Searching through hundreds of amazing yet sometimes overwhelming wedding websites and blogs, you can become slightly cross-eyed from staring at the screen as you search vendor listing after vendor listing for a wedding planner. Where should you start?

I’m sure you received some great word of mouth referrals from your just married BFF, then you hit up Wedding Wire as well as visited your favorite blog to see who designed that stunning wedding you saw posted last week…but now that you have names, how do you select the one person that will be managing your big day?

Laura Hunt Photography

Here are my tips on how to find the best wedding planner, and what to ask…

1. Listening Skills – You call up a potential planner and she yaps on and on about this wedding she did and that venue she loves and never gives you the opportunity to share what YOU are looking for. As the client, you need to be able to express your wants and desires and a good planner will ask you the right questions to find out what your needs and hopes are for your wedding day and let you do the talking.

2. Trust – Once you’ve got a planner that listens, meet with them. A lot of planners have complimentary consultations so you can get to know each other better. Meet up over coffee, chat about all things wedding, and do a gut check. Does this person seem trustworthy? Do you get that good vibe and are your personalities clicking? Are they on time and do they seem organized, poised and confident? Remember, this person needs to manage you, your wedding party, your family, and your guests as well as all the vendors making the magic happen – do you get the sense they can handle the job?

3. Experience – This one goes a little deeper than the question “How many weddings have you done?” Make sure you also ask about the type of weddings they have experience with, for example if your wedding is on a boat, ask if they’ve dealt with anything similar. Or ask about any tricky or atypical situations they may have been in and how were they resolved? This will show you their problem solving skills in action.

4. References – A good planner will have quite a few references and will be open to sharing them. Past brides of fabulous planners love to share rave reviews so get those email addresses and use them. Ask those past brides how the overall experience was working with that planner.

5. Design Aesthetics – Even if you are simply hiring a planner for Month-Of Services, make sure that your design vision and your planner’s vision somewhat match. If there is a situation on the day of your wedding and the planner needs to make a call about something, you want to be able to trust that their design aesthetics are relatively aligned with yours. If you’re looking for a planner to manage logistics and design it is even more important that you like the look and feel of their events.

One last piece of advice…don’t forget to breathe! Planning a wedding is a huge job –which is how us wedding planners came to be in the first place. Good luck!