Manolo for the Brides

Wedding planning is sometimes no fun. You don’t have as much money as you’d like to have in your wedding budget. Your first-choice wedding venue is booked on your set-in-stone wedding date. Your FFIL is demanding a barbecue-centric menu at the wedding reception. And your intended has thus far not lifted a finger to help. I get it. Sometimes being a bride-to-be can suck.

Sometimes in the midst of all that suckitude, it can really start to feel like wedding planning is a World vs. Bride affair. And when you’re mad at the world, it’s only natural to adopt an adversarial attitude when dealing with people. But when it comes to dealing with your wedding vendors, my advice is *don’t*. As in don’t assume that your wedding vendors are adding a ‘wedding tax‘ to the bill. Don’t just assume that you’re going to have to fight your wedding vendors to get what you want. And don’t change your mind a hundred times, just to mess with your vendors’ heads.

Of course, some brides-to-be, when faced with the suckiness of planning a wedding, veer too far in the opposite direction. They’re afraid to tell their wedding vendors what they want because they don’t want to be seen as pushy or, worse, labeled a bridezilla. Instead of making choices that please themselves, they make the choices that they think will make their wedding vendors happy. In some cases, the bride-to-be might not disclose her wedding budget, leaving her vendors free to make choices outside of her price range.

In both cases – whether we’re talking about the “difficult” bride or the “easy” bride – the bride-to-be becomes her own worst enemy. Her unwillingness to trust her wedding vendors or her unwillingness to be straight with her vendors can cost her the wedding she really wanted. Why? In the first case, the bride-to-be finds it impossible to work closely with someone who she thinks it out to get her. In the second, she never tells her wedding vendors how much she really has to spend or what she actually wants.

Planning a wedding should be a collaborative task undertaken by a couple and their wedding vendors, and that means that brides and grooms have to do their parts when dealing with wedding professional. When a bride or groom is up front with a wedding vendor about money matters and color preferences and all the things they do and do not want, that vendor has a good chance of putting together something – whether it’s a wedding cake or a bouquet or a table setting – that is just what that bride or groom had in mind. And that wedding vendor? He or she should be someone that the bride or groom deems trustworthy, so there’s never any need to be adversarial at all.

Today I’m going to do something a little different, which I hope will become a regular feature here at Manolo for the Brides. I recently had a chance to interview the absolutely lovely Megan Leavy of Mpire Events, and I think that the insider’s view you can only get by talking to wedding vendors is so important when it comes to learning all you can about planning a wedding. Megan agreed to be my first-ever interview, but with luck there will be many more to come! Without further ado, let me introduce Megan and share what she had to say about her background, what she loves about wedding planning, and how she approaches wedding planning on behalf of a couple.

Tell our readers a little about your company and your background

Mpire Events produces stylish, creative and unforgettable events. I started the company in January of 2010 after working for a number of years helping manage events for professional athletes’ charitable foundations, as well as planning lavish parties for hedge fund managers and financial firms. My experience has allowed me to work on a range of events in areas such as Vegas, Tokyo, Florida, NYC and the Hamptons.

I knew it was time to start my own business in order to create events that would reflect my global experience and bring a fresh and unique style to Boston.

Why you were drawn to wedding planning specifically?

I’ve always loved attending weddings and through the years I’ve noted what makes a great wedding versus an average one. I wanted to help bring a couple’s dream to life by creating something that embodies what they want their special day to be and of course make it unforgettable. There’s no event quite like a wedding!

Would you call yourself a full-service wedding planner? Is there anything you won’t do?

I am definitely a full-service event planner. I can do it all, from the invitations and venue research and selection to planning rehearsal dinner and helping manage the ceremony, gifts, transportation, etc.

I am finding more often these days that there are certain aspects of planning a wedding a couple may want to handle themselves (e.g., hire their favorite photographer or use their family friend to create invitations). I think there is a larger market for wedding consultants who take care of specific elements of a wedding as opposed to every last detail, and I’m happy to take on a limited role or handle everything, start to finish.

Stay tuned for Megan’s tips for brides and grooms!

ATTN. WEDDING VENDORS: Would you like to be interviewed as part of Manolo for the Bride’s profile series? Send me an email at Manolobrides at gmail dot com!