No matter how organized and diligent you think you are, planning a wedding is a challenge like unlike any other. My husband and I both have PhDs and thought, “We can do this!” Nope..., we couldn’t. At least, not without Amina and the Wedding Day Girl Team’s help.
Right from the start, Amina inspired confidence in us. We interviewed three other wedding day-of coordinators, and Amina was the only one who gave us a very clear vision of what was involved in planning a wedding from start to finish, how she would help, and what tools and tricks she could offer to help us make the best decisions. A lot of wedding coordinators will try and sell you on “fluff” (“We’ll pin the boutonnières on everyone!” “We cut the cake!” “We make sure everything arrives on time!”) that’s down very specific tasks. What separated Amina from all other coordinators was her ability to help us navigate the wedding industry right from the start. Even after just one conversation with Amina, we felt like we knew what specific tasks needed to be done and in what order, from the caterer and photographer to picking the right sized tablecloths.
Amina’s professionalism, responsiveness, and genuine love for the couples she works with shines in everything she does. The wedding industry is incredibly complex and makes low-stakes choices (picking flatware) seem incredibly high stakes. Every step of the way, Amina pored over our vendor quotes and showed us where we could fine-tune things, where we needed to adjust based on our guest count, and also where the BS was :) If we had concerns about costs, Amina gave us a sense of what average costs were industry-wide, provided really fast and really specific advice about where we could cut back and put our money where it really mattered. And even though she doesn’t do design planning, she was always there if we wanted her input on whether something would look good or not. By the time we got to our 8-week timeline meeting, we really got a sense of just how much work we had done, and how much work there was still left to do. Amina took all of our contracts, plans, and notes and raked them with a fine-toothed comb: we had picked the wrong banquet table size (whoops!), we needed longer table cloths (double whoops), we still needed to tell our caterer about special meals, we needed to add a few extra pieces of equipment for things we didn’t know we needed, etc. etc. While this would normally have been stressful, Amina reassured us that she would have it all sorted from that point on. Also, the day before our wedding, Amina single-handedly saved us thousands of dollars on striking redundant tenting (due to a tent share contract), a major testament to her professionalism and good relations in the wedding industry. Every time we had a call or chat with Amina about something, we were hugely relieved, confident, and so excited to get married— something everyone should feel when they work with Amina and WDG!
Our wedding was such a magical, joyful experience. To a large extent, all weddings are. But what most people don’t tell you is just how important it is to have someone guide you through in the months and weeks leading up to it because it takes SERIOUS WORK to create that magic and joy. We would 1000% do it again, and we wouldn’t hesitate a second to ask Amina to be our coordinator!
p.s. for what it’s worth, my mom still can’t stop talking about how much she loves Amina!