Wedding Planner & Event Directors

At Event Weddings, wedding planning isn't about fluffy white carpets, French provincial desks and colour swatches.

We take instructions from the clients and project management your case professionally from venues search to post-service. After planning over 1000+ weddings, our clients benefit from the collective experience of all these couples. Our planning philosophy is about:
* Running the event around your key priorities
* Helping you keep budgets in check
* Proactively addressing risk factors and problem mitigation
* Proactively being one step ahead, identifying and weighing up decisions that have downstream effects before you start doing them
* Identifying and maximising efficiencies in both costs and time
* Time-tested creative solutions to address your situation

After extensive planning the event will be carried over to the Event Director for execution and implementation.

All live events whether it's a church service, a stage show, live TV or radio programme have directors, even for a musical where it's the same people doing the same thing every day. This is because in all live events - the unexpected is expected.

Senior event producers don't promise perfection because a well-run event is not about perfection but about risk avoidance from before the event began (at the Planning stage), and on the event day how the unexpected is dealt with. This is where experience counts. The objective is not perfection, but how to create a seamless and well presented event.

It is the Event Director's role to coordinate all guests, key guests and all suppliers including key venue staff. While the couple has conveyed the plans, it is up to the Director to orchestrate, lead  and take care of the couple.

When a situation arises whether it's resolving supplier conflicts, dealing with equipment breakdowns, delays of one service holding up the entire programme, health episodes of important guests... the list is never ending, our main concern is to address the issue and to create a solution that is consistent with the goal of the event. We make measured and authoritative judgment calls in a dynamic environment where major issues are addressed along with micro-decisions have to be made continuously, where even inaction is often a decision in itself. 

A day coordination assistant is a junior position where the couple has already decided what they want done, but cannot do it themselves delegate this task to an assistant. This includes things like setting up placecards, or keeping an eye on the time. While the scope of an Event Director does include some coordination, it does not have the same leadership and authoritative role that an Event Director has.

Event Directors and the Venue Coordinator fulfills different role in a wedding. While the Event Director is in charge of the overall event, they are supported by the Venue Coordinator or Operations Manager who looks after the venue. This includes food and drinks service, the lights, doors and windows; as well as venue security and all venue related operations. When a Event Director wants to delay desserts by 10 minutes because speeches are going overtime, he does not run into the kitchen to the the chef. This is conveyed to the Venue Coordinator.

In a reception, it is not the role of the Venue coordinator to get the photographers ready before speeches start, inform the DJ what song they need to play for the next section, or brief the couple about the next section of formalities and where they will need to speak from. This is the job of the Event Director.

Having a trusted friend or family member act as a second pair of eyes can often be helpful. In fact, for certain responsibilities, particularly cash gifts, personal items and family-related matters, we regularly encourage couples to appoint trusted helpers. However, there are important limitations when asking friends or family members to take on a coordination role if they have not been as deeply involved in the planning process as the couple themselves:

1 INSUFFICIENT CONTEXT

A friend that has not been deeply involved in the planning process does not have access to the full context behind decisions that were made and may not understand the priorities, compromises and discussions already held that led to the final plan. Even an experienced event director who lacks context and is just thrown into a wedding won't be able to manage well: "Let's move this here". "No, we've already had a discussion about this with the couple, and it's because of this." Once a conversation like this happen, the dynamics don't work out well.

2 LIMITED AUTHORITY

Professional and seasoned suppliers prefer to take instructions from other senior professionals. It is challenging for someone's cousin to manage a team of professionals who have each done hundreds of weddings. Conflicts can arise when instructions are given by someone who does not have recognised authority and have insufficient context.

3 DECISION MAKING CHALLENGES

If coordination by friends is limited to putting out place cards and asking people to sign a guestbook, there's generally no problem. But real delegation inevitably is about making authoritative and measured decisions when the couple are not present, considering what downstream effect that these decisions have, and taking responsibility for those actions. This can be a heavy burden, and particularly so if the person appointed lacks context and does not have the influence and authority.

During wedding planning, one of the matters we discuss are the roles of "Highly Involved" persons. In fact we don't just allow but often encourage friends and family who are key decision makers to get involved, but the requirement is that they have to be as involved in the planning as the couple. By doing so, they have as much established context and authority as the couple and can be very helpful working alongside Event Directors and other professional staff. 

Good wedding planners come from many diverse backgrounds, most come from creative, stylist, dressmaking or even entertainment backgrounds, our background is uniquely in live stage events and TV/Radio broadcast.

Our Executive Event Director Sy Chung had a celebrated career in radio for over 10 years, and in live events for over 20 years.
Anyone who has worked in any professional live envrionments learn very quickly that the unexpected is inevitable. And this is the angle from which he approaches weddings.

* Live events must be meticulously planned and expertly managed. Every event have problems waiting to happen. A good planner create failsafes and Plan B's, and a good director executes well and deals with issues in the background
* Reliability is built using well-tried and tested systems
* While integrity, reliability and expert planning is not instagrammable, it is the backbone to being able to successfully run 1000+ weddings.