On My Own

Alternative Title: Why We Decided Not to Hire a Day of Coordinator

I can almost hear the gasps through the internet.  You read that correctly, we are not having a DOC for our wedding day.  There are a couple of reasons why not and I wanted to share them in case anyone else is struggling with this decision too.  I am not saying not hiring a DOC is right or wrong but here is what Mr. CS and I came up with.  You should probably take it with a grain of salt though because only the wedding day will tell if this was a good decision.

1. Our venue comes with a fantastic wedding coordinator.  If I could make the word fantastic 10x larger I would.  She is just that good.  Daniella (the wedding coordinator) deals strictly with weddings at our venue.  I believe this makes her slightly different than just a regular venue coordinator.  Starting from about three months out, she has been at our side the whole way.  She has gone over every detail with us and even made some great suggestions of her own.  I am fully confident that she understands our vision and the Congress Hall team will execute it to perfection.

What does this have to do with no DOC?  For the wedding I am subscribing to the philosophy that too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.  I think if too many people are 'in charge' it will just lead to confusion and mismanagement.  I think there should be one point person on wedding day and having a DOC along with Daniella might be dangerous.

2.  I couldn't find anyone I liked.  Seriously!  Either they were out of our budget or didn't seem invested enough.  I didn't have full confidence in anyone.

3.  Speaking of budget, our budget for this was almost zero.  Well not that low but pretty close.  This decision also came down to money.  If we had an unlimited budget would I have hired a DOC?  Abso-f*-lutely.

4.  A DOC is not always the 'silver bullet' for a stress free day.  I was in a fabulous wedding over Labor Day weekend and they had a DOC.  However I think the DOC lead to more stress and wasn't really all that helpful.  The MOB was the one who put everything together and did an amazing job on the wedding not the DOC.  (wow, that is a lot of acronyms in that sentence.  Hopefully you are down on the bride lingo)

5.  Mama CS has 7 sisters!  Their family motto is 'someone has to be police of the universe, why not me?'.  Being in charge is like a family sport.  They are all fabulous women who I know would be willing to step in at a moments notice and take charge if something is not going right.

I am sure I could list just as many positives for having a DOC but for the Cucumber Sandwiches the cons simply out weighed the pros.  I think part of what makes a wedding day 'stress free' is having full confidence in someone else to execute the vision.  I really feel like I have that in Daniella and the rest of the Congress Hall team so no DOC for this wedding.

Did you have such faith in your vendors that you decided to go without a DOC?  Or am I being completely naive and this decision will haunt me for the rest of my life?