wedding review: Pampered Bride Weddings (planner)

Pampered Bride Weddings

Review: Eager and excited to work with us, but ended up being a disappointment in the end. Limited meetings meant we could not get to know them well. On the expensive side. Based on how much we personally had planned and organized, we probably did not need them.

For about 7 months of our engagement, I was convinced I did not need the help of a wedding planner or coordinator. I had very specific ideas about things and planned to do a lot of it myself. I had also booked all of my vendors by that point, so I saw little need for a planner. That is, until I decided to sit for my preliminary oral examinations just 3 weeks before the wedding. During a meeting with both of our parents, we started to feel truly overwhelmed...not by the planning itself, but the details that would need to be managed on our wedding day. We decided that an outside day-of-coordinator might be just what we needed.

I had a fairly difficult time booking a DOC for our day...originally wanting an Indian coordinator who would know the traditions/customs and how best to deal with our guests. I eventually settled on Pampered Bride Weddings...a company featured on Whose Wedding Is It Anyway. My main liaison was Melissa Loiacono.

The good:

*At our first meeting, Melissa seemed very eager to work with us, and excited about what we were planning. She mentioned that she had helped coordinate one other Indian wedding, which partially put my mind at ease.

*PBW has pretty airtight guidelines and contract. The terms of your contract are clearly laid out...as well as associated pricing.

*Depending on the size of your wedding, your main liaison will bring 1-2 assistants on your day. Though it'll cost you extra.

*They have worked with a ton of vendors around NY/NJ. For example, they had worked with our photographers, and when we had some communication issues, Melissa stepped in and helped smooth things over.

*I believe they do design work and more extensive planning - having contacts with MANY vendors in the area. If you need those sort of services, PBW might better serve you in a fuller capacity (as opposed to just DOC).

The not-so-good:

*Their pricing is on the high side...perhaps because they are featured on tv? You can definitely find a coordinator that is more reasonably priced.

*The most annoying thing for me...my contract entitled us to only 2 meetings prior to the wedding beyond the the initial consultation. This leads me to my next gripe:

*I didn't feel as if I got to know my coordinator (or her assistants) very well. I don't think my family was super comfortable with them either. This created part of the tension that was felt on our day.

*They seemed not to know boundaries too well. Melissa and her 2 assistants came to my family's suite and stayed for the entire morning (this could be fairly common, I'm not sure). Now, imagine my family of 4, hair/makeup person and her assistant, 2 photographers, 1 videographer, and 3 wedding coordinators...all in one suite! And imagine how you and your family feel before the wedding has started. Needless to say, we were totally on edge, and having so many strangers in the room only made it worse. They were sitting in our room, having their own conversations, trying on our bindis without asking, and generally raising the tension level of everyone. Eventually my mom kicked them out of our room! To their credit, they did offer to help out, but there wasn't that much for them to do...

Lessons Learned:

*Really think about why you might need a coordinator/planner and delineate their roles accordingly. In my case, it turned out that they really just served as an extra pair of hands - and ones we rarely relied on since we had family and friends to help.

*Review your contract and what you are entitled to. I was disappointed in only having 2 meetings prior to the wedding. Perhaps if I had additional or unlimited meetings, I would have felt more comfortable delegating responsibilities.

*Shop around and book early. Anyone featured on a tv program or popular wedding magazine will have a significant markup, in my opinion.

*Get your family involved with the coordinator, so everyone is comfortable.

*Don't be afraid to speak up and ask for something to be done (or not done)! Our coordinators did some things I found to be a tad unprofessional (or at the very least rude and overstepping their boundaries)...I wish I could have spoken up instead of waiting for my mother to kick them all out of the room!

*Find out early if your venue offers a 'chaperone' or on-site coordinator. At hotels, for example, the catering manager or events planner will often act in some capacity as a DOC for you.

Overall, I probably didn't need to hire a DOC. I had a catering manager working pretty closely with me through the Hyatt (though I wasn't aware of this fact until 2 days before the wedding). We had also done a really good job of having everything organized and ready to go for each event. I might have been better off tasking a friend to help out, or just hiring an independent coordinator who might have been cheaper and more accommodating.