, you do owe us still for this because I know nobody hates getting a surprise bill worse than No, right? Nobody hates it worse than me. So like to make sure that people are aware of what’s coming. And you know, if they want to pay those little things as they go, they totally can. But you typically have forgotten that you spent $500 on postage in November. By August, you have forgotten about that. And all of a sudden, you’re like, Oh, my gosh, I still owe her $500 for postage. That’s a lot of money for postage, right. So no, we don’t like to surprise people with a bill. That doesn’t relate to anything they’ve already talked about. And I answered that.