Episode 24: The Unsexy [And Necessary] Things Wedding Planners Do

Episode Summary

There’s so much more to wedding planning than the beautiful photos you see online. This week, I’m opening up the unsexy tabs in my brain to share the work our team does behind the scenes. We’re talking force majeure clauses, rain plans, venue quirks, guest communication, and the time it takes to set up a vision. I’ll also share how we capture what we learn at each venue and why doing your due diligence before making a decision can save everyone from surprises later. These details may not be glamorous, but they make a meaningful difference to your experience.

Let’s Connect

julianleaver.com | @julianleaver

Resources

Full Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Mind Over Matrimony. Today, we are going to maybe just unpack all of the different tabs that are sitting in my brain that are like the unsexy parts of wedding planning and design. The beauty of where I sit now with Julian Leaver Events is that there's a whole team of people who are thinking about all of these things within the client and the guest experience. But it is always still my job to keep all these little tabs open so that I can ask questions and have a good understanding and make sure that I know exactly where the project is headed and that we've covered all the bases because we're all doing checks and balances on each other. And that's what I think is actually one of the things that makes Julian Leaver Events so strong is that there is a team that can have checks and balances.

Not one person is responsible for making sure that all of the tabs have been checked. And so what am I even talking about, right? It's the unsexy things that we don't really look at. It's the things that really are not in your eyesight in some ways, in your view as a client, but they're the things that we're worried about such as the force majeure clause, right? What is a force majeure clause? It is a clause that talks about whether it talks about cancellation in terms of acts of war. It's the clause that talks about what happens when a hotel has to close its doors or there's cancellation and how that all plays out, right? These are the things that we look at in every single contract that we are reviewing on your behalf to make sure that it's included, that it is correct, that it is balanced, right?

You're never going to get rid of a lot of this boring kind of stuff. What we're really trying to do is make sure that it's balanced, that both sides will come out in the way, like in a good way, right? With a good result and that everything is not just tilted towards the original contract issuer. And so force majeure is just one of those things, right? Or rain plans, there's a venue here in Dallas that I'm always saying, okay, we can go there, but we have to have a plan A, B, C, D, and E because there's lots of different ways that this could go. There's lots of different movement. There's lots of different scenarios. And so your guest count really has to be at the exact perfect size to be able to fit within this venue and then move into all of these different plans. And so if your count is too big or then you can't go there.

And so we're always thinking about these little tiny quirks and little bits, right? And for example, there's another thing we're always thinking about in terms of rain plans when we're planning in Lake Como because it could hail there or there could be crazy wind off of the mountains that rushes down onto the lake. Or you have to always have backups for the transportation because sometimes you can put people on the lake in the boats and sometimes you can't, but you have to have the transportation on standby. So it's all these little bits and bobs that are just collected over the years, right? That's the weird knowledge that lives in my head. When you inquire with us and I'm like, oh, they want to get married there.

Okay, let me think about all the weird little quirks of that location because we've worked there and it's actually very difficult if you do X, Y, and Z. But if you do it in this other way from the beginning, it actually, it's a lot easier and more stress-free. And so it's all of those weird little things. And what we've done over the years to kind of put all of that into a codified system is really building it into the notes of every single wedding. We use systems within Julian Leaver Events to capture all of that information. And so one of the really cool systems that we have is within our timeline structure, we use this system, it's called Timeline Genius, and it allows us to actually input information on a venue and then insert all of these notes. So these are the things that went horrifically wrong.

These are the things that went really well. These are the things that you need to think about next time. These are the things that are really good in terms of the venue load-in. These are the things that were really bad about the venue load-in, or this is how we would communicate it differently in this next time. And what's really cool is that when we then use that venue again and it gets put into the timeline, it automatically pulls all of those notes over with it. So then we can easily and very quickly communicate all of that information to our partners and our teams who are gonna bring your wedding to life and make sure that it is all taken care of. And we've crossed all those T's and dotted all those I's because each specific place that you might be getting married really has its own unique set of challenges.

And those are just the unsexy bits about being a wedding planner. I think what people see on online and on Instagram and in galleries and when people are showcasing weddings, they're seeing the beautiful end result, they're seeing the gorgeous couple, they're seeing the happiness and the amazing things that happened. But they're not seeing the 365 really days before that, the 364 days even sometimes before that, that really are where we are doing this hard work and figuring this all out. And what I also think that's really cool about having a team is you have this structure where maybe we haven't worked at your venue before, but we can ascertain that, oh, it is similar to this other one where we worked. And so we start to get information and then we can pull that information over and plug it into something new.

And it gives us this kind of competitive advantage about being able to pull all of that knowledge together and then be able to use it in an intelligent way to make your planning process more smooth than it would be if we didn't collect all of that information. And if your wedding is all in one location, that's a lot less logistically complicated than if you're moving from one location to another location to another location. And so we've been really working hard, we actually implemented a system called Wedping that allows us to communicate with guests via text message and it's almost instantaneous. And what's really cool about it is it allows us to push out information at different stages of the wedding, almost more than we've ever communicated with guests before.

But the beauty is that we put a lot of work on the front end into that in terms of gathering everyone's phone numbers to be able to text every single guest. And then also really building into our timeline where that information is gonna be pushed out to guests and then they have preemptive information and then they can actually text us back and we can text them back. And it becomes this totally different conversation in terms of guest communication and the guest experience overall because every single guest actually feels informed, right? They have received the invitation, they have received the website link, right? They can go and look it up themselves. They've also received some itinerary in either their hotel room or the gifting suite or in their welcome bag.

But everybody isn't carrying all of that information around with them all the time. So if something can actually get pushed right to them and we can have an active conversation with each individual guest about whatever it is that they might need assistance with, then that's a pretty amazing, it's been a pretty amazing tool for us. And it's again, just an unsexy part of this job. It's like, how am I gonna show that on Instagram, right? Okay, we've sent the text and then somebody sends the text back and we solve their problem with their dress or their zipper or their, generally it's around clothing, friends. That's where most guest issues actually arise is they have issues their zipper fell out or they need to be sewn into something or they forgot a pair of socks or they need a bow tie or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But again, it's these unsexy bits that allow us to take that pressure off of you, right? And I think that's the most important thing is we can never make this process completely stress-free. That's unfortunately, there are family dynamics, there are guest list dynamics, there are all kinds of those dynamics that you're gonna have to deal with as the couple and the family, but we are gonna take off as much as we possibly can in terms of logistics and in terms of managing these expectations and ensuring that everybody has the information that they need so that they're not bothering you. You know what else is totally unsexy, friends? Noise restrictions and time restrictions and set up and break down times and getting enough time to do what is necessary and what we've actually designed for you.

We work really hard to make sure that in the beginning when we're having those initial conversations with you and we're really understanding the scope of your vision that we are then booking the correct amount of time at the venue to be able to set that vision up, right? Sometimes you could do it in a day, but more often than not, we're gonna need a day before and sometimes we're gonna even need a day before that to make it all work. And so really understanding those restrictions and deadlines and when we need to make some decisions by is really hugely impactful for the front end of your planning process. And I think this is a misconception a lot of people have actually is that you can come and you can hire us and then in a week you can make a decision on a venue. And it actually takes a lot more time.

And I would say the hardest part of the entire process in all honesty is the beginning of the process and selecting the location because we need to do so much due diligence on so many different locations that you're looking at, right? So maybe we're looking at 10 to start with, then we narrow it to five, then we narrow it to three, then we narrow it to two and we're finally down to the last one. But then we're still diving deep, deep into their contract and their requirements and all of those pieces that can uncover any hidden costs that may be there or anything that's going to pop up later that's going to bite us in the ass. And so it does take some more time than I think most people think. It's not just as simple as saying, that's pretty, let's go there and that's it. It really does.

We want to get that due diligence out of the way on the front side. And I think that's been an interesting thing lately is everybody just wants to make a quick decision but I don't want you to make a quick decision, right? You're not gonna lose the venue. We're in the conversation. We're actively having that conversation and we're going to get where we need to go but we're going to do it with as much deliberate investigation as we possibly can so that there are no surprises later in the process. I don't like surprises. You don't like surprises and your budget definitely doesn't like surprises. And so I think to wrap this all up in a little bow, not that it's a solution of a bow, but just to say that there are some things that take more time than you would think that they are going to take.

And so we really want to be able to take our time to understand exactly the choices you're making in your venue. We want to take our time to make sure that you are understanding the choices that you're making in decor. We want to take our time to make sure that you're understanding and we understand how we're going to communicate all of this to all of your team. And what I would say about the Julian Leaver Events Experience is that you are not really involved in any of that. That's the beauty of it. We're giving you the high level of it and then we are dealing with all of these little messy details behind the scenes and the team is working very diligently to make sure that we are ensuring that your experience is going to be beautiful and elegant and seamless while all of these weird little details are dealt with.

So thanks so much for joining and we'll see you next week.

A The Media Socialites Production