Questions to Ask a Wedding Planner Before You Book

At the end of every inquiry call, I ask if there are any questions I can answer. And more often than not, the answer I get back is another question: I’m not sure- is there anything that should I be asking you?

So let’s fix that. Here are the questions I’d recommend that you ask a wedding planner before you book one, including the ones nobody thinks of until it’s too late to matter.

(Fair warning. Some of these will get you answers you don’t love. That’s the point)

How many hours are you actually there on the wedding day?

Start here, because “day-of coordination” or “event management” means something different at every company. Some planners are on site for eight hours, and that’s it. Some are there from the first delivery to the last load-out.

For us, we’re the first vendor to arrive and the last to leave. Not every planner works that way, and there’s nothing wrong with a capped package of hours as long as you know it’s capped. What you don’t want is to find out at 9pm that your coordinator left at 8.

Oh, and ask what happens if the day runs long. Ask if there’s an overage rate.

Who is actually going to be at my wedding?

The person on your inquiry call is not always the person who shows up. At larger companies you may meet the owner and be handed off to an associate you’ve never spoken to.

Ask directly: are you the person running my day? Who else is on the team? Will I meet them before the wedding?

At SK Events, I’m your planner and I’m on site. My sister-in-law Julia assists, and if you’re a full or partial planning client you also get a bridal concierge, which is a member of our team who stays with the bride all day. She’s steaming dresses, getting you a drink, making sure you don’t miss the photos you asked for, and answering anything you need so you never have to go looking for me while I’m setting things up at the reception.

How many weddings do you take a year?

This one tells you a lot in a single number.

A planner booking forty weddings a year is running a volume business. That’s a legitimate model, but you should know that’s what you’re buying. We cap at twenty per planner, per year, because that’s what it takes to answer a text on a Tuesday afternoon during busy season. 

Follow it up with: how many weddings do you have the weekend of mine?

Do you do design, or only logistics?

These are two different jobs and a lot of couples assume one includes the other.

Logistics is your timeline, your floor plan, your vendor communication, your rain plan. Design is your color palette, your florals, your paper goods, your table setup, and how the whole thing looks and feels in the room.

If a planner does both, ask what that actually looks like. For us it means a mood deck that puts your palette, floral inspiration, paper goods and table design in one place, which then goes to your florist and rental company so everyone is building from the same document instead of interpreting a Pinterest board. It also means floral mockups and rental meetings that we attend with you.

If a planner does logistics only, that’s fine. You just need to know you’ll be hiring a designer separately, and you should budget for it.

What are your fees beyond the contract price?

Ask this one plainly.

Are meetings included, or billed? Is there a travel fee for venue tours? What about a wedding more than a certain distance from your office? Is there a fee for a second location, like a separate ceremony site?

None of these are red flags on their own. Surprise line items with just 2 months until your wedding are.

What’s your preferred communication method, and how fast do you respond?

This is the question I almost never get asked, and it’s the one that has potential to shape your entire planning experience.

Some planners are email only. Some have a client portal and won’t answer a text. Some will give you their cell. Ask what the expected response time is, and ask whether there are hours when they’re unavailable, because a planner who is at a wedding every Saturday is not answering you on a Saturday.

Then be honest with yourself about what you need. If you’re a texter and your planner is a formal-email person, you’re going to spend eighteen months mildly annoyed.

What system do you use to keep everything organized?

Ask to see it. A good answer is a real platform, not a spreadsheet someone built in 2019.

We use Aisle Planner, and every client gets their own portal. Your checklist and booking order live there. So does your guest list, your floor plan, every vendor’s contact info, every contract and proposal and quote, your budget, your family photo list, your music list. When you can’t remember whether you signed the linen order, you don’t have to text me. You open the portal.

Do you help with the venue search?

If you haven’t booked a venue yet, this matters more than almost anything else on this list.

We help with venue research and go on the tours with you, because the tour is where the logistical questions get asked and those are exactly the questions couples don’t know to ask. Where does catering stage? What’s the actual curfew? Is there a separate ceremony fee? What does the rain plan look like and does it fit your guest count?

You also want a planner in the room when the pricing conversation happens, because what a venue quotes you and what a venue costs you are two different numbers.

Will you tell me when you disagree with me?

I’d rather be the planner you trusted than the planner who agreed with everything.

If your floral vision doesn’t match your floral budget, I’m going to tell you in month two, not in month eleven when there’s nothing left to cut. If a timeline won’t work, I’ll say so. You’re paying for someone who has done this a hundred times, and the value of that experience is in the honest read, not the agreeable one.

Ask a planner how they handle telling a client no. The answer will tell you a lot about what your planning year is going to feel like.

The short list

If you only get through five, make it these:

1. How many hours are you on site, and what’s the overage rate?
2. Are you personally running my day, and who else is on the team?
3. How many weddings do you have the weekend of mine?
4. What’s included, and what gets billed on top?
5. How (and how quickly) do you communicate?

Save them. Have them on every call. The answers will sort your options faster than any Instagram feed.

If you’re at the very beginning of your wedding planning process and not sure a planner is even the right spend, we wrote about why couples hire a wedding planner and about what to do first after you get engaged.

And if you’d like to run these questions past us directly, get in touch. Ask the hard ones… we like them.

Vendor Credit

Planner: SK Events and Design / Venue: Saddlerock Ranch / Photography: Molly Lichten / Videography: Miguel Garcia Studios / Floral: Lark Floral and Event Design / Main Rentals: Premiere Party Rentals / Linens: BBJ LaTavola / Printables & Stationary: Paper Cliché / Cake: MJB Cakes / Bridesmaids Makeup: Kohnur / Catering: Harvest Kitchen / Bartending: Mint Bartending / DJ: DJ Taahaa / Musician: Hershel Abram Entertainment and Lucine Fyelon / Live Painter: Agnes Csiszar Russo / Makeup: Beauty by Chloe / Hair: Arsineh Ghazarian