Wedding planning can be a stressful time for the bride and everybody around her. Luckily, there are resources available to assist in the process. One of the most comprehensive resources is a wedding planner. Wedding planners help guide a bride through the process of planning and coordinating her wedding in the most stress-free way possible.

“We don’t want it to be our event … It’s her day, not ours,” said Kyra Jacobson and Taylor Thomsen, two ISU seniors in event management and co-owners of White Willow Events.

Jacobson and Thomsen said they would like the bride to visualize her wedding so they can facilitate the creation. When a bride first meets with a planner, she’ll need to bring with her the wedding date, her budget and ideas for colors and themes. Some planners will provide a free consultation and they usually last an hour.

Wedding planners, such as White Willow Events and JoAnn Van Vleet with Weddings Without Worries, offer planning packages brides can choose from, along with a la carte items in case the brides need to customize the packages a little more.

“Time management is huge. Don’t expect to do it quickly. Beware of costs and read the fine print,” Van Vleet advised brides who want to plan their own weddings.

According to White Willow Events, planning a wedding is ranked as one of the top five stressors. They suggested not doing it on your own. Even if the bride doesn’t want to hire a wedding planner, she at least needs to get help from family or friends.

There is a timeline that needs to be followed when planning a wedding. The top four priorities when planning are to determine the reception place, entertainment, ceremony site and officiant. Although general timelines for planning a wedding can be found on wedding websites, the wedding planner will help the bride figure out a more personalized timeline when they meet.

When planning their own wedding, brides have an array of wedding websites to choose from, such as The Knot, Martha Stewart, Wedding Channel and Pinterest, to name a few. Brides planning their own weddings can still consult with a wedding planner if they need some guidance along the way. Most planners will do hourly consultations for brides doing their own planning.

For the brides who want to plan their own weddings, White Willow Events and Weddings Without Worries will coordinate the special day so the bride doesn’t have to make sure everything is in order. The planners do require the bride to meet with them prior to the wedding to make sure they are all on the same page and a plan can be made.

Some of the things that need to be included in the plan are: talking to vendors and making sure everything is ready to go, the schedule for the day, things the bridal party may need, salon appointments and transportation.

When it comes to working with a vendor, it depends on the vendor the bride is working with, but most like to work with a wedding planner because they usually have good relationships with each other, which is very important.

Some brides don’t know what they want or which vendor it is that takes care of certain things. The wedding planners are more aware of what is going on and are more organized.

The planners can interpret the bride’s emotions and translate them to the vendor. The brides don’t always understand or know everything so the planner is a good resource to use to help with communicating with the vendor.

“Computers are killing real people today. My job can be done over the internet,” said Van Vleet.

Although wedding planners are not as popular anymore and there are very few of them, Jacobsen and Thomsen said there is definitely a market for them in Des Moines. This was one of the reasons Jacobsen and Thomsen started their event planning business.