TES12DAYSOFCHRISTMAS

For the past few days, we've been learning about some of the aspects of wedding planning, those seemingly little things that come together to form your Big day...to help bring your dream wedding to reality but what's the glue that brings all these things we've talked about and even more together to achieve that dream? EVENT PLANNING!!! Event/Wedding Planning and Coordination includes budgeting, scheduling, venue selection, vendor sourcing and management, stakeholders management, event day coordination...Event Planning can be said to be the glue that brings all elements together to create an amazing event. There is a legion of reasons why you should contract an Event Planner, but to mention a few; ▪To Take the Stress Off You; It's your big day you and your family and friends should enjoy the day making memories that outlive the event day not running up and down, stressing yourselves. ▪Professional Experience; As a Professional, an Event Planner has gained loads of experience and can see crawling what most people can't see standing at the top of a mountain. This experience/knowledge becomes readily available to you as a Client and can be put to use to identify problems that might arise beforehand and profer solutions for them. ▪Vendor Contracting/Negotiations/Management; Everyone wants the best for themselves, the best in this context doesn't exactly relate to the most expensive. An Event Planner helps you get value for your money from vendors, most of the time, there are some vendors who they already have existing relationships with which they can leverage to get even lower prices than would be given to others. Contracting a vendor is not all about the pricing, we also need to take into consideration the quality of service, capacity of the vendor to deliver the brief. The Planner manages vendors from the point of negotiation to post event reviews. ▪Stakeholders Management; Weddings are very emotional and with lots of people involved there's bound to be a conflict of ideas and opinions, An Event Planner helps you stay objective and helps everyone come to a consensus in order to have a memorable event. A very important advice I'll give to prospective Brides is when you have contracted a Planner, TRUST YOUR PLANNER, if you don't trust, worry sets in and you start being stressed which shouldn't be the case. Also, An Event Planner isn't a magician, be careful, cautious, mindful, thoughtful enough to commensurate your budget with your expectations, yes, it's possible for a Planner to go out of his/her way to get even more than your budget should cover, please note that this is out of goodwill. Trust your Planner to get the best quality your budget can cover but don't expect any magic done. Finally, It's your big day, one of the best days of your life, a one time thing for most people, give yourself the chance to experience it, to live in the moment and have fun, create amazing memories.

WRITTEN BY BASSEY OKON FOR THE EVENTSMITH NG