When the planner starts making decisions or recommendations that is above and beyond your budget, blatantly disregarding it, she is a wedding planner from hell.

With horrible tales about bad wedding planners floating around, it is better to be at alert to know whether or not to fire your current wedding planner. Below are sure fire signs that you may have bagged that wedding planner from hell.

She is remotely familiar with your husband to be

Your wedding planner waltz into the room and she goes “Oh! my God, so it’s your wedding?” while giving your fiance a big hug. Ditch her. You do not want a “Mary Fiore” situation (cue Jennifer Lopez’ character in the movie The Wedding Planner). If you cannot make a quick connection as to how they know each other and all they can offer is that vague “I know his brother’s sister’s cousin’s girlfriend”. You may have to be careful, she might be an ex flame or a friend of his ex. Too close for comfort huh? Better to be safe than sorry.

She tries to force feed her own ideas on you

“I want lighting and florals at my wedding”‘, “No it’s too cheesy why not have drapery instead?” “But I hate drapery”.”For real? You can’t not have a drapery at your wedding I mean who does that?” If this pretty much sounds like a conversation between you and your planner it may be time to ditch her. Many planners especially the single ones try to vicariously plan their wedding through yours hence unknowingly force their ideas on you. It is the job of a planner to make your ideas come to life. Nothing more, nothing less.

She lacks communication etiquette

Okay, based on a recommendation from a friend, you have called up a wedding planner, had a meeting with her and have done all the preliminaries. Then all of a sudden you are unable to reach her phone and she calls you up 2 weeks later. It is likely that this will go on throughout the planning process so why not save yourself the added unnecessary stress. A wedding planner must be prompt with phone calls and emails.

Your creative juices are worlds apart

If this is the case then you have a lot on your plate especially if it is a ‘day of co-ordinator’. You will have no time to check the goings on at your wedding and if your creative juices aren’t in sync there will be a problem. Imagine having a planner that is used to planning 70 year old owambes,and the direction of your wedding is to focus on the couple, the first dance and all the beautiful romance, you may have to start calling the shots from your head table when the juju live band will not stop playing. Also if your plannner is a prude and you and your husband are fun and flirty you may run into problems. You will figure out after the first few conversations if your levels of creativity are at par. Make sure to ask plenty questions.

 She doesn’t care about your budget

 A good planner must work with your budget no matter how big or small it is. If she feels the budget is too small, she shouldn’t take on the job in the first place.When the planner starts making decisions or recommendations that is above and beyond your budget, blatantly disregarding it, she is a wedding planner from hell.

She is not up to speed with the current trends

So your bobo has finally popped the question and you can’t help but stare at that beautiful diamond ring every 5 seconds. Naturally, most women at this point begin to stalk wedding sites looking for inspiration, saving pictures, pinning the “pinnables” and getting up to speed with the latest in wedding trends. If your wedding planner cannot differentiate between chiavari and plastic chairs, it is time to ditch her. A wedding planner must be up to date and innovative.

 She makes decisions without consulting you

 So you are considering whether to use that photographer that your wedding planner recommended or the one that did your sister’s wedding and your wedding planner calls you to say she has already paid for a photographer. Ditch her with a capital “D” . A good wedding planner must get the bride’s approval for every single detail, no matter how minute it is.

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Nkiru “MizVuitton’” Okoye is a legal practitioner and a freelance writer. A lover of weddings and a die-hard romantic, she blogs passionately about weddings at www.cakesbymizvuitton.blogspot.com.

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.