Have you thought about how and who will coordinate your wedding reception, so that the party will run smoothly without your involvement? Will you hire a wedding planner or prefer to have a friend or family member coordinate your wedding reception? Even if you follow your wedding planning checklist to the letter and have even executed every single task, without having a plan of how to coordinate the day of the wedding and without a day-of wedding coordinator, there’s a huge possibility of an unexpected disaster. Do not risk your wedding day without a coordinator.
Most vendors always disappoint do not deliver as planned, even when monitored closely. Lack of a wedding day coordinator is likely to lead to unexpected disappointments by vendors and venue people. In this post, we’ll look at what a typical wedding day looks like, what you can do to plan the coordination of your wedding reception and who to assign as the wedding coordinator. Read on for tips on how to plan your wedding day coordination.
Wedding reception planning and coordination, especially on the day of the wedding can usually be jam-packed with things-to-do; it is complicated and very stressful. And you should not even think about being there. You have to reserve your wedding day for yourself and put on a mindset of going to your wedding to be a guest – to be pampered and not to get stressed.
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The wedding day can be very stressful, with lots of running up and down. There’ll be a lot of calls and questions from the vendors and guests. Expect to be called from left, right and center to give directions and quench fires. A typical scenario is this:
The cake has arrived and the baker is asking where to set it up. The caterer is here and is asking where to setup. The DJ is here and has questions. Where’s the food? Where do you want this and that to go? The water and meat has run out, what should we do? The cake baker forgot the cake stand, who can you send to get them. Power has gone off and there’s no generator in the venue, how can we get one fast?
Obviously, those are not the kind of things any bride wants to hear or do on her big day. So, you have to delegate somebody (NOT YOU) to run all that for you and generally coordinate your wedding reception planning tasks in the last weeks leading to your wedding day, as well as the day of the wedding. That is the person to assign to answering the many questions that would come from your wedding service providers, the vendors, and out-of-town guests. That’s the person whose name should be on your R.S.V.P.
Your wedding reception coordinator should be a person who would not mind missing attending the wedding event, as s/he would be in the background quenching fires and resolving last-minute confusion when the main wedding reception is going on.
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When Should the Bride Stop Planning the Wedding Reception?
You should not be planning your wedding forever. There should be a time for planning the wedding and there should be a time to stop and plan the coordination. Once it’s a few weeks to the wedding day, stop your involvement in the wedding reception planning – either hand everything off to a wedding coordinator/ planner or to a close family or friend. Spend the last days before your wedding on pampering yourself, so that you’ll look pretty in the wedding photos.
Only a bridezilla plans the wedding right into the wedding day. And you know what happens to bridezillas – they get so heavily involved in planning their wedding, trying hard to get it perfect and later become so stressed that the effect shows in their faces in all their wedding photos. And in an extreme case like in the movie “Over Her Dead Body‘, the bride-to-be was still in the center of wedding planning on her wedding day and was killed in an accident by a delivery truck bringing stuff for the wedding. She never saw a wedding. So, the lesson is not to be obsessive about wedding planning.
What a Wedding Coordinator Should Do for You
You’ve put a lot of time into planning your wedding, and the reason is so that on your big day everything (your plans) will happen like dreamed and planned them. You have agreed the time to arrive and setup with your vendors and they all promised to do as planned. Think about it, on that D-day, you’ll be sitting on the high-table and what if the cake or venue decor people have not arrived on time? Who will be responsible to be following up and calling vendors?
What if the food is not being served to some and not served to others – and you’re there looking? Who will call the caterers or ushers to order? Who will be your personal person to coordinate things behind the scenes and ensuring nothing ugly happens or quickly correcting any emergency or something that’s going out of the plan? That’s what your wedding coordinator team or person will do.
You should plan for that and appoint a few trusted persons to help you sort of ‘be your eye’ on your wedding day. If you will hire a professional wedding planner or a wedding day coordinator, you will be covered. If not, follow this guide to learn how to delegate tasks to others.
Before the wedding day, the day of the wedding coordinator should have been introduced to all vendors and venue managers and should have been communicating with them. The coordinator should also have had joint vendors meeting with all vendors in attendance and scheduled time of arrival and set up for each vendor, as well as instructing them on how to operate on the wedding day.
Who Should Be Your Wedding Reception Coordinator?
If you find a capable person for the wedding coordinator role, you can go to your wedding ready to boogie till Mama calls, with the assurance that if anything ever goes wrong, there’s somebody able to take care of it without the guests knowing a thing. Now you know how to coordinate your wedding flawlessly and wow your guests – all without stress.
The best person to coordinate your wedding reception is a professional wedding planner. However, if you’re on a low budget and have helped people around, ask a couple of friends to work as a team, to coordinate your wedding reception. Be sure to make one person the team leader and the others assist.
Final Takeaway: Coordinating Your Wedding Reception
Let’s recap: If you have executed all your wedding planning tasks, there is no guarantee that every vendor will show up or deliver as planned and how you planned. Hire a professional wedding planner or day coordinator, or follow our tips above to assign a day-of wedding coordinator and know what this person should do.
Once you implement the tips, you will help achieve a flawless and wildly successful Naija wedding reception that you’ll have to beg your guests to leave, hours after the wedding party is over.
Now tell me in the comments – what are your plans to coordinate your Nigerian wedding reception and ensure you stay calm on your wedding day?
Thanks so much, this was helpful. My wedding is in a few months and i certainly will be using these tips. Keep up the good work.
Thank you too, Onyinye. I’m happy to learn that our reception planning tips helped you. We love fedbacks.
My team and I wish you the very best wedding day experience.
Its few weeks to my wedding, I just stumbled on this website this morning and it has really helped. Thank you so much for this selfless service, God bless you.
You’re welcome, Kenny. I’m very happy to hear that this article has helped you with ideas to better coordinate and plan your Nigerian wedding. We love feedback.
I wish you the very best on your big day!
Hi,
Just want to say thank you for the very insightful and informative site you run on wedding planning. I have not doubt learnt a lot from reading your articles. Please keep up the good work.
Thanks and God bless.
Ayo.
Aww! Thank you, Ayodeji. I am happy to hear that you enjoyed reading my wedding blog, and also my tips on how to plan your wedding reception. Thanks for visiting, and please do follow us on Facebook and Twitter.