Key Difference: A wedding planner is the professional person or team that helps the bride and groom prepare, organize, design and financially manage the wedding. On the other hand, a wedding coordinator is responsible for taking care of the details on the day of the wedding.

The wedding day is not only a big day for the bride and groom, but also for the families and multiple people that are working on that wedding. In order to ensure that everything happens properly and nothing is out of place, brides usually prefer to hire either a wedding planner or a wedding coordinator. Though, these terms go hand in hand, they are two distinctly different jobs. However, many times a wedding coordinator is a wedding planner and vice versa. What is the difference you ask?

A wedding planner is the professional person or team that helps the bride and groom prepare, organize, design and financially manage the wedding. Their services start from a year prior to the wedding and end a few days before. The color patterns, the theme, the invitations, the seating chart and all those other details are taken care of by the wedding planner. They will give the bride and groom the choices and all they have to do is tell them what they want at their wedding, how they want it and which choices they prefer. Wedding planners are also a big help if planning a destination wedding, meaning the bride and groom are planning to marry in another country; all the forms and legal works are usually done by the wedding planners.

The services offered by wedding planner include: interviewing the bride, groom and their parents, preparing an outline of the budget, planning a detailed checklist of how the wedding will plan out, preparing a timeline of everything, preparing a seating chart, taking care of invitations , hiring the additional help (caterers, photographers, videographers, beautician, florists, bakers, etc.), schedule management, etc. Wedding planners are beneficial to hire if couples do not have the time to spend on the wedding details. Though previously, wedding planners were only hired by the rich people, they are now becoming a common trend among upper middle classes as well.

On the other hand, a wedding coordinator is responsible for taking care of the details on the day of the wedding. A wedding coordinator is an essential part of the wedding, who is basically the person who takes care of the details, the help, looks after the guests and sees that everything is going according to the plan. After a wedding planner is done with her duty of planning the wedding and getting the whole wedding set up, the execution is usually done by the wedding coordinator. In many cases wedding planners also double as wedding coordinators, since they are fully aware of the wedding details and what the bride and groom want.

Wedding coordinators work according to the hours that are required by the bride and the groom, they may be working for a few days before hand or just show up to work on the day of the wedding itself. Services that are offered by a wedding planner is setting up a timeline on the day of your wedding, ironing out the final details of what should go where and who is responsible for what and adhering to the back-up plan that is set by the coordinator. Wedding coordinators are part of almost all wedding and are sometimes even offered by the hotel or hall where the wedding will be taking place. This allows the bride and groom to have a care-free wedding and not worry about running around trying to organize things at the last minute.

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