WPCNR'S THE REAL DEAL. By The Wedding Jeannie, Jeannie Uyanik. December 29, 2007: Ideally, if you can afford it, hire someone who has a proven track record.  Someone who has either come highly recommended or who is known to be very good in their field.  If you are going to allocate funds to a professional, spend a bit more to get representation that truly will reflect your needs. 

We find more often than not that you get what you pay for – so if you follow our advice and meet with a few prospective planners and one is much less than the others, there might be a reason.  Don’t be anyone’s guinea pig.  Don’t hire friends who don’t have experience. 

A large event is not the time to build someone else’s career IF you are going to be depending on them for a host of services and it’s certainly not the time to try something new (unless you are willing to take the risks that come with it). 

Whether you are considering hiring a planner for one task or everything from A to Z, it’s important that you click with this person and that the chemistry be right from the start.  Inevitably there is a great deal of trust that you will have to put into your planner and if you don’t feel that right from the start, the relationship will be doomed. 

Even if he or she is just making recommendations for you to follow, by virtue of the fact that those recommendations will be whittled down from a larger pool, your tastes have to be in line.  A professional should be able to understand your objectives from the first meeting and be able to guide you in line with those, even when saying no to something you might want or think is a great idea.

And finally, understand their method and how they operate.  While most professional planners do accept commissions or kick backs from their referrals if they are hired, we find this to be a conflict of interest.  But, if the company is clear on their policies from the start, you can at least make an informed decision, because commissions are still pretty industry standard, even if we think that they are the devil’s friend! 

Ask questions about how they execute the planning process, how often you can meet, how they communicate with you during the process and what is their level of responsibility for each task.  Are you assigned one person, or can you be handled by anyone in the firm?  And, perhaps most importantly in terms of policies and procedures, make SURE that the contract delineates exactly what the professional has said that he/she will do and for what cost.  If the contract is not clear from day one, this can lead to misunderstands about who is doing what as there a number of details involved in even the simplest of tasks. 

Overall, hiring a professional can help manage an overwhelming process and often do so more cost effectively than going it alone.  No one really hired florists back before the late 70’s and now, even on the most stringent of budgets, its hard to imagine not hiring one.  That’s a direct result of design and décor becoming a large part of how an event is created.  In the same vein, it is likely that with the overwhelming amount of information that is so easily accessible on-line, that more and more people will have to hire planners to mange the cost and volume of responsibilities

Our next column, after the New Year, will give all of you out there who want to be more green in 2008 the right tips to plan an event while being environmentally conscious.