Our couples are usually kind, laid back, fun loving and see the wedding day as more than just a really great party. While the wedding day is incredibly important, their ultimate goal is their marriage. As long as they walk down the aisle, it can be raining, flights can get canceled, someone might get sick…. but that’s okay, two will become one!

Our clients are trusting and decisive. They seek our expertise and know that we will not lead them astray. 

Some have long engagements, others have very short engagements but all hire professional vendors and generally like checking things off the list.

We often incorporate special elements for our clients that bring true meaning to the day. Those special elements may come in the form of using family heirlooms, showcasing personality in design or even just creating special moments for their guests.

Guest comfort is of ultimate importance to our couples. The day is not just about the bride, it is about all who come together to celebrate both the bride and the groom. Our couples recognize that the happiness of the guests only enhances their own happiness and therefore factor their needs into the planning process.

A wedding planner is a professional who will help you with most tasks involved in planning your wedding.  Most importantly, we will help you enjoy the planning process more by taking stress out of the equation and give you peace of mind!  

Save You Time

The average wedding takes couples 200+ hours to plan.  As a wedding planner, we will take the bulk of planning off of your plate, so you can focus on your fiance, your career and your friends & family.

Stay Within Budget

How would you know what things actually cost for a wedding? You’ve never put together a wedding before.  As a planner, we will create a detailed budget and help keep you on track.

Support

We know the ins and outs of the wedding industry. We help match you with wedding vendors that are perfect for your vision, personality and budget.

Save Relationships

It’s no surprise that tensions can arise between family members during the process of planning a wedding. A professional planner can be a great objective resource in tricky family situations.  

Point of Contact

As your wedding, we will be the point of contact for all vendors on your wedding day so you can sit back and enjoy your wedding day.

Your friends & family will thank you for it!

On your wedding day, friends and family don’t want to be put to work, even if they think they do.  Have you ever been asked to work on a day where everyone else is having fun?  You want your friends and family to be present for your wedding day.  They are there because you love them!

Let them help choose colors, offer to pick up your dress the days before the wedding, or to lick stamps to go on your invites. But do them the honor of making them a guest at your wedding.

We are really transparent about this one.  There is no such thing as a “Day of Coordinator”.  It’s a mystical creature.  It DOES NOT exist.  It’s like showing up for a physics test but just scanning the first two pages of the textbook.  Now unless you are a math wise, you and I are going to fail.  We don’t set our clients or ourselves up for failure.  It is impossible for someone to show up the day-of the wedding and be able to manage every single detail.  There are 100 moving parts.  If anyone is selling you on day-of coordination, consider what you are actually investing your money in.  We get to know you intmately to know what your vision, goals, and dreams are for your wedding. If you don’t mind collaborating with us well in advance of you wedding, then we are probably a good fit.  

We are often asked if we provide “day of coordination” and the answer is no, we do not. In reality, the service you are seeking doesn’t actually exist anymore. You may still find start-ups that will do this but seasoned pros pull away from being responsible for executing an event that they were not at least minimally involved in the planning. So many things can go wrong and our reputation is at stake. Here are some answers to this conversation.

I’m very organized so I am comfortable planning the wedding:

I love the ambition and detail oriented nature. In theory, every couple will only ever plan one wedding, right? So no matter how detailed and organized, there just really isn’t any possible way to put together a proper timeline and reconcile all of the many details that go on in those last few weeks. There are TONS of templates and articles to help, totally get that! But each of your vendors are unique to you and your vision so they will all have varying needs that a template just can’t consider. For example, your photographer will likely have a timeline and your DJ too – so it will seem simple “ah, I’ll just use their template”, but it’s important to juggle the needs of all of the vendors and we as pros know exactly what questions to ask and which red flags to work through so that nothing is left un-turned. 

I speak from personal experience. My wedding day was nuts! I had been a Restaurant Manager for years, so like you, felt like I had it under control. I had a friend to oversee the wedding day and we met once and she simply showed up to the wedding like you are asking.  It was so stressful!

Here are some supporting articles that may help with understanding the need a little more:

http://theeverylastdetail.com/day-of-wedding…/

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/…/day-of-wedding… 

I have a smaller budget and I don’t have a choice but to hire someone only for the day.

For the budget aspect of it… totally hear ya! I got married with a tiny budget with little assistance from our families so I certainly understand the value of a buck and definitely respect that with and for my clients. Our philosophy is to maximize every last penny. 

We believe you really can’t afford NOT to hire the pro that will vet things for you. I promise that is not a sales pitch and if I’m not the one for you, no worries, I’m happy to point you towards some other awesome wedding planners. I like to be an open book and share my good and bad experiences. I am also excited about educating couples on what it really takes to make a wedding day run smoothly. 

Our planning process starts the moment we receive an inquiry. We are fast at work brainstorming ideas based on any information you give us. The more info you give us up front, the better! We want to develop ideas with you even on that first call.

From there, once a signed contract and a retainer are received, we hold the date and get to work! We send a questionnaire that allows us to get to know you. We ask that this is returned prior to our first consultation so we can be prepared with ideas for vendors, timeline, layout, etc. We provide lots planning tools and resources for you in this meeting as well.

From there, our process depends on the service you secure with us.

WEDDING MANAGEMENT

We are available to you to answer any questions along the way! We check in every month to say hello and see how things are coming along but we encourage our clients to keep us in the loop, ask questions and allow us to be apart of the process. About  3 months prior to the wedding, we schedule a venue walk through with you and begin reconciling details with vendors and producing the final documents that will make your wedding day a success.

WEDDING PLANNING & DESIGN

Following the initial consultation, we are fast at work pairing you with vendors that best suit your style and wishes. We attend meetings with those vendors with or on your behalf and assist in securing their services. We keep track of all the details and guide you through the pieces you’ll need to work on. Things such as your guest list, your gift registry and trying on a dress, things we can’t do for you. We are otherwise tending to the details and alleviating the burden of logistics.

And with both services, we conduct the rehearsal and provide at least one or two event assistants on the wedding day. Then of course, we follow up after every wedding to thank you for allowing us to serve you and to gain feedback on how we can better ourselves. We believe in always learning and growing and our clients are the best source of suggestions!

This is two-fold.

If you’re willing to hop on a call with us, it means you have done your research and like what you see. A lot of people are price shopping and that can take up the precious time we prefer to spend on our clients. That being said, we want to focus on those that have us on their short list of vendors to interview!

Also, just as you are interviewing us, we are interviewing you. It’s super important that we are the right fit for each other and because we only accept a certain number of clients each year, we use this time to make sure both parties connect and enjoy each other. Talking on the phone is also a more productive way to understand your vision and needs, allowing us to provide an accurate quote.

We are the middlemen.  We negotiate on your behalf until the proposal and contract are perfect, we worry about vendors showing up, centerpieces arriving on time, directing guests, and setting up so you don’t have to. We take that stress of off you, your mother, best friends and family so they can all fulfill the roles they should be and everyone can truly enjoy.

We are the secretary.  This is where our logistics skills come to use. There is so much to keep up with while planning a wedding and it is our job to keep up with it all! We keep notes from every meeting and identify all the action items, type out and organize timelines, budgets, photo and song lists; we keep track of vendors and their contact information; and we even help with contract language.  There is a ton of paperwork when it comes to weddings and we manage it all.

We are a neutral party, a therapist and a mediator.  There is always some type of situation where we are putting on our referee shirt and grabbing our whistle. Sometimes it might be battling opinions in choices made, sometimes its family members that don’t get along but we are here to take that stress off and redirect those conversations. Do you have a super “helpful” Aunt Sally who really wants to be involved and wants a task but drives everyone crazy—sound familiar? We will make sure she is loved on and tasked with something that makes her feel like she is contributing but also redirects her away from you or your mom.We are here to give you exactly what YOU want on YOUR special day!

We see the bigger picture.  Our job is to have the eagle eye view of your wedding plans. It is so easy to become overwhelmed with the tiny details, that sometimes the bigger picture can get overlooked.  Our master checklist ensures that those little & big things are tended to. We are here to help you focus on the details AS WELL AS the bigger picture.

We put out the fires that arise.  We fully believe wedding planning is marriage planning. Every couple should be able to enjoy their engagement & relax and enjoy their wedding day, and especially be able to enjoy one another.  It’s hard to do that when you have a million people running up to you with questions and mini disasters when all you want to do is soak up the happiness and enjoy yourselves. Our job is to handle the questions and mini disasters for you, and make sure you able to be “in the moment” as much as possible.

We have access to the best vendors in the area.  You may think, well why would I hire a wedding planner to contact this vendor when I can just do it myself?  With a full time job, it can be a daunting task. A bulk of that time is spent researching vendors, meeting with them, securing contracts and invoices as well as the on going planning communication you will have over your engagement. We know the creative vendor partners that are going to be the best for you in regards to style, taste, & budget. We will be doing the research and heavy lifting for you rather than you doing it yourself.

We are always your advocate.  Did the weather change your plans for a beautiful outdoor setting?  We make sure Plan B is equally as lovely and beautiful, and arranged perfectly like it was always supposed to be that way.  

We are based in Stevens Point, Wisconsin but plan weddings all over the greater Wisconsin area. We love designing weddings at new and familiar destinations. 

Living & planning from afar can be difficult and stressful but we have several clients year in this exact situation have said without us the planning process would have been just that. Laura & Micheal lived in Boston while planning their wedding in Wisconsin. 

“We cannot thank you enough for all you did to make our wedding possible and so memorable!  It all went by too fast.  Thank you for your patience, professionalism, eye for detail and genuine care for us and our event.  Forever grateful to you, Mike & Laura”

We are very comfortable working around your schedule and planning in advance for your trips into town! This is where some of our customized planning tools can really come in handy to ease stress or anxiety about planning a wedding in a place where you are not currently located. 

Absolutely!! The best weddings are designed with personal vision, style and personality in mind. This is YOUR wedding and having your input is absolutely critical to the overall outcome. In fact, we want you to get excited about planning your special day. It is solely up to you what you want your level of involvement to be. Our role is to execute the vision you have for your wedding and provide insight and feedback along the way to make the process smooth.

We have heard this concern before. The answer is no! There will always be things we can take care of for you, but there will always be things you need to be the person to do. We truly believe this is a partnership with us at the helm steering you in the right directions.

All wedding vendors are chosen based on their reputation, time in the wedding industry, and experience with weddings.

You are welcome to use as many (or as few) of our vendors as you’d like for your wedding. We are here to help with exactly with what you will need.

A wedding is an investment. If you’re going to host the party of your lifetime, doesn’t it just make sense that you want it to be as fantastic and stree-free as possible?  Not to mention, don’t you want to know if you are investing your money in the right places?  What would that be worrth to you?

The couples that hire us are looking for peace of mind.  Yes, you can afford it, and you deseerve to have the wedding you want.  Hiring dedicated professionals who spend their lives making sure people have the wedding they want is worth every penny. 

We are happy to discuss pricing with you.  No obligation, not awkward conversations after we chat if we’re not right for you.  We believe a good fit is important!

Our pricing is based on many factors (time of year, location(s), number of guests, consultant(s), services we are providing).

However, as a point of reference, our base package of Wedding Management for 2021 & 2022  starts at $2,100. Contact us directly for Wedding Planning & Design, Intimate Wedding Planning or Planning Consultation services.  marsha@stevenspointweddingplanner.com or 715-347-3566 for a Discovery Call.

Yes and No, our role is to manage the event, overseeing  those responsible for each aspect of the day. We ask that our clients hire professional and full service vendors that provide all installation and striking on the wedding day. We will never stand and just watch but being dedicated to any one task, such as decorating, defeats the purpose of being able to multi-task and handle all vendors at one time.

In a nutshell, from our experience, your venue coordinator is responsible for overseeing the set-up, food and beverage, and logistics as it relates directly to the venue. An outside wedding planner will coordinate and manage ALL logistics and design details with your entire wedding team.

A great wedding planner will not only make YOUR life easier and stress-free when it comes to planning your wedding but will also streamline and simplify the jobs of your entire vendor team (including your venue coordinator!). This allows each vendor to bring their A game to your wedding and results in wedding amazingness for all. 😊

We accept cash, check and credit cards, and we receive payments from couples in three installments. The first installment is due at the beginning when you hire us, the second installment is in the middle of the planning process, and the final installment is due one month before the wedding.