HOW TO: Your New Best Friends

Trust Is Key

As with other significant relationships, while trusting your vendors is important, it won’t happen overnight. “If you’re smart, you’ll have a couple conversations” with potential vendors before deciding whom to hire, Brown says. “Make sure they’re on the same page with you – your priorities should be their priorities.” A good vendor asks questions, both about his or her specific area of expertise (music, say, in the case of a bandleader or DJ) and about you, your fiancé, your family dynamics, and your history as a couple. “I want to know, are the parents divorced? Are they remarried?” says Bruce. “Say the bride has a stepfather – I want to know about the relationship with him. That helps me be a better bandleader,” he says. And, for couples who don’t have a set idea for what they want played for special dances, it also helps him suggest songs that reflect you as a couple and your relationships with your families.

Negron gives her clients “get-to-know-you sheets” with “questions about the couple, how they met, what they like to do … things they might not think of telling me, so that on the wedding day I’ll notice something that normally I might pass over.”

This made a difference for Marisa Oldham of Philadelphia, married in May 2009, when she started working with Negron. “The first time we spoke, we talked for about half an hour, and not even about photography,” she says. “She asked what I’d done, if I knew where the wedding was going to be, what had I looked at so far. She was interviewing me as much as I was interviewing her.” Oldham’s connection with Negron became so strong that she decided – -uncharacteristically – to book a boudoir session. “Honestly, I’d never put lingerie on before that day,” she says. But after chatting with Negron about it as one of several options, she found herself warming up to the idea. “I was very, very comfortable with her,” says Oldham.

Open Lines of Communication

Once you’ve established a sense of trust, chances are you’ll be better able to open up to your vendors when it comes to trickier details, from battles with your future MIL over the floral arrangements to the 20-year feud between your great-aunts. While these details may not seem significant, spilling the beans on your family dynamics helps vendors do their job better. “We kind of see them in their underwear – and we literally do, on the day of,” says Brown of her role as a wedding planner. “You have to get to the point where you’re comfortable with your planner, because they see it all – the relationships, the fights, the money issues.”

David Hall, director of catering at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel, says that when he has a strong bond with a bride, he can support her through planning conflicts: “Nowadays, many family members are helping the bride and groom monetarily, which can be challenging. Relatives may feel they get a say in the decision-making.” When he and the bride trust one another, Hall says, they can let parents have their say while still striving to stay true to the bride’s original vision.