Selecting a Wedding Date & Who to Hire First | After You Get Engaged | The Un-Wedding Podcast

Sydney Spidell 0:11

Welcome to the Un-Wedding Podcast. I'm Sydney

Corina Waldie 0:14

and I'm Corina,

Sydney Spidell 0:15

We're two neurodiverse wedding planners who are committed to empowering nearlyweds to throw out the wedding rulebook, shrink their guest list and create a meaningful, purposeful wedding experience. We're taking the wedding industry by storm and disrupting the status quo. We're the Un-Wedding Planners and we invite you to join our movement.

Corina Waldie 0:33

We record our podcast from Treaty Six Territory, a traditional gathering place for diverse Indigenous peoples including the Cree, Blackfoot, Metis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Ojibwe, Saulteaux, Anishinaabe, Inuit, and many others, whose histories, languages and cultures continue to influence our vibrant community.

Corina Waldie 0:58

Welcome to the fourth and final episode in our series on the Un-Wedding podcast what to do after you get engaged, we're breaking down all the steps you should take in those key days to not only get your wedding planning journey off on the right foot, but to actually set yourself up to enjoy your engagement period, a point in many relationships that often gets glazed over because the whole focus gets put on to the wedding, or gets put onto the wedding. I'm not wearing glasses I can't read. Alright, in this week's episode, we're going to be talking about what to consider when choosing your wedding date, because there is a lot of pros and cons to getting married at different times of year, depending on where you live. And once you have that wedding date, we're going to wrap up today's conversation by answering that age old question about who you should hire first venue or wedding planner and give you our opinions on what we think is best.

Sydney Spidell 1:46

All right, so what's best? Just kidding, we have to start with the dates and stuff

Corina Waldie 1:50

Let's start with dates

Sydney Spidell 1:51

I was getting ahead of myself. Okay,

Corina Waldie 1:54

let's be honest, you get engaged, that's the first question that like everybody asks of you

Sydney Spidell 1:58

When's the wedding

Corina Waldie 1:58

When's the wedding? So how is it that you even go about picking this date? Is there any strategy behind picking this date? You know, I'm really I guess there's kind of two schools of thought, right? So there's those couples out there that have, you know, maybe a set date in mind? Maybe it's a date of significance. So maybe it's a dating anniversary or another relatives anniversary?

Sydney Spidell 2:06

Really good?

Corina Waldie 2:20

Sydney Spidell 2:49

Yeah, you know, a fall, I want to have a fall wedding. So that's, that's all I care about. And that could you know, that then breaks down to, alright, do you want fall colors do you want to chillier like, because then there's going to be different moments within autumn, that are then picks to give you that perfect feeling, right.

Corina Waldie 3:09

And you know, and there's a lot of pros and cons between, you know, going with that set date and go moving into your planning and saying, I want to get married on this day, for the simple reason that you can approach every vendor selection with availability. So especially the venue and planner, like we're going to be talking about, you know, if you approach a certain venue and you say, Hey, this is the day we're getting married, either they have it or they don't, yeah, same thing with a planner, or they have it or they don't and can give you an answer right away. But if you're going with the month, kind of the month year season approach, what that allows you to do is potentially work with people that you might not, you know, that you really jive with. So like let's say for example, you want to work with a specific planner, or a specific venue, it gives them a great deal of flexibility to try and accommodate your wedding and your date into their busy schedules. Like

Sydney Spidell 3:57

especially considering like the fact with venues, often they'll do multiple weddings in a day, right? So if you have more flexibility, with your date that you want to set and everything, you might have a better chance of then getting something that other people haven't picked over in this schedule, and you can establish something that really works for you. You know, I want to get married at this time of day as well. Well, great because we don't have something before and after that. We can make that happen wherever go and episode without hitting the microphone?

Corina Waldie 4:26

I don't think so. As the one that edits most of these, there's usually some point in every single episode, you're like, sorry, I punched the mic.

Sydney Spidell 4:34

Yeah, punched it or like bit it. I'm just, this is why I need to be caged.

Corina Waldie 4:41

That's all good. But that being said that flexibility, you know, it does mean it can actually ultimately kind of even like save you money. Dare I say it because there is other alternatives. Like you know, obviously it's preferred and this is the reason why we deal with you know, higher prices and more busyness on weekends, weekend weddings, especially Saturday weddings are the preferred, because that way people, you know, your guests don't have to take any time off work, they can come into town they can enjoy whatever. And also, obviously, we've talked in the past about, you know, high wedding season here in the northern hemisphere, which is like, you know, mid, early to mid May, typically up until about the end of October. And so those weekends during those months, obviously gonna be busier obviously going to be more expensive. So when you're going that month and day, Route, month and month and year route, you're giving yourself so much more flexibility to potentially even look at other dates or days of the week. If you're open to it.

Sydney Spidell 5:35

Yeah, we love a weekday wedding here at the Un-Wedding Movement,

Corina Waldie 5:38

Honestly,

Sydney Spidell 5:39

Full support of it. Now. I mean, we also like to do smaller weddings. So it makes coordinating that with people who have jobs a lot easier. Yes. But we also think it's great. If you know, you have some people that mean a whole lot to you. If you got to take some time to really just settle in and celebrate that kind of a perfect opportunity for vacation. Now, of course, knowing that everybody has six vacation days in a year and shit availability and whatever. It's hard, but you know, if you can make it work, why not?

Corina Waldie 6:10

Yeah, I think we you know, that's the one nice thing though about weekdays too though, if you do the weekday wedding route, it does give you so many more options, because your vendors are typically booked on weekends. Yeah, so if you want those options, great. And I know for even ourselves, if we do a weekday wedding like Monday to Thursday or non holiday Monday to Thursday, you know, we actually discount our services for that, because it still leaves our weekend open to potentially take on more events. And so you know, if you want to take that spot, well, you know, here you go, you can have a little bit of a discount for going midweek. So if you're especially if you're on a tighter budget, there's so many pros and pros, I think, to moving into this process, with a great deal of flexibility, depending on where you're at.

Sydney Spidell 6:48

I mean, I think the same thing could be said for almost anything in life, right, it's always gonna be a little bit better if you have some wiggle room. Now, of course, knowing something like an anniversary, or maybe you know, you have limited time with someone, and you kind of have to move within a certain, you know, area, all of those things are totally understandable. And having something that limits you in that way does not mean that you're going to have to sacrifice, you know, the quality of the wedding, either of what you want and what you want to see. So like, yeah, I don't know, it's it's definitely nice to have that flexibility. But if you don't, don't sweat it,

Corina Waldie 7:28

yeah, there's just might mean that you're not going to get your first pick, if you have a preferred vendor, they might not be available, and therefore you'll have to move on to another alternative. So it's like, again, it's an all things it's just weighing out those pros and those cons to fully understand what it is that you know, really ultimately you're doing with your wedding.

Sydney Spidell 7:46

Yeah, what do you want? And then so not only weekday weekend, which creates a bit of this is better, this is worse, but those times of year to when it's high season low season, because we've talked about I mean, we at the very beginning of this series, we talked about engagement season, and when that is throughout the year, it sort of suits that then you're kind of looking the opposite part of the calendar for wedding season and when people like to get hitch primarily in the summer, why is that? I don't know. Everybody likes good weather.

Corina Waldie 8:18

Yeah, you know, deal, especially driving, you know, because we all can appreciate, you know, right now we're recording it's February roads or heck, yeah, okay, hell, I'm just gonna swear.

Sydney Spidell 8:28

I believe we have the Explicit E, beside our podcast in places

Corina Waldie 8:32

Yeah, but roads are hell right now. So, obviously, that's one of the reasons why we have a wedding season, you know, weather's nicer, you can have those outdoor pictures. But that being said, All things aside, I'm firmly in camp like I love winter weddings, I personally had a winter wedding. It was beautiful. There was not that much snow. I really wish there had been more snow.

Sydney Spidell 8:52

Right, but I feel like I'm definitely a winter wedding leaning kind of gal. For sure.

Corina Waldie 8:58

One of the biggest reasons we went with a winter wedding was because we did not want to be sweating our skivvies off in our wedding attire when it was 35 degrees out. So you know, that was one of the we wanted to be comfortable and with the weight of you know, a wedding gown and then my husband's, Jon's suit. It was just like, No, that's okay.

Sydney Spidell 9:18

I'm a very sweaty person. Such a good point. We we were talking right before I'm recording this for those of you at home who really want to know about the like menopause supplements that I take in my 28th year of life because I sweat too much and really need to control the hot flashes. It's It's hard being me almost 29 year old grandma. But okay, so beyond just saving yourself the sweat. It's also important to note that although in this society, we really like ourselves and talk a lot about ourselves. The world is different in other parts of it. Though when it's not high season here, it's high season somewhere else, you're always gonna find great weather, if you want to find great weather, you just might have to travel a little bit to find it. So again, options for getting that perfect date or that perfect whatever are out there. But you might be looking at destination wedding now, which is also super fun.

Absolutely. So you know, Caribbean, their high seasons, pretty much the opposite of our high season. So if you wanted to go to, you know, to have your wedding down there and take a relaxing vacation with your group. Oftentimes in the Caribbean, especially if you're doing like resort packages, on resort packages, those sorts of things typically are mid-week anyway, you just kind of get married middle of the week, but it's a lot more casual, and it's a lot more chill than any sort

Everybody is sort of taking the time off anyway.

Exactly. You know, anybody that's there has already paid to fly down. So you kind of get the wedding over with the first few days you're there. And then you can just relax and celebrate the rest of the trip is sort of the philosophy around that.

Yeah, we're big fans of the mindset of get the wedding over with.

Get the wedding over with and move on with your life.

Like, yeah, but it gives you that ability. I mean, you could even if you want to do more hang out lead up to it, you can structure a destination wedding how you want as well, it just again, depends on the like, what what the destination packages are whatever the venue does offer.

Absolutely.

Okay, so we've got a an idea of whether we have a date in mind or whether we have a general time in mind. So the difference then - the reason why we started with this as part of this conversation is because depending on which one of those you go with, it's going to change your answer to Who do you hire first. If you know the date that you want to go for, if you have a date in mind, then your first thing is going to be making sure that the thing with the tightest availability, the tightest calendar, which is the venue can be booked. If you don't have a venue in mind, maybe then you want to bring somebody on, but primarily, like that's the thing that's most likely to not be available. And if you have your eyes set on something, well, you want to get there soon.

Both honestly, both planners and venues we do have limited availability, we can only typically take either one wedding per day or one wedding per I know for us, we limit ourselves to one wedding per weekend,

we are magical, but we can't be everywhere at once.

But, you know, it's definitely something to consider if you have set dates that you need to especially if you have your heart set on working with somebody specific, whether that's a planner, whether that's a venue, then you really need to reach out to check availability before you get your heart set one way or the other either, because in that circumstance, if they're not available for your date, your options are either change your date, or change your venue, right or change your planner or whoever. So you know this these early stages, there's a great deal of flexibility you need to potentially have or be willing to move if you if and only if you have your heart set on certain things.

The other thing that's great about a venue is like going going with a venue first as if this is completely out of your wheelhouse if you have no freaking clue what you're doing, and the thought of even looking for wedding planners scares you, but you have seen a building before, so you're a little bit more comfortable with that side of things. venues will often have their preferred vendor list and you might find planners on there as well. So you can get suggestions. But again, very similarly, if you go with a planner, they're going to have people that they're going to suggest to you the beauty of that is they're listening to your vision. And so they're going to be building examples and or sorry, not examples, but suggestions for you based on that. That vision. And a venue might have a more limited list or a setlist that it provides you. But what's kind of great about that, too, is again, yeah, you have this venue in mind, you know, you want to work with the vendors who work well, with your venue. You don't want to you know, bring somebody in just because they were oodles cheaper than what was on the preferred vendor list. And find out that there's, you know, generation long feud between the owners of these businesses and they're gonna use your wedding as their sparring match, right like unlikely

Most of us keep it pretty professional or, to be blunt, we blacklist certain people were will refuse to work with each other for whatever reason, but that's another conversation for another time as to why that happens or why that might happen. But you know, when it comes to the venue, it really allows you to I think more than anything solidify that date if you're really getting anxious about that idea of having a date, once you have a venue. Great. The other thing into as the venue can dictate a lot. It can dictate style, it can dictate theme, it can dictate budget, it can dictate so many different things. So if again, if you're at that stage where you're like okay, I don't really know what but I really Love this venue, and you have that flexibility to say, okay, I can be flexible a budget or vision or whatever you can work with that venue to venue can really inspire certain things potentially.

And there's one, like the beautiful thing about working with people who love where they work and love, what they do is that they are going to know all the little special bits and pieces of their venue, they are going to know the moments that are unforgettable. And they are going to be like, okay, but if you do this here, I can promise you, this is the result for that. And that is such a cool, a cool thing to get, you know, if they say, seriously, if you're going in this room, this corner has the perfect acoustics for a live band, maybe you're thinking DJ, and suddenly, you know, there's gonna be somebody up there with their instruments. And that's, you know, set a whole new different feeling to your experience that you're planning.

But, you know, as I said, there's a lot of pros, but I do think it's also important to think about some of those cons and one of the big, huge cons that can potentially happen, especially if you are somewhat unsure about what kind of wedding it is that you want, or style or theme or budget is you can often get pigeonholed into, you know, having a certain wedding, or a certain style of wedding because that's what that venue typically produces. So you know, if you kind of move, start moving forward this process, you've hired your venue, and then you start changing your mind, because you realize you want something different, you can then get into that mess of losing deposits. Whereas when you're working with planners, that planner has hopefully already asked you a lot of those questions ahead of time to help narrow down what potential venue it is, that might be a good fit for you, or what kind of theme or thing and they can really sort of drive that for you and really help you walk through those process that process so much more confidently.

Plus, if we've worked a venue before, we're going to know what has gone well before and what hasn't, you know, you get a whole different kind of insight of those things. And so even though something might seem really good on the surface, you will then get a little bit of, you know, industry knowledge saying, okay, but for these other aspects that are pretty far away from what you're thinking about right now, it is going to throw a huge wrench into your plans. So let's look elsewhere. Yeah, I think two is not to contradict what I just said before, about, like these people know their space, and like, they're going to have all these hints and tips too. But in in, you know, there's, there's always going to be someone who isn't quite as helpful. And like on the opposite end of that spectrum, then we can see a little bit of defensiveness or sort of territorial behavior from venue coordinators and stuff. So if you go with a venue first one thing to keep in mind is, how much support do I want with planning this wedding? Because if I want support in terms of how the vendors are interacting with each other at the venue, if I want support in terms of knowing what's going to happen to my car after this is going, like, yeah, the venue coordinator is there to help you and figure that stuff out. But if you're wondering more things, like how do I get my mother in law on board with the plan I have for the flowers, that is probably not something that a venue coordinator is going to take on because it's not part of their job. And beyond that, they have a lot of other stuff going on in their work. Like other than just planning weddings. So you're going to get maybe they are wedding planner within there. But then they're planning weddings for the whole season for that venue, which it depending on the size of the venue, that's going to be way more than what like we would take on as planners in a year, we're not going to take on as many weddings, as the venue itself is going to take on

No.

And then you got somebody who's spread so much more thin between all of these projects. Beyond that they're an employee, they're not your hired hand, they're an employee of this place.

Yes, you know, it really boils down to that a venue coordinator and a wedding planner are not equal. And I'm going to be blunt here, any venue that tells you that you don't need a wedding planner, honey, because I got this, is probably, unless you're not intending to hire a planner for one reason or another, which is totally fine. You know, that to me as a, I speak mostly from the position of a vendor. I honestly find that a little bit of a red flag because I feel like that venue coordinator is just going to be trying to push themselves too thinly on that day, especially if they have multiple events. They have so many more elements beyond just your wedding. You know, your venue coordinator, I hate to break it to you, but they're not going to fluff your train before you go down the aisle. They're not going to attend the rehearsal and make sure that everybody lines up the way that you want them to necessarily or walk people through. Like they're the role of venue coordinator first and foremost is to meet the contractual obligations of the venue. So whatever the venue has agreed to provide for you, that is what that venue coordinator is going to do. All of these little extras aren't things that they do. You know, they can, they can paint that all they want, but they don't do it. Right. So and also, there's something to be said on the idea of like, it strikes me if a vendor or venue doesn't want to work with and I'm saying, blanket all wedding planners, definitely you can blacklist people, as I mentioned before, but you know, it's to really think about, you know, like, are they going to work well? Like, how are they going to function if they're not willing to work with a wedding planner?

Yeah, like, you know, the collaborative mindset there that, because I think what that says to me, like, No, we can manage it, it means okay, why? Why, like, what is it that you're managing? And and what? What are the specific things that you're saying, then that a wedding that you think a wedding planner, does that that aren't needed? Because you've got a hold on it? Break down that difference for people? Because yeah, if you need more support in your wedding planning process, a venue coordinator doesn't cut it. And then if they are unwilling to bring somebody else in, is that because one way is the right way to them? If that's the case, maybe that's not the right way to you, and then you're being stuck with what this person says is the go to standard. So, anecdotally, and this wedding hasn't even happened yet so I do have to be careful. What I say here, it is going to be a fabulous wedding. But one of my best friends is getting married at a golf course. And the venue coordinator said outright like we don't work with with outside planners. And so my question when we were doing the venue tour was okay, so you are a wedding planner, then and her response was, I'm the event coordinator. And to me as a wedding planner, I'm thinking, Alright, so on the day of how like, do you have staff here on your team, then that you're assigning like one to the bride and one to the groom? Do you have, like, how is that support being broken down. And now because this person already knew I was a wedding planner, she was immediately defensive, and which is hard on a person coming in to support their friend, because now, my friend has this impression that I'm the enemy of the person who's helping her out, which is just going to give us tension, which sucks, because I did want to just be there to support my friend. And instead I got like, hey, here we go, bad guy. Fine, whatever. But she didn't answer those questions. So I'm thinking, in my mind, what you're saying is, you've convinced my friend that everything is going to be handled, but all of these other things that I'm thinking about, you don't have a plan for. And when the night comes, it is going to be me who's going to be handling all of that. And do I see that in the future? plain as day? Yes, I do. Am I a psychic? Yes, I am. Congratulations to me.

Honestly, I'm a wedding planner, I have attended weddings, where there's no wedding planner, and I end up filling gaps. I just can't help myself. Even though I'm there as a guest

You want things to go well. And if you have the experience to do it, it's like if you see a fire, house on fire, and you're a fireman walking by with a hose, you're like, Well, I'm here actually just in the costume. But you're holding a hose. So why not put it out?

Exactly, I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, go over and can I help? Can I assist? Can I do something weird because this is how I function. It's, it's actually really hard when I go to a wedding as a guest to not be like, judging everything or looking for like, ways that I could like, Oh, I could, I could, I could tweak this, I can do that. And I could do all these other sorts of things.

If you have a wedding planner, friend, smack them on the hand if they try to fix your wedding.

Okay? Even though I now like have a personal policy that I do not plan the weddings of family and friends, you know, if somebody came to me and said, hey, you know, one of my a good friend, who forever, you know, I would have you plan their wedding, because I want to be arm's length from that, because it can cause so many issues. But that's other conversations for other days.

Well, I mean, honestly, no, that's the peanut gallery and that insidious in laws, right? Like, it's it's or party pirates. It's saying, like, we want this space, because we've already talked about all the bad decisions that can happen when you don't create that little bit of space. And when you don't have a planner who is your ally and not your friend, right, like they are there to back you up.

Yeah. You know, and then yeah, exactly.

It can't be your friend too.

Well, and you know, and the thing is, is I have helped in some cases where I'm like, Hey, if you got a question, like, I'm happy to answer your question, but I don't want to end up being your wedding planner when I'm your friend, because there is you know, it's that level of professional like professional versus friendship and expectations again, and all other sorts of different things.

So I don't hire your friends. But you might want to hire a planner before hiring a venue.

Yeah, yeah. And I think ultimately, why you want to hire a planner, why I'm making this argument all the time, is because as planners, we are able to see the big picture, we can come in to the big picture, we can say, alright, so this is what you're hoping to create. This is your purpose, this is the experience that you want. Let us figure out how to give you that. And,

and for us, it's not just trying to fulfill the terms of a contract, right? For us. It is, we're risk managers. We come into something and we go, what could go wrong? And how can we find a way around that?

Yeah. You know, I actually, I had a consult today with a couple who, you know, and we were talking about having their wedding in their backyard. And they were saying how, you know, we were talking about details, they said, we're probably gonna need a tent. Okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we totally expected that. I said, But what about washrooms? And they looked at me, and they went, Well, I said, because I'm assuming you have a powder room in your house, but you're going to want 50,60 people to share one powder room? Yeah, that's that's not going to work very well.

So now your budget just changed

Some of your budget changed, because now you need to look at washrooms trailer

right at the beginning of this process

so that's sort of my point though, is if you're going into this venue conversation with a planner at your back, that planner can say hey, have you thought about X y&z Because

your budget at the end is not a surprise it's it's something that you're you've prepared for and planned for and have had time to emotionally accept? Well, okay, and we hope today's episode is help you figure out some next steps after popping the question and help set the tone for your engagement and your planning journey. If you want to know more, check out our fabulous free eBook "After You Get Engaged." It's on our website unweddingmovement.com, breaks everything down in more detail and has worksheets and a fun quiz. And that way you can start your engagement journey off on the right foot. So next week, brand new series, we're going to be talking about all the different parts of a wedding. What are weddings made of?What is the stuff?

Yeah, we're gonna be talking about you know, some of those events that are like pre wedding events, showers Jack and Jills, stag and does

breaking down those day of because there are a lot of points in there. We're gonna be talking about what they are made of, and what you can just chuck out the window. If it doesn't appeal to you

also, at the end, what do you do with the aftermath of your wedding? Because that's going to be super fun conversation as well.

Yeah, so Okay, wait, it can't wait for that. You know, we know you want to hear it. We want to talk about it. In the meantime now. Join the conversation over on TikTok and Instagram. We're @unweddingmovement, and until next time, cheers.

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