Planning a wedding is not for the faint of heart. After getting married and being to tons and tons of weddings, I’ve learned that hiring a wedding planner is 1000% worth it. Jennifer from Gather Events Company is a wedding planner based out of Lander, Wyoming, but also serves destination weddings in Jackson Hole. Jen has been planning events as part of her positions in the art world since 2006. She brings fun and organization to the planning process and loves nothing more than catching glimpses of happy clients enjoying their events. In this blog post, you’ll find a Q+A about Jen’s wedding planning business. If you’re still on the hunt for a photographer, contact me, and I’ll answer any questions that you have about weddings near Jackson Hole! Let’s get to the questions and answers.
Services & Payment For Gather Events Company
- What kinds of services do you offer? (Month of coordination, full-service planning, or a la carte planning)?
- Our couples are all different and their needs are unique, so we tailor our packages to fit each client. In general, though, our clients fall into two archetypes: destination weddings in Jackson Hole and local couples in Lander. We like to offer Full Service Planning packages for Jackson Hole weddings. Our Jackson couples are traveling in from all over the country, and Full Service Planning is definitely the way to go if you are planning from a distance! In Lander, our local couples often don’t need full planning services, so we offer customizable planning packages and a crew for set up and break down services.
- Do you offer payment plans?
- We invoice monthly for all of our packages.
- How many meetings do you generally have with your couple?
- It depends so much on the couple and the services they’ve booked! Our packages are fully customizable and our clients have unlimited zoom, phone and email access to us. We make site visits a priority for all of our couples, whether they are local or from out of town. It is so helpful to walk through the venue together to really crystallize our vision! If a destination wedding couple is flying in to visit Jackson, we make an extra effort to see them!
- Do you handle the invitations, from wording and ordering to the addressing and mailing?
- We connect our clients with talented stationery designers who can guide word choice and provide addressing and mailing services.
Working With Vendors
- Do you handle professional services, contracts and payment processing?
- We work with clients to select the best vendors for their wedding. All contracts and payments are made directly between the client and the vendor.
- Can you walk me through the process of selecting other vendors and how the couple is involved with that?
- After our initial conversations, I’ll usually have vendors in mind that would be a good fit for the client’s preferences and price point. I’ll reach out to that vendor to check on their availability for the couple’s wedding date and then set up a zoom call with myself, the clients and the vendor to connect them and help the client decide if they want to move forward with that vendor or if we need to go in another direction.
- Do you have preferred vendors?
- Sure do! We have made some great friends in the industry who we recommend when we think they’ll be a good fit for the couple. We have confidence in their work and we like to have them on our team whenever we can!
- Do you coordinate delivery, arrival and set up times with the photographer, the florist, the musicians and the caterer/banquet manager?
- We put together a custom timeline with input from all of our clients’ vendors. We follow the timeline closely on the wedding day, making sure that all vendors’ services are running smoothly.
More About The Wedding Planner Gather Events Company
- What was the most unique wedding you ever planned?
- All of our weddings are unique because all of our couples and their favorite people are unique. The guest list makes a wedding what it is!
- How many weddings are you generally working on at the same time? Does it just depend on the season?
- We take on a limited number of weddings each season to give our clients the best experience possible.
- Is wedding planning your full time job?
- Wedding planning is a big part of my professional life. One of the great things about living in sparsely populated Wyoming is that there are opportunities for folks to do more than one thing! In addition to wedding planning, I have an interior design practice.
- What is the average size wedding that you plan?
- We have planned weddings from 20 guests to 200 guests. Since 2020, an “average” size wedding is tricky to pin down!
- What challenges have you faced with weddings in the past, and how did you deal with them?
- This question could be a blog post in itself! We know that things don’t always go to plan, and our team has a saying, “everything is figure-out-able”. We are resourceful, solution-oriented, and can pivot quickly. When a problem occurs on a wedding day, our couple usually won’t know anything happened because we handled it for them!
- How many people on your staff will be at the wedding/event?
- The number of team members we have on site varies depending on the details of the event. At a minimum, we’ll have two team members on site. We add team members if the event is more complex – for example if the ceremony and reception are in different locations, which is pretty common, or if the guest list exceeds a certain number, we’ll add more staff.
- How many weddings have you planned?
- Oh my gosh, let me dig back in my memory! In a professional role, I have planned 22 weddings!
Your Jackson Hole Wedding Vendors
I’m super thankful for Jennifer from Gather Events Company taking time out of her busy schedule to answer these questions! As a wedding vendor, it’s fun to get an inside look at other vendors lives, and I hope you found it insightful. Reach out to Jennifer if you have more questions about her wedding planning business. I know you won’t regret hiring her to help ease the stress of planning your big day. If you’re still on the hunt for a photographer for your Jackson Hole wedding, fill out this form. I’d love to chat with you about any questions that you have. For more helpful information on Jackson Hole weddings, check out the blog posts linked down below.
