Day of Coordination by NY Engagements, LLC.
With all the weeks of planning and care that goes into each event as a day of coordinator, there's always one that a planner picks up that comes pre-packaged with a whirlwind of potential challenges that we will be walking into - from working with vendors who are brand new to the wedding industry, potential weather related issues at mainly outdoor venues/tented weddings, high traffic holiday weekends that can leave vendors traveling long distances stranded... yes this all affected us. In addition, there are the challenges that you'll least expect - like a ceremony participant knocking over and breaking a ceremonial teapot for a Korean tea ceremony, a dj having a corrupt music file for the bride's ceremony entrance music that we had to remedy quickly for him, a rickety chuppah that falls down with an intense gush of tornado wind just as the ceremony ends, a dj that didn't know he was to play for the cocktail hour and had to remind him, and a dj that had power failures for part of the evening with his equipment and playing loud dance music even at times they were told to turn to dinner music... this is just part of it. Thankfully, with constant adjustments to scheduling, working closely with the great staff at West Park Winery, having coordinators everywhere helping, and working around vendor issues to help everyone continue working, we all teamed together and had the wedding moving forward with minor blemishes that could have turned into some major issues. A wedding is never perfect...the imperfections are just disguised through working with a good planning team to keep on a positive face and make the best of the resources we have to work with at the time.
Here are a few key pointers to keep in mind as you plan your wedding to reduce risk of potential mishaps:
1) Work with reputable, seasoned wedding professionals that know the ropes. For example, djs should be responsive in communications throughout the planning process, understand what they are providing onsite, know what equipment they need to bring for the type of venue, have backup copies of important music, understand timing of a reception with the kitchen schedule to know when to turn to dinner music, and when it's great to have a full out dance set on the floor to finish out the evening. The dj from this wedding really gave us challenges on all fronts and we couldn't leave the room without worrying if everything would be ok for a minute.
2) Work with wedding professionals that are not too far from your ceremony or reception venue if your wedding falls on a high-traffic holiday weekend such as memorial day, labor day, etc... Many clients from the city having Hudson Valley destination weddings hire city vendors without thinking ahead of the possibility of high traffic on a holiday weekend. For example, the florist at this wedding, had they been local, would have been able to set up everything with time to spare so that the photographer wouldn't be behind in her formal photos, we would have been able to have the bride do a look through to see if her flowers were satisfactory in the room, and maybe the chuppah wouldn't have fallen if there was more time for a quality check over before they left.
3) Too many unfinished diy projects onsite leaves little time to take care of other issues that could potentially arise. Try to get as much prep work done prior to arriving onsite for your vendors to set up. Our client gave us boxes of items that we thought were pre-assembled and ready to just set out. However, onsite we realized that we had to divert our resources to helping assemble lantern pieces, finding votive holders for candles provided that had no holders for them, and taking stickers off of containers. It was great this bride had coordinators working onsite. However, for brides that don't have coordinators, don't assume the wait staff will have time to take care of diy projects as they have challenges of their own in the kitchen and with their setup. The more vendors can focus on their main roles, the smoother the event will run and be on schedule, and the less things will be overlooked.
4) Prepare for inclement weather (you never know even high winds are good cause to have an event indoors if you don't want to risk fly away programs, veils, arrangements, etc). The bride had umbrellas that she wanted the guests to use to block the sun and for a cute photo...but there was no sun and guests would have taken off like Mary Poppins with the gusts of wind that day. Backup plan - nix the umbrella photo idea.
5) Hire a day of coordinator because you just never know... this bride was very well organized and knew what she wanted but when it came time to re-structuring onsite while she was busy enjoying her day and taking photos, we had the know how to keep things moving along as smoothly as possible and keeping other vendors moving with the flow as well.
Here are some photos of what we had time to capture of the decor for that day.
The bride really put a lot of personalized details into their day that really did make it special. They also did a great dance routine to Dirty Dancing "Time of My Life" and the groom performed on his acoustic guitar for the bride which was sweet.
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