Wedding Decorators

I feel like I haven't written - again - in so long. But this totally goes hand-in-hand with also feeling like I am WAY behind on wedding planning and totally consumed with work. I spent two very tough weeks in Europe for work and then came back for a few days and then went to Cabo for a week of vacation for my birthday! Although it was all fun, it's now the holidays....tons of work....and well, 7 months till IDD - "i do day".

I thought I would write this next post about decorators. There are SO many decorators out there - ones who are truly decor consultants and should be working in the creative department of an ad agency and others are florist who are brilliant at their craft and make amazing centerpieces, but need your guidance on an overall vision.

I knew from the get-go that I wanted a theme and a vision around the entire event. So, as Amy and I began talking about decorators and the spectrum of options, my head began to hurt. How could someone put a price tag on something that isn't yet tangible? Would they be able to create the vision I had in my mind? How much creative ownership would they let me have? How much freedom would I have to bring in my own pieces? How consultative would they be? How much input could I give? How nice would they be to work with? These are all valid questions that most brides probably have....and should have....because yet again, the answers vary depending on the decorator.

So, given my business brain, I thought the most efficient and effective way for me to go about this was to create an RFP - Request for Proposal, just like I would create a bid for consulting services at work :-). As Amy will validate, this turned out to be one of the most strategic and helpful things I did....both for me, as well as the decorators we were speaking with. I didn't have 100's of hours to talk to them, and I wanted to quickly get a snapshot of their ideas, their thinking, their creativity, their ability to take my vision and put a design against it.....and I knew that the decorators that would embrace and have fun with this were the ones I would want to work with.

So I created a 4-page RFP that went through an introduction of the two of us getting married - our background - our vision - our story. Then talked a bit about the venue. Then spend the next section talking about themes, visions, elements that were important to me. I described how nature needed to be fundamentally central to each event and I wrote about a page extracting all the images I had in my head into something concise that someone else could understand.

What I asked for in return was simple....I wanted a real business proposal back. Once that showcased their talents. What did they envision for the event? How would they make our dream come alive? What had they done in the past to support these capabilities? How much would it cost? The same stuff I would ask for in any other RFP. And in return I told them what my criteria were in making my selection decisions.


What I got back was very telling. I received a wide spectrum of ideas, which was great. I really was able to discern how these different individuals would approach our wedding and what type of creative out of the box juices they have. It was wonderful. What it did was save my time and energy in having to talk to various people...instead I used their responses to narrow it down to the top two or three that I can now have meaningful detailed conversations with.

I would HIGHLY recommend doing this for anyone - especially those who don't have the luxury of 100's of hours and those who are planning an out of state wedding.