5 Ways to Know It's Time to Fire Your Wedding Coordinator

I was blessed in that I had a great wedding coordinator. He was family, he was assertive, he was aggressive, but he was kind. He wasn't affiliated with the wedding industry so much as he knew how to manage a project, and given the magnitude of our wedding he did an outstanding job. You didn't see him that much, but you knew he had a pulse on everything going on.

What happens when your wedding coordinator doesn't have his or her pulse on your day? You're in the thick of the wedding planning but your coordinator isn't coordinating very well. One thing people don't often consider changing in their wedding plans is the wedding coordinator! Sometimes people aren't made to manage large-scale projects, and that's okay. As the bride and groom you have to have the courage to say, "thank you for all you've done, but we don't need your services anymore."

Here are five ways to know when that time has come:

1) The wedding coordinator is being lazy, slow, non-resourceful, or inefficient.

Planning a wedding is a matter of timing. Most couples have about six to twelve months to really plan their wedding day. Within that time, everything needs to be moving like a well-oiled machine. If your coordinator is being slow about things or lazy about things, then they are in the wrong business. A lazy or slow person can cause you to miss crucial deadlines. For example, if a bridal show is happening in November and you don't find out until a week before, you probably won't get into it. For some the bridal show is the best way to find out about vendors, dress ideas, wedding themes, etc. I'm not saying your coordinator needs to go to every event, but they need to be on top of things as much as possible.

The most important thing the bride and groom need to do is prepare for the marriage, not so much the wedding. The wedding itself is a one-time event that will last all of a few hours. The marriage, hopefully, will last a lifetime. The bride and groom have their own things to take care of and though they will give their input into the wedding day, the coordinator should be the one who does the legwork possible to get things in motion.

2) The wedding coordinator is going against EVERYTHING (or is FOR EVERYTHING) you both are planning to do.

You've come to your wedding coordinator and presented your ideas, and the coordinator is coming back to you with negativity and snide remarks and putting a damper on your day. Fire that coordinator. If he or she cannot present constructive criticism towards things you guys have planned then they are not an effective asset to your wedding day. Should the coordinator agree to everything you guys want? I would say, no, however, that doesn't mean that everything you guys have planned is completely wrong either.

The inverse of that is if the coordinator is so lackadaisical that whatever you guys have planned is fine with him or her. That kind of misguided direction can be a recipe for disaster. Unless it's the first time coordinating, that coordinator should have some ideas on what things will work and what things won't. The objective here is to fuse as much of your ideas with their ideas to make one great day for everyone involved. A YES-man won't be objective enough, and a NO-man will be over-critical. The key to an effective wedding coordinator is being able to balance emotion with practicality. For example, if you can't cater to 500 people in your wedding, then your coordinator should raise a red flag and help you come up with options on what to do for your situation.

3) The wedding coordinator is not in favor of your union.

This is a major red flag! Fire your coordinator immediately if this is the case. He or she should have both of your best interests at heart, but if you find that he or she is favoring one side over the other then it will cause friction in your wedding plans, and that's the LAST thing you need! Some wedding coordinators can be objective in spite of their feelings about whether the couple should be together or not. Regardless of that they're not paid to be judges; they're paid to be coordinators.

4) The wedding coordinator is trying to make your wedding day all about him or her.

Your wedding coordinator should not be trying to prepare your wedding as a marketing piece to put into a case study. Their business cards should not be in the foyer of your wedding site the day of the wedding. A good wedding coordinator is invisible but can be seen at a moment's notice to handle any issue that arises. Signs that the wedding is geared toward the coordinator would be food choices, color choices that neither of you have chosen nor considered, an wedding arrangements that favor them and not you , time changes to accommodate their schedule and not yours, etc.

5) The wedding coordinator is overbooked to the point that your wedding plans are suffering.

I'm sure that some wedding coordinators are planning multiple weddings at once, but they should all get their fair share of attention. If you find that your wedding coordinator is never available for you, or never has the information you need when you need it, then you should fire the wedding coordinator and find another one. Your wedding coordinator should treat your wedding as if yours is the only one they're attending to, even if that's not the case.