Donna Putnam is the owner of Forget Me Knot Events, and she has planned more than 250 weddings. Her experiences might help out those who are planning their own weddings.
Tell me a little about your company.
I own Forget Me Knot Events, and I opened it about three or four years ago. I went out on my own after working, gosh, 16 years in the corporate world. I used to work for Reno Diagnostic Centers, and I was a marketing and HR director. And I thought if I was going to work this hard, I’m going to do it for myself and take all these skills that everybody has taught me and open my own business and do the one facet of my job that I love. And that’s event planning. I do corporate event planning and wedding planning and pretty much any event someone wants me to help out with.
What’s your favorite part about being a wedding planner?
I think my favorite part is meeting the family. It might sound kind of trite, but I really, absolutely love all the different family dynamics and how much emotion is involved in the process and helping mitigate the stress level and let them enjoy the emotion versus letting the other negative emotions come in. In other words, let’s keep the stress level down and let the happy emotions come through. It’s just really cool to be a part of that day, and I still keep in touch with a lot of my brides, and it’s kind of nice to feel part of the extended, extended family.
Any bridezillas or horror stories?
I think in life you’re always going to have someone you don’t get along with or whatever. I think part of my job is to pull them off the ceiling, so I don’t really let them get up there that high. It’s my job to sweat the details. It’s my job to make sure the day comes out the way they want, so if I’m doing my job then they don’t typically turn into a bridezilla. And my major was communications, for Pete’s sakes, so if I can’t talk to somebody then I’m doing something wrong. I really, really try to get them to talk to me. And I used to bartend, too, so it’s all about building a relationship and talking with people. And I think that helps keep them from turning into a bridezilla. And when they interview me, I’m interviewing them as well. Sometimes you’re just not a fit. You can’t be a fit for everybody. So there’s times where you can sense that in an individual and maybe it’s best to just not go forward.
So how does the process normally work?
They usually find me from my website or word of mouth or something. Pretty much everybody is going to go check you out online first, you know, the sniff test. So they go scope you out, stalk you on social media, Facebook, Instagram and all of that, and they look at your work. And then they decide if that is what they’re going for. Then they’ll usually send me an email or give me a call, and they’ll usually want a price range, whether they want day-of or partial or a full planning experience. So I’ll give them kind of a ballpark range because I don’t want to waste anyone’s time, myself included. … And so then we usually set up a time to Facetime chat if they’re a destination bride or if they’re local, we usually meet [at Starbucks]. And then depending on what they tell me and how well the meeting goes, I’ll give them a price from there.
Do you get more people who want full planning, just day-of or partial?
If you took the pie and divided it, it’s almost all equal. I have a lot of day-ofs, but then throughout the course of the year, I’ll get a lot of full planning that come in. And it’s kind of nice because you get to put your toe in the pond of all these different facets. Sometimes the day-ofs are really cool because you get to become someone else for the day, and you get to execute their vision. Sometimes they’re a little bit more challenging in that regard because you don’t know if someone else will be as organized as you are. But I purposely jump into the picture 60 days beforehand to make sure that I understand what’s going on, so it’s a little bit more than just a day of. But the partials are fun, too. And with the full planning, that’s where you really get your feet wet and then you’re down in the trenches trying to plan it out with their mother, sometimes grandma.
What’s the best advice you can give to someone who’s planning their wedding?
Don’t put your family to work on your wedding day. It’s your wedding day. You’re getting married to celebrate two families coming together. Don’t put them on the unpaid work detail. In order for your family to enjoy the day and you to enjoy the day, hire someone to just be you for the day. Carve that out of your budget if you can afford it. It’s more affordable than most people think. When people hear wedding planner, they think Jennifer Lopez with the headsets on [in The Wedding Planner] or even Father of the Bride, and they think, “Oh, I can’t afford it.” And it’s actually more affordable than you think, and it’s money well spent because someone is watching out for you for the full day. … When you rely on friends and family, it’s not if they’re willing to help, it’s if they actually do help in the end. Everyone is going to say they will help you, but you may not want the help that you get.
What are some common issues that people can try to prepare for?
There’s always going to be issues with their budget. When I work with people, I always advise to them to have a slush fund set aside for those unforeseen costs. There’s always vendors who want to work with you but then certain circumstances come along and later something happened and somehow they become double booked or something. Always prepare for a vendor who maybe can’t fulfill what you want to do, and that’s OK because you can always find another person that’s going to work with you. It’s not the end of the world. Some people have lost their venues. That’s a big one. We have always been able to find them another venue, and they’ve done well, if not better. It’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t happen exactly the way they plan, so try and keep that perspective that this happened for a reason, now let’s work it out positively.
What’s your favorite part of the actual planning process?
I think planning the floral and the décor, because what we do is we usually do a mock table setting. And you can really see on the family’s faces, the bride’s face—it’s like a preview of their wedding and they’re really excited. You can tell immediately if what you’ve put together is going to work or not. It’s always nice to give them that feeling, that release, like, “Oh my gosh, what I saw in my head is actually going to work out.” Sometimes you have all these ideas in your head. You’re on Pinterest, and you’ve got a thousand pins in your head, and you’re like, “How the heck am I going to put this all through this funnel and get this all to work?” So it’s a matter of putting in a tangible form for them to be able to see. I really like to work with the local florists in town because I’m not really a designer. I can do design, but I’m more like organization, planning, all of that. And so I work with them to kind of pool those two schools of thought together to give them visual confirmation of where they’re going. And again, it’s a preview to their wedding day. And it’s always, from that point forward, I wouldn’t say smooth sailing but things are just like, “Ahh.” It takes that pressure cooker feeling off. I’ve got it. I can see it. I know it’s going to be great, and then they get really, really excited about it. I like to do that early on because that excitement helps fuel them through the rough patches, budget problems, vendors dropping off or things not panning out or things being more than they thought they were going to be.
You mentioned Pinterest, is that more of a help or a hindurance?
I think Pinterest is an awesome medium for inspiration and ideas. It can tend to overwhelm folks because they tend to over-pin. And having never planned a wedding before or any kind of large social event that has over 100 people, that’s understandable. So I recommend that they pin to their heart’s content. It’s kind of like brainstorming. You’re just dumping ideas. And then create a whole separate page and don’t even look at your other page for like a whole month and get the planning started, and then you can go to that page and start pulling things that you really like. It can help you streamline your vision. And you also have to be realistic with your budget because Pinterest can sometimes give you the illusion that things are more affordable than they really are. A lot of the bouquets that are in there are really elaborate. It’s a forum for people to showcase their best work, so that’s the best of the best. Sometimes we forget that when we’re budgeting things. And they’re like, “Oh, I can make that.” Someone else can make that, maybe, but it’s going to cost a lot of money. They have to be realistic with themselves as far as do-it-yourself projects. Sometimes people get into a quandary, and they’re like, “Oh, I’m going to make this and my mom’s going to make this and grandma’s going to make this.” You end up with this do-it-yourself list that’s really long, and you don’t want to be up the night before your wedding hot gluing things and folding programs because you’re saving a dollar and you saw it on Pinterest. It might come out beautiful, but now you’re photos are going to come out bad because you’re tired and have dark circles under your eyes. So I think it’s really great for inspiration, but you have to keep in mind what’s realistic. It’s kind of like what they used to say—you can’t have everything you see on TV. Same thing for Pinterest. It’s just a different medium.