Why day of coordination doesn’t exist & the difference between and in house event coordinators and what we do.
If I had a dollar for every time I received an email saying “I just need day of coordination” I would have my mortgage paid off and a fully ran animal rescue space set and running. I’m exaggerating but it’s very frequent. Unfortunately this term is used so often is it leads event planner owners to either take the time to educate or for some not bother responding at all.
Some potential clients understand “day of” doesn’t actually mean day of while others reach out to us explaining that they can do all the prior work and hand off docs literally day of. For a full licensed business that has built a reputation with vendors and venues this simply isn’t possible. So what do we actually do before your event day? We set up your drive folder with very usual files such as a list of preferred vendors, guest trackers, detail trackers and more. This makes things as detailed as possible for us when we meet up at 8 weeks out. Once we “meet” on your 8 week out point we start with creating a rough draft timeline. This rough draft only usually takes a couple of hours to create. With the rough timeline in hand we start the vendor outreach with all your vendors from a shuttle or car service to your venue, florist, photographer, band and anyone else. This outreach alone take a few hours since it might take a few different outreaches before even getting a response. As soon as we get their feedback we edit the timeline as well as incorporate their timeline into ours. For some clients we are starting with a full event weekend and others we are doing the timeline from the morning hair & makeup to first look, ceremony until the biter end of breakdown. A final timeline can take us 5 to ten hours with all the vendor correspondence. Outside of the timeline we are creating a floor plan, organizing a site visit, trouble shooting and having weekly touch bases. Our files are pretty detailed and we even are informed on the color of your linen, venue lighting and making sure we get info on things like your hotel room number. The actual event day we are onsite for roughly 10-12 hours managing the vendor crew, answering questions with the in house and making sure everything is running on time. We are making sure your escort cards are in order, all items are set up correctly and probably jumping on a call with your driver to double check timing is still as per schedule. Prior to the event day we typically put in 30-50 hours depending on the clients needs and complexity of the event.
“The event space has a coordinator, so we don’t need much help.” I get this often as well. Majority of venues we work with or are on the event list of require event coordinators. Why? While we bring on roughly 20-25 events per year they are putting on hundreds and don’t have the bandwidth to answer all your emails, take numerous calls or deal with emergencies that can arise the week of. They will most likely have a vendor list for you to pick from but they aren’t going to hire said vendors for you. They aren’t going to create your hair & makeup timeline or the shuttle pickups. They aren’t going to schedule your dress or suite fitting appointments with you and they certainly aren’t going to design your event for you. They 100 percent want you to have the best day ever but they work for the venue and are more so focused on sales, food timing, in house staff etc. Majority of our events the in house coorindator leave prior to cake cutting if they are onsite day of at all. We ABSOLUTELY LOVE our in house team but our roles are very different. In fact thats why they either require planners or truly advocate for you to have one. At the end of the day we are both looking forward to a successful event and a great memories to follow!
Photography EP love
Florals A petal to peddle
Planning & Design Direction Skylar Arden Events
Venue Battello JC
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