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Quinceanera Planning Guide: Should You Hire a Professional Event Planner?

The decisions that go into planning your Quinceanera are definitely exciting, but they’re also challenging. If you love doing things yourself, no matter how complicated the project, then you might not even want to hire a Quinceanera event planner. However, if the thought of managing all those details feels more stressful than fun, a professional may be exactly what you need.

A good event planner will stay on top of things for you so that you can relax and enjoy the anticipation of your long awaited Quinceanera day. However, choosing between DIY and hiring outside help is a big decision in itself, so let’s have a look at the pros and cons of hiring a professional event planner to assist you with your Quinceanera.

What Does a Quinceanera Event Planner Do?

Essentially, a Quinceanera planner is an event planner who either specializes in or has extensive experience in planning Quinceaneras. The extent of the work that he or she does for you will depend on the range of services that you and your family desire. You can hire a Quinceanera planner to work with you from Day One—sometimes a full year before the actual celebration—or you can hire an on-the-day planner to coordinate the event from start to finish, but only on the Quinceanera day itself.

Benefits of Hiring an Event Planner

Here’s a simple list of 4 major tasks of a Quinceanera planner:

  1. The professional event planner and his or her team will handle all the major technical details including scheduling your venue, arranging for vendors, and making sure every moment of your Quinceanera day is as perfect as humanly possible.
  2. While you’ll still make the final decisions on such things as your dress and color scheme, your Quinceanera theme and party favors, and general decisions on the music, the professional planner will ask questions about your overall preferences and help narrow down your choices based on your personal taste that will also help you stay within your budget.
  3. An experienced event planner will provide time-saving—and often budget-friendly—suggestions for your party based on what worked well with previous clients’ Quinceanera celebrations, and/or will suggest ideas from other events that could be adapted to work nicely for your party.
  4. Professional event planners often have a short list of tried and tested vendors that will give you a better rate if you hire them through your professional. This can be invaluable if you’re not familiar with who’s who in the industry.

Drawbacks of Hiring a Planner

Usually, the deciding factor regarding whether to hire a professional or not comes down to cost, so let’s make another list:

  • The biggest downside of hiring a professional event planner is the price. If you conduct a general search, you’ll find that Quinceanera planners offer package deals beginning around $800-900 for limited service and ranging up to $3,500 or more for full service. That’s not exactly inexpensive. However, a professional can make things happen that you might have trouble pulling off yourself—like procuring a truly top-notch choreographer, arranging rehearsals so that you don’t have to make all the phone calls yourself, and managing the Quinceanera day timeline to perfection.
  • A less expensive option is on-the-day coordinating and “a la carte” service which generally runs about $100 per hour. That can be very affordable and a real lifesaver.
  • It’s possible that you’ll be asked to use the professional planner’s specific vendors and not those of your own choosing. However, the plus to this is that the planner will more than likely get you a better rate than anything you can find on your own.

Tip: To get an idea of how much different Quinceanera planner packages cost and what’s included in each price range, check out this link with its various planning options.

http://www.tiarasandtacones.com/quinceanera-planning-services/

Two Alternative Approaches

Suppose you can’t afford a professional Quinceanera planner but you know you can’t do everything yourself. Here are two ideas:

Option #1: Ask a Friend

Recruit a loyal friend—or a friend of a friend—who’s fabulous at organizing things. Put her in charge of planning and offer to either pay her a rate that’s within your budget or offer a gift or other benefit to be collected on later. A couple of suggestions for how to find this type of organized personality are to ask someone who thrives on being in charge of school dances and other big events, or someone involved in community or school theater, especially as a director.

Option #2: Recruit a Team

Gather a team of people who are willing to divide the different tasks and attend to each one personally. For instance, your dad can arrange for the church and the party venue, your mom can work with you on the giveaways and the food, and a cousin can see to the invitations and take charge of RSVPs. You can ask the individual members of your court if they’re willing to see to one small detail, and usually the girls in your court will band together for group projects like making favors and decorating the venue.

The one crucial thing to remember about using the team approach is that each person should be given a task that he or she either likes to do or is very willing to do specifically for your Quinceanera. It sometimes takes a little finesse to match the right person with the right job, but don’t be afraid to ask your family and friends directly regarding what they feel comfortable doing.

Tip: For help knowing what specific tasks go into planning a Quinceanera so that you can organize a team, check out our blog’s planning checklist.

http://qbydavinci.com/blog/your-quinceanera-day-checklist/

How to Go the Professional Quinceanera Planner Route

If budget isn’t a problem and especially if you don’t have a friend willing to take over the entire job or you really don’t feel like micromanaging a team, then hiring a professional planner is the way to go! Here are some steps to get you started in choosing, hiring, and working with a planner near you.

1. Find a planner: Either get recommendations from friends and relatives, or scout the Internet for Quinceanera planners in your area. Reading their reviews should give you a pretty good idea of their skill level and reliability. (And if there aren’t any reviews posted—look for someone else!)

Tip: Check out www.gigsalad.com/book-services. Simply enter your city or zip code, then do a search for “Event Planners.”

2. Choose the top 2-3 candidates and compare contracts: It’s best to have several options because you need to have a Quinceanera planner who can both do the job the way you desire and can comfortably fit you into the schedule. You don’t want someone who’s going to “squeeze you in.” Be sure that you interview them and ask specific questions about their services, rates, and any other fine print. When you feel completely confident about one planner, sign the contract and submit the down payment.

3. Meet to discuss preliminaries: Your first meeting or two with your Quinceanera planner may be quite lengthy because he or she will want to get as many details as possible before diving headfirst into the work.

4. Check in regularly: Once things are in motion, your planner will check in with you to give you updates from his or her end. You’ll also be asked about your progress on the things that you’re dealing with yourself such as your dress and whatever else you’ve chosen to handle personally, and whether you need any more suggestions to help you get those things done.

5. Relax, have fun, and trust: With an experienced professional, you can rest assured that everything will run smoothly! Once the details are settled and your Quinceanera planner is giving you positive progress reports, you’ll not only breathe a lot easier, but you’ll definitely relax and truly enjoy the entire planning process!

One last tip

For a fabulous general party planning checklist that you can print out for free, check out this link: https://therefurbishedlife.com/2014/02/10/party-planning-101-with-printable-checklist/