Using a coordinator

As stated in a previous post. I am a super planner. I am a high school English teacher, and planning and organization are essential to my sanity in the classroom. I have 160 seniors and juniors who literally pop in and out of class every day during recess and lunch in order to bombard me with requests to make up work, get missing work, tell me about their lives, etc. etc. If I am not able to keep up with their very distinct personalities and needs, my career would be in serious jeopardy.

I love planning things. Three weeks ago, I found out that the week after spring break we only had a two day work week due to two furlough days (thanks a lot, state budget cuts) and Good Friday, so essentially this March I will have kind of a two week spring break! I decided as soon as I found out that we would go to New Zealand as a pre-wedding honeymoon (we will have absolutely no money later this year due to the wedding and building our first home, and this is a great time of year to visit NZ). I had our entire fifteen day itinerary with flights and transportation planned in two days. TWO DAYS! BECAUSE I AM CRAZY! And also because I like to plan things out.

What does this have to do with using a coordinator? Well, we live on a separate island from our wedding venue. We live on Kauai, and our venue is on Oahu. I lived on Oahu for several years before following Chad moving to Kauai so I feel as if I'm pretty familiar with the island and what it has to offer. However, when planning a wedding there are a lot of things you have to do, contracts you have to sign, meetings and what not to go to, and with airfare being almost $100 each way, doing everything myself just wasn't happening.

Enter coordinator.

Luckily, the venue we chose, Kathy Ireland's Beachfront Oasis World Estate (the venue and company have undergone some recent name changes, so I threw in all the names just in case) has its own coordinator who happens to have been born and raised on Kauai! He was willing to put together a package for us based on our budget and his connections working in the wedding industry. The house is actually licensed to have weddings, which is awesome because the neighbors can't call the cops if the house gets too loud (I think). It's a relief to know that someone else is putting all of the vendors together, and all I we have to do is approve or disapprove. It's also nice to know that all of the vendors are going to fall within our specified budget and I don't have to price a million things. All we have to take care of is cake, alcohol, and photography. My only gripe is I like to have all of my questions answered RIGHT WHEN I ASK THEM, and apparently our coordinator is not awake at 6:30 A.M. like I am, ready and willing to talk all about our event!



Does it bother me that I know I could have done all of this myself and maybe saved some money? Yes
Do I need to let go sometimes? Also, yes (but I'm only letting go because we're planning on getting pregnant, and apparently you can't plan anything with kids involved so I'm ACTUALLY practicing letting go of things [again, crazy]).