Our Wedding Coordinators

Hiring a wedding coordinator was the single most pivotal decision we made to ensure our day went smoothly. Most venues now require you to hire a coordinator or may even provide one as part of the venue package.

Right after securing our venue, I started browsing through coordinators in our area. Our venue provided a list of recommended coordinators, but we weren't require to choose from that list. I looked at the websites and social media sites for those and then expanded my search beyond the list. In all honesty, I only contacted one coordination service during my search, and they were the ones we hired. That's definitely not the advice anyone ever gives, but it worked out well for us!

Probably my favorite thing our coordinators did all day was decorate our cross. It looked like everything we wanted it to.

We hired Kelsi and Stacey with Every Little Element and were beyond happy with that decision. We purchased their Day Of package. Their services technically started one month our from our wedding day, but they were so responsive and willing to answer any questions I had between the time I hired them in June and when our contract started. I reached out to them about things like bartender recommendations, timeline help, and much more.

Around a month before our wedding, I met with them and we put together a timeline of the wedding day specifics: when we would cut the cake, do the bouquet and garter tosses, when the dances would be done, etc. Knowing that the flow of the day would be completely off of us put us so much at ease.

A week before the wedding, they contacted all of our vendors to confirm arrival times and details. They conducted our rehearsal, also. The package included 8 hours of service on the wedding day, but we ended up adding a few more hours to our package. They set up all of our decorations and made sure everything went off without a hitch - which it did!

We have only good things to say about our experience with Every Little Element and my hope for all brides is that they love their coordinators as much as we did! Wedding coordination is such a broad field, so here are some things we considered when looking:

• What kind of coordination do we want: day-of, partial planning, full planning, etc?
• How much are we willing to spend?
• What packages does the coordinator offer and what do they include?
• How many hours of service day-of are included? Will we need to add hours? If so, what is the fee per extra hour?
• Are they excited about our vision?
• How many weddings have they coordinated previously?
• What are their reviews on wedding sites like?

The most important question I asked myself, though, was do they "click" with us? Harrison and I have a very strong sense of community and quite a few of our vendors are people we know or are in overlapping social circles. Because of this, "feel" was very important to us. We wanted people at our wedding who felt like friends and who were excited about their job. This was 100% the case with Kelsi and Stacey. 

My biggest piece of advice for brides is to hire a coordinator. This may seem like a no-brainer, but some people may feel like they can handle it on their own - and they probably can. But, having a coordinator takes the logistical stress off you and your family. Your only worry the day of your wedding should be getting ready to marry the love of your life. Do everything you can to make sure you can focus on yourself, your family, your wedding party, and having fun that day! If we didn't have coordinators decorating, our family would have been doing it. We wanted them to enjoy the day, too. 

Hire the coordinator, you won't regret it.