What’s the difference: Wedding planner vs. Event planner.

Introduction

The question of which is better: a wedding planner or an event planner is a head-tossing, question-answering conundrum. The truth is that there are a lot of options in this sphere, and most people have no idea what is good for them.

There are two schools of thought on the matter. One says that if you want to do something for someone you must work with a wedding planner — unless you’re doing it as an exercise in self-expression (like a “wedding photo shoot”). The other argues that if you want to do something for someone, then you are free to work on your own.

The latter isn’t true — but neither is the first. If we look at the practical implications of these two viewpoints, they can be summarized as follows:

• The first type believes that all events must be planned so they will fit within the scope of someone else’s planning. This means that there needs to be an extensive planning process, which includes many meetings and endless hours spent on task lists — which isn’t cheap or sustainable.

• The second type believes that if you are going to do anything for someone, it should be your own choosing — not some arbitrary timeline imposed by someone else. This means that there is no need to “plan ahead” and there are benefits from not having a schedule (which therefore saves time and money).

So what does all this have to do with wedding planners? Well … nothing much really, except it does make it clear which approach is better for most people:

• If you want to do something for someone, then take your own time; don’t worry about it being perfect or too expensive; just enjoy yourself!

• If you want to do something for yourself and control the process yourself (and maybe even give yourself more money in advance), then look at what works best in situations where you don’t know what’s going on yet – like an engagement party or bachelor/bachelorette party – and then decide how much time you would like to spend on them…

Wedding planner vs. Event planner

At least two major wedding planning services exist one for the bride and groom and one for the family. Wedding planners typically charge 2 lacks to 25 lacks for a wedding, though some can go higher. Event planners typically charge about 5 lacks to 50 lacks for an event. A wedding planner will typically create a detailed document that tells you everything you need to know about your wedding (catering, venue, etc). A hotel or restaurant might provide the venue. The event planner will usually provide tables and chairs. If a wedding is planned at a public place (like a park) there are no tables or chairs available; if it’s private (a home), there may be no caterer.

After you choose one of these options (or if none of them suits your needs), you’ll also receive details about other vendors that might be involved in your major events like birthdays or anniversaries.

The difference between wedding planners and event planners.

The first time I heard the term “event planner”, I thought it was a joke. I worked in a small retail consultancy that provided event planning services to organizations in the hospitality sector. Our clients were mostly hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs. My colleagues and I had been through their invoices and often found ourselves having to explain what we did or why they were asking us for something specific rather than providing general service that covered all their events.

At the time, we felt we were doing them a disservice by not mentioning our wedding planning expertise and by failing to provide any clear value proposition (“We can help you plan a wedding…”). We took our position as advocates of wedding planners very seriously though and I remember asking several colleagues if we could use them as part of our marketing strategy.

They all looked at me like I was crazy. “No way!” they said. “We are not using wedding planners!” The only one who agreed to try it was someone who had been through one of my events but had lost interest in us after she found out what we actually did: she had no interest in her client ever hearing about her wedding planning services upon becoming engaged so just kept her engagement private until she married her boyfriend (who was also a hotelier) without our intervention).

So, there is a very obvious difference between the market these providers serve: weddings and events. Wedding planners focus on weddings whereas event planners focus on events rather than weddings (the majority of people who have an event planner do not have a wedding). Event planners have an extensive list of services available (from the organization of receptions to executive support) which you can use to your advantage if you are looking for your brand to be associated with weddings, or vice versa. The problem is that most people don’t know which category they fall under and it can be quite challenging for businesses trying to get their customer base interested in the topic at hand — especially if it is something new from their side (and perhaps unfamiliar terms).

The benefits of having a wedding planner.

This is a discussion of wedding planners vs event planners. It’s a classic product-market fit question and it’s also one of the most common ways product managers and marketers approach this one: “Which is better, a wedding planner or an event planner?”

The short answer is that the right tool can do both. The long answer: yes!

We have had a lot of requests for more details on what each of these products is good at. A lot of people are mixing up wedding planner software with event planner software. Wedding planners don’t necessarily know what they do as well as an event planner would know it, but they handle things from beginning to end, from planning to execution, and everything in between. Event planners are much more on their toes when it comes to planning their events (and if you ask them about planning their life, well…).

Event planners tend to be very comfortable with numbers at this point in their careers and so they often come up with simple metrics (e.g., “will more than 250 people attend the party?”). That leads to some clever use cases like measuring the impact that sending an email will have on the success of your marketing efforts (takeaways: follow-up emails can increase engagement by 23% in just 6 weeks, and actionable tips like this will boost your sales by 30% in just 6 months — without spending a dime).

Wedding planners don’t necessarily want to add value for you either; they are there only for your direct benefit (even when you hire them). They want you to be happy with them, so if you want them to do more things for you, then that is something that should be negotiated with them. We do tend to see many businesses asking how much value each product provides or how much money is involved in signing up for the other product. This basically comes down to two factors:

1. price
2. Convenience
3. flexibility
4. ease-of-use
5. features
6. features
7. capabilities
8. features
9. features
10. features
11. features

There may be some additional factors here too (e.g., security), but we aren’t going into those here because most businesses have limited time and budget constraints (and those tend not to include time and money allocated towards security).

Note: Wedding planning software tends to be more complicated than event planning software because there are no metrics at all

The benefits of having an event planner.

A wedding is a pretty big deal, even if it’s just the two of you. With preparation and planning you can get your little day to go off without a hitch. So I would like to share with you my favorite wedding-planning software that I use on a daily basis.

It is called “Event Planner”. It’s a free app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch from Eventbrite. It’s so good that we at Eventbrite have given it our top award for the best event-planning app:

Here are some reasons why I love event planning:

1. Easy to use: it’s super easy to start planning your big day. All you have to do is install it and start preparing the details.
2. It saves time: most people only have 10-15 minutes left before they have to go out of their way and make an appointment with their caterer or line up their table arrangements. But because we’re planners, we can make our plans in advance. No need to rush off on the spur of the moment! You can also create your guest lists in advance so you don’t have to spend time remembering who’s coming or whom you want them to meet…or how many people should be coming or going! And Event Planner has integration with your phone calendar so you can add events right from your phone without having to download any additional software or apps!
3. It makes things easier: whether it’s helping you set up a rehearsal dinner (or anything else) or getting married yourself, Event Planner is there for you from start to finish! We designed Eventbrite to be as easy as possible for desktop users, but when we’re working on mobile devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch), we always offer our users the option of downloading an event planner app so they don’t miss out on all the fun features available in other apps like Weddingbook.
4. The best part – no lag time: when making an appointment with our caterer, we don’t usually wait until 15 minutes before the hour mark — because I’m usually running late! And since most people are already rushing around anyway — why waste precious time by rescheduling? With Event Planner, all appointments are automatically updated on your iPhone within seconds after being made, without any lag time! If that wasn’t enough – there’s no need for multiple phone lines or WiFi internet access – all tickets are sent directly

Which is better for you: a wedding planner or an event planner?

I’m a big fan of wedding planning, but I don’t think it’s better than event planning. It depends on what you want to do and how you want to do it.

In general, you can save yourself a lot of headaches by delegating more tasks to Designers, Vendors, and other people who are familiar with your brand, but there are a few situations where it makes sense to hire an event planner.

One is when you’re launching a brand new product and have little or no experience in the industry yourself. For example, if you’re just starting out and have no experience in the wedding industry (or in product design or anything else really), then hiring someone to do marketing for your business may be a good idea: they can help with PR efforts early on, get you off the ground before you start paying attention to your competitors (beyond just price) and let you focus on building your core business.

The other situation where hiring an event planner may be useful is when there are multiple vendors involved in the event (i.e., if there is more than one company involved in an event). If all of them are on the same page about what they want to do — even if they don’t know each other well — then having a single point of contact can make things simpler later on: everyone gets what they want, everyone gets paid and everyone gets some free publicity. A single point of contact also means that less information is shared between vendors because everyone knows what they need from their vendor partners; so if any vendors want something different from others, they can work directly with their partners instead of having to play word games over email or text messages amongst each other (which can result in major hair-pulling at restaurants!).

But I don’t think this is better than hiring an event planner:

The first reason is that most events that come with a wedding planning element involve multiple companies competing for the same customer base (the bride or groom); not just one vendor vs another. In such cases, having lots of people working together may not make much sense at all because the competition will end up being too much work for each party; either one person can try to handle everything themselves — which means less time spent doing something else important — or two people may be needed: one person who has total control over everything and another who just helps with logistics/entry/exit at crucial moments

Consider your budget.

There are a bunch of different wedding planners/event planners (which is ultimately a service) and it’s usually hard to choose. If you want to plan your own wedding, you want to be able to do it on your own terms, but if you’re planning an event for the first time, or perhaps your husband or wife doesn’t want to attend the same place as you do, there are some compromises that you need to consider.

If you’re looking for someone for both of these things, it can be tough. The difference between them (or at least what I call them) is whether they can help with:

• Getting your family together in one place

• Organizing your wedding

If they can’t give you either one of those things, they’re not really worth having around. That’s why I’m not listing them here. If they can help with either of those things, then they will be worth having around. You need to find someone who understands that marriage is about 3 people sharing a big space and sometimes it just doesn’t work the way we’d like it to.

There are many ways this can happen. One way is when there is only 1 person who does everything: the wedding coordinator. They aren’t going to get into details about how much each part should cost, but will put together a budget that works for everyone involved in the end result (they’ll also take care of all the communication & logistics though). You’ll have more control over what happens during the day than someone else will because they know exactly how much information people need from each other and how much each needs from the wedding coordinator.

A second way this could happen is when there are 2 or more people who do everything: like an agency. Here again, there may be some differences depending on what style you prefer personally, but generally speaking, agencies tend not to have any direct costs so if someone knows exactly how much something should cost and exactly what costs she has no problem creating a budget based on that estimate, while others might get annoyed at being asked questions such as “how much did this cost?” etcetera And finally another way this could happen if there are 3 or more people doing everything: like a consultant. Again here there will be some differences depending on what style you prefer personally, but generally speaking, consultants tend not to have any direct costs either so if someone knows exactly how much something should cost and exactly what costs she has no problem creating a budget

Consider your guest list.

The more people you have, the more work you need to do. The number of people you have at your wedding varies from one wedding to the next. The important considerations for us are:

Do we need to hire a wedding planner? We can certainly appreciate the benefit of having someone who has experience with weddings and knows what to do so that we don’t have to. But, can we afford it?

what does all of this cost? We want to make sure that if we do use a wedding planner, it is for the right reasons and not because we want a cheap or false solution.

What are some other services we should consider? A marriage counselor might be useful for a legal services firm but they don’t really provide a “Wedding Planner” service (which is why they charge more than 80000 Rs per couple). We could try asking friends who have been married before and see what they think and ask our own friends!

We also want to spend some time talking with our guests at our wedding. What kind of things did they like about their previous weddings? What did they like about ours? What worked well or didn’t work well in terms of planning the day? Thanks for your help and input!

If you go here: http://www.weddingplannerblog.com/message-board/, there are lots of helpful tips and advice on how to find vendors and how best to work with them; there are also some cool ideas on how to engage both your guests and vendors in an effective way.

Consider your wedding style.

Most folks will agree that the wedding planning software market is a mess. If you are planning a wedding, you’re likely to have at least a few different options for software to choose from. A big part of the confusion comes from people’s lack of knowledge about what they should be looking for in a product purchase. To help you out, I’m going to make a list of some things you should keep in mind when buying your wedding planning software:

1. You need to decide if your goal is “wedding day by day” or “wedding day by date”. The former is designed for guests, who may have many questions about every part of the process; and it also tends to be more complex, requiring more interaction with the system itself. For example, if you are tracking multiple ceremonies, it’ll take more time and effort to do so using this kind of software.
2. There is no one-size-fits-all solution
3. Different tools are best suited for different kinds of weddings
4. If you’re doing a small-scale wedding (less than 100 guests) then the panel tool may be better than having an in-house team handle everything else (and then charge premium fees)
5. It’s worth thinking about whether or not you want your wedding planner as an employee or partner

How to choose the right wedding planner or event planner for you.

Wedding planners are as varied as the wedding itself. As an industry, they have been around for centuries. Some are highly regarded and some are not. Many offer training or there are books or webinars available to help you choose the right planner for you. Others don’t. There is no universally accepted way to choose a wedding planner, though many people do.

Here’s a helpful post on Yelp that talks about what makes a good wedding planner (and which one is better). The key differences between planners can be summarized as follows:

• The more money that you pay, the more expensive they tend to be (this is true of all service industries)

• Some people say that “you get what you pay for” but this isn’t necessarily always true (for example, price is often a factor in choosing whether or not to recommend someone)

(And don’t get me started on how some of the most respected planners are never accredited by any organization at all.)

So, which kind of wedding planner should you use? I would argue that there is no “one right way” to go about it — just ask different types of professionals and find what works best for your situation. You can also see some commonalities between wedding planners here:

http://www.lodestoprojects.com/projects/wedding-planner-services/

Do your research.

It is no secret that wedding planners have a huge advantage over event planners. The planner has a huge head start on this one, but the event planner can still win if they do their homework.

For starters, you should know:

1. What is your market? If you have only one market in mind, you should be careful to identify just that market and not something more broadly defined (e.g., “we want to create a wedding”). And don’t forget to include yourself in the mix!
2. How will your market be served? This is where you need to think deeply about what kind of service you are offering and how it will fit into the overall landscape. A good event planner will understand that each customer has different needs and wants, so they can offer customized services for customers who aren’t using your product at the moment.
3. Where are you starting? How far can you get from where you are now? If there are several ways of reaching customers, figure out which one is most appealing for your company (and don’t forget about how much money/effort/time it will take to reach each of them).
4. What types of clients are likely to come out of this? Who do they know? Who else might they be able to refer? These people may not directly be members of your target customer base, but they can still have an important impact on the success or failure of your product. Consider external advertising; referral marketing; word-of-mouth marketing; clients who choose referrals over other means; referral programs like GoToMeeting or MeetMe; etc.
5. How much time and effort do you need before launch? Your product needs time — time that includes actual testing, user validation, and user experience research — before it can actually hit the market and make money for itself. For example: if people start using your product after 2 weeks and then stop using it after 2 months, then it is probably too early for them to sign up yet (and either way, nothing would change in terms of the value proposition). Conversely — if people start using your product in a week (or even less), then it isn’t too early for them to sign up (and anyway, there would be significant benefits from doing so). The goal here is to get as much feedback as possible prior to launch so that we can make any adjustments required between now and launch day so that

Get referrals.

In my experience, there are two major categories of event planners in the country. The first one is the “event planner” that you hire to plan your wedding. They have a specialized skill set based on an understanding of wedding traditions and rituals, which they can also use to help you plan a party for your wedding or a party for another event.

The second one is the “event planner” which helps you plan an event and then gives you referrals to other people who are close enough to your guests (or possibly even closer than those) that they could help with your next event.

The difference here is that the first kind of event planner has their hands full with actually making things happen; they need to make sure everything runs smoothly and on schedule, and if anything goes wrong, it doesn’t matter how much time and effort went into planning it.

The second kind of event planner spends most of their time helping others prepare for events by encouraging them to do the same thing they do themselves (or by giving them tips on how to do it better), but they do not need to worry about making things happen themselves: they just want other people to be able to enjoy their own events.

This might seem like a small distinction, but it is not. You just need to decide if you really want your own events or if you prefer using someone else’s events (and thus are willing to risk being seen as a “not-so-serious person”). If you prefer having people around when you have an important social occasion — whether it is about starting a new business or getting married — then think about hiring someone else who can help out with this part of their job. If not, then consider yourself lucky because someone else might be willing or able to help you out at least partially as well as give you an opportunity at having some fun too!

Interview candidates.

It is not that there isn’t a market for event planners; it is that the marketplace is filled with a host of other questions that need to be asked. The key question here is “Which is better?”.

There are many reasons to choose one over the other, but it all comes down to what you need for the services of the other. If you don’t already have an event in mind (good luck with that), then your best bet is perhaps a wedding planner. If you want help planning and executing an event, then an event planner might be perfect for you. If you want to assist in planning your own events but also want them to be memorable, look into having help from a wedding planner, or even better, why not just hire a full team of professional organizers?

Conclusion.

Are you in the market for wedding planning software? Have you accidentally stumbled upon a wedding planner vs event planner website, only to find conflicting advice on how to choose one over the other?

This is a common problem we face as we are currently preparing for our wedding: which do we use? Are there any advantages or disadvantages to using one or the other?

There is a lot of confusion out there and while some people will argue that “it depends” and others will argue that “they’re all the same” (I personally think they’re all different!), it doesn’t help anyone if we don’t know what does what.

So, in this short series of posts, I’ll try to lay out the key differences between them and provide some possible solutions. At the end of each post, I’ll also list some additional resources.