faq’s

Planning Services

If you are looking for a wedding planner to work with you from the beginning. or have made a start and are looking for some support for the rest of the time, you may find some answers to your questions here…

TELL ME WHY SHOULD I HIRE YOU AS MY WEDDING PLANNER?

We bring calm at what can be an overwhelming period and we provide efficiency to save you lots of time – and money. Having us by your side will give you confidence in your decision making and will give you assurance that you will have the best team of suppliers bringing together your dream day.

Our experience tells us that getting engaged is the most exciting time of your life but then once you’ve set the date you can easily get confused. Where do you start? How much is everything going to cost? How do you breakdown your budget into different areas? Often couples don’t know what they want for their wedding day and they haven’t worked out their budget, they just go full steam into searching for the perfect venue, spending weekends visiting everything from castles to barns and not knowing how much they want to spend.

Wedding planning isn’t just about choosing your colour palette, flowers and food choices – although we love it when it comes to these bits! No, wedding planning is so much more. It’s about choosing the right venue that suits you as a couple, finding suppliers that can deliver the vision you have in your head and it’s about creating the day that is as unique as you are. There are often several logistical matters to attend to, such as being realistic with the timings and creating the right atmosphere. Our mission is to give you confidence to plan the wedding you want, we will help you write yourself a brief for your perfect day, break down your budget into prioroties and take care of all your concerns.  We will give you options and ideas that you may not have thought off and save you a shed load of time.

Can I Afford A Wedding Planner? Only Couples Having Extravagant Wedding Hire Wedding Planners, Right?

Wrong! A wedding planner can help on even the most intimate celebrations. Our purpose is to worry about all of those little details that you do not have time to think about, and deal with any problems that may arise throughout the day. We are here to relieve you and your family from the stress of the wedding whether you have 5 guests or 500. While hiring yet another supplier may seem costly, a wedding planner can offer valuable advice to save you time, money and worry.

WHAT SIZES OF WEDDINGS HAVE YOU planned IN THE PAST?

We have coordinated all styles and sizes of weddings from just the small and intimate with less than 50 guests to large Indian and Jewish fusion weddings where there were over 200 guests.

MY VENUE ALREADY HAS AN EVENT COORDINATOR... SO WHY DO I NEED AN INDEPENDENT WEDDING PLANNER?

A venues coordinator and a wedding planner are two very different roles. There will be some overlap but if you tell a venue coordinator you were thinking of hiring a wedding planner, they would agree that there is an added value to having both work together and for you.  Often the venues coordinator handles all kind of different events and clients – where your wedding planner will only have one focus – and that is YOU!

CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW YOUR FEES WORK?

The full wedding planning package has a minimum fee of £4,000. This is based on the fact that we will be spending a minimum of 115 hours planning your wedding. The final quote will be based on the complexity and size of the wedding, the fee is for both the run up to, at the wedding itself and the following day.  It factors in how many supplier meetings we attend with you, how many days we will need to be on site and the number of suppliers with whom we will be liaising with. For example, a wedding involving a marquee setup will often demand a higher fee compared to a couple who have already found and booked a venue for their wedding.

If you have found a venue and a couple of suppliers already but feeling confused about what to do next, we offer our partial planning service (also known as The Dolly Fix Package) where we take over the reins, find the remaining suppliers needed, organise the logistics and offer creative solutions. Prices for the partial planning service depend on what is left to do and how many hours we will spend working with you. The minimum fee for partial planning has been set at £2,500 because our experience shows us that we will spend a minimum of 80 hours working with you to finalise the details, includes visiting suppliers with you and being there on the day to manage everything and everyone.

HOW MANY MEETINGS SHOULD WE EXPECT TO HAVE WITH YOU DURING THE PLANNING PROCESS?

We are really flexible on this and appreciate that some couples just don’t have the time for lots of face to face meetings and so we can keep everything on email and skype calls with just a couple of face to face meetings. Ideally we set the dates for the planning meetings, usually at the venue at the start of the process so that we all have the dates in our diary in advance and have some structure to work with. We would always encourage weekly phone calls to check in on the status of what is going on.

The Dolly Deluxe Planning Service offers unlimited phone and email communication, so we’ll be in touch regularly!

I’VE FOUND SOME SUPPLIERS I LOVE, ARE YOU HAPPY TO WORK WITH THEM EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVEN’T BEFORE?

Absolutely. When it comes to your supplier team, the decision about who you book is always yours. Of course we love to work with industry colleagues that we have built relationships with over the past 8 years, we know we can rely on them to deliver every time. We will only ever recommend suppliers that will be the perfect fit for you but if you have specific suppliers you’ve found then we are more than happy to work with them too.

HOW MANY ASSISTANTS WILL ATTENd ON MY WEDDING DAY?

One wedding planner and at least one assistant will be at your wedding. We will have more assistants should you have multiple locations, or large guest numbers.

WHEN SHOULD I BOOK YOU?

The sooner the better, why wait! We want to make the whole wedding planning experience as smooth and as fun as possible. Having us with you on your planning journey from the beginning means you have our guidance and expertise when you need it most – the early stages that involve selecting your venue and sourcing the perfect suppliers can be overwhelming, and that’s not the best way to start!

Why don’t you list the suppliers you like working with on your website?

We only recommend suppliers that we have worked with before and we love to shout about how amazing they all are in our exclusive client area. We have built a Dolly Loves List over the past 8 years and when it comes to choosing who we would suggest for your wedding we always turn to those most suited to your brief, style and budget.  Once you book us, you will receive access to the Dolly Loves List.

WHO WILL WE PRIMARILY WORK WITH?

You will work with our lead planners Joanne and Lisa on all the pre-planning details for your event. They will also be there on the day of your wedding and there may be some additional Dolls depending on the guest numbers and the scheduled events.

HOW MANY HOURS ARE YOU ONSITE FOR MY WEDDING DAY?

From start to finish.

Day Management

Dolly on The Day is designed as a professional helping hand on your big day – so that everything runs like clockwork and is visually stunning allowing you to relax and enjoy the celebrations. If you are considering hiring a Dolly on the Day here are some answers to the questions you may have.

What’s the difference between a Dolly on the Day and your Wedding Planning service?

 Aswel as offering the full planning service for couples wanting help from the beginning, we also have a team of Dolls who are legends at running the perfect wedding schedule. If you are happy doing all the planning yourself but want someone to make sure it all runs smoothly on the day, A Dolly on the Day is for you.  You can meet The Dolls here.

You have a large team of Dolls, how will we know who is going to manage our wedding, we would like to get to know them before we make that decision?

All Dolls have been through an intense training period and have worked at a variety of weddings for many years. Each Doll has the experience and know how to make your wedding run like clockwork.

You will most definitely get to know who will be running your wedding schedule before you confirm your booking. You will have a telephone call or face to face Skype call before deciding and will also meet them approx 4 weeks before the big day for your final run through.

MY VENUE ALREADY HAS AN EVENTS COORDINATOR. WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME THAT THEY CAN’T?

That’s a great question, and one that we think causes confusion fairly regularly. The fact is a venue coordinator and a Dolly on the Day are two entirely different jobs. For a venue coordinator, the elements of the day that concern them centre solely around the venue and the logistics that are related to it. They’re an ambassador for the venue, rather than for you, and it’s their job to get involved with every wedding that takes place at that venue, regardless of size or style.

A Dolly on the Day is there for you and you only. It’s our job to make sure you relax and enjoy every moment and that means we are there to do all the jobs that need doing, big and small. We will ensure that the visual aspect is perfectly set up and looking exactly as you want it to, will make sure that the logistics are in place and be that point of contact for your suppliers so that they know where they need to be and when and we will also provide a concierge service to your family, friends and bridal party, making sure grandparents get a seat when they need one, new mums get a quiet area to feed and everything in between.

The Wedding Dolls is a team effort, we can use our individaul strengths to take on a variety of clients and weddings each year. Building a personal connection with our clients is our priority. Team work definitely makes the dream work and we pride ourselves in being there to support every couple we work for. If you book a Dolly on the Day you can count on us to be by your side (but maybe not at the aisle!) taking away any worries you may have. 

Why do you believe that every couple needs a Dolly on the Day

Our Mission Is to provide the missing link between suppliers and couples.   Suppliers are hired to provide their specialist service but every supplier we work with says they wished they had a Doll at every wedding – without wanting to scare you! Sometimes there will be a mini crisis and someone will have to discreetly solve it. Many times, couples don’t even know it’s happened.  There will be the occasion that an outfits rips (yes, we have used a needle and thread from our emergency kit to sew up a grooms trousers!)  and if we are not there, photographers feel they have to put down the camera to reach for the needle and thread – that’s if anyone has any. Or there might be some guests that drop out at the last minute and no one tells the caterer, which is then slightly award for table 9 when there is a bug gap where 2 places have been set.   A mini crisis can take your suppliers away from the role you have hired them for and can mean important moments are missed or service can be held up, with us there as the main contact on the day we will smooth out any issues that arise and be that go to person for everyone.

We have our venue for 3 days, can you help us to set up the day before and tidy up the day after?

 Absolutely, when you book a dry hire venue it gives you the freedom to do what you want but don’t underestimate how long it will take to bring your vision to life. Couples often feel that they will have lots of time to start some of the decorating and setting up the day before and arrange for delivery of drinks, furniture, games etc only to realise that the hours just run away and the stress kicks – why be stressed the day before when it would be much more fun to relax and prepare for the following day. We can be there the day before to oversee deliveries, put out bulky furniture, hang lanterns, you name it – leaving the girls free for a pamper session, the boys free to play a  round of golf and everyone enjoying the opportunity to kick off the wedding weekend  worry free. The morning after, that first day as husband and wife and you have to set the alarm to get up and clean the barn or hall, we say boo to that. Who wants to spend their first day of married life picking up empty beer bottles and stacking over 100 chairs, we can be there before you even wake up and have all that sorted for you.  

How will you understand our vision?

Your Dolly on the Day will take the time to understand your wedding plans intimately.

We ask you to complete our online questionnaire approximately 8 weeks before the big day, so that we know what you have planned and which suppliers you have hired.

A month before your wedding we will meet up to find out more about your plans for the day. We will then work together to create a schedule of events that we can work from. We’ll even contact your suppliers in advance and introduce ourselves so that they have us as a single point of contact on the big day, leaving you to the important business of getting ready and not being bothered with queries about setting up the ceremony chairs, the best place to display the cake or where the dimmer switch is for the fairy lights, to name just a few.

How will you make our vision happen on the day?

Your designated Dolly on The Day Manager will oversee a long list of jobs on the day, here is a snippet of what you can expect them to do:

* Create a schedule of events for the day – and make sure everyone is aware of it

* Liaise with all your suppliers on the day

* Ensure your suppliers have access and know where to park and where they have to be

* Take delivery of fresh flowers, any hire items (such as tables and chairs), cake etc

* Organise set up according to your brief

* Liaise with the booked entertainment who may need to set up and sound check etc

* Make sure guests know where everything is and where they need to be and when

let's talk weddings

Why don’t we have a chat about your ideas and how we can work together to create the most amazing day - call 07872160911, email hello@theweddingdolls.co.uk or complete our contact form

we can't wait to hear from you!