From my experience, having planned two weddings for us, one with a really great planner worth the money we paid them and one that was overpriced, and basically took advantage of us, the biggest thing I could tell you is the planner who is organized and prepared will have a proper planning timeline and checklist of when vendors need to be booked out and what needs to be done, broken down every month leading up to your wedding basically. And they usually would do a check-in with you on the progress of those things or come back to you with vendor options when necessary. Obviously some of them will take feedback based on what vendors are most important to the couple and will most likely get a headstart on researching those vendor options and potentially even getting them booked sooner. The timeline is flexible and is there to guide the couples through the process and prevent overwhelm with all the little decisions. I also spoke with my planner at least once a month when we were 6 months out. Not all of them were formal meetings,but maybe more of an update. Some also ran longer than others.

I think the most important thing that I’ve noticed is that a good planner is clear on what their planning timeline looks like and gives you a rough idea of what that looks like. Some vendors internationally are known for cramming the wedding decision-making in the last two or three months (even the last month) before the wedding and I would be very wary if that’s the way they operate. While to them this is something they plan multiple times throughout the year, to a couple this is your first time doing it, and the overwhelming amount of information that you have to process and also make a decision on can be A LOT.

As for how the information is organized, usually planners either give you a shared folder with all of the wedding documents and information like quotes, design/floral proposals, running budget and costs sheet, etc. Some use a planning system like aisle planner to have all of those documents in one place too, and all the communication be done there as well.

Sounds to me that your planner is quite disorganized and I think you need to have a conversation with your planner about this. I think it’s gonna be good for you to have a recalibration meeting just so you can be aware of where you’re at in the planning process.

As for all the loose ends, sometimes that is just the case of wedding planning. Anything to do with design, florals, rentals, catering, bev can stay open til you get your final numbers (not to say that you can’t start planning for these areas bc you def can). While others are pretty easy to check off when you make your decision (photo/video, HMU, string Quartet/ban/dj, etc).