When I tell people that I’m a Travel and Events Planner, I get a lot of different reactions. But there’s a really good reason why a wedding planner is the perfect person to plan your trip.

Some people tell me how jealous they are, and gush that they’d love to do what I do. Others say “no way could you pay me enough for that”. Still others will say it sounds fun, but stressful (they’re not wrong).

The most common thing that all of those people follow up with is “how did you decide to do both travel AND events?”

The short answer is… I didn’t. I decided to be a wedding planner, and the rest sort of fell into place along the way.

I’ve always loved traveling. I’m the sort of person who gets restless if I go more than a month or so without leaving home for a few days. Last summer, I went to Europe for the first time. I’m not joking when I say I’d move there tomorrow if I could.

A friend on facebook caught me reminiscing about my time in England (I admit it, I still can’t shut up about it). They asked me for tips for their own upcoming getaway. I offered to help them put together a romantic itinerary, and it hit me – I could work as a travel agent, booking honeymoons for my brides!

I joined a host travel agency, and the rest is history. It wasn’t until after I started booking trips (everything from girls’ trips to LA to honeymoons in Greece!) that I started realizing the connection. There are SO MANY similarities between planning for travel versus a wedding or other event.

It doesn’t matter which one you’re planning – you’ll be up to your ears in research.

You research everything when you plan a wedding. I need to know all the nitty-gritty details: what time the sunsets, how many reviews that photographer has, how much square footage the band is going to take up, etc.

It’s exactly the same with travel. Does this hotel have good reviews? How far is that metro stop from the restaurant? Do we need to change busses to get where we’re going? Which supplier offers direct flights?

Researching everything to death is part of the gig – and I truly enjoy it. Give me a glass of wine and a good google search, and I can kill the better part of an evening finding you the perfect vendor.

After the research, you’ll need to get the timeline figured out.

Building a travel itinerary is exactly like establishing a wedding day timeline. The timeline/itinerary is the cornerstone to any successful occasion. No pressure.

Keeping all the timing details straight is so important. Sure, you need to know who is supposed to be where, and when. But you also need to be positive that everything you’ve researched and booked can happen in the limited amount of time you have to work with.

Even if you don’t refer much to the itinerary while you’re in the moment, it’s important to plan it out ahead of time to be sure everything works. If you don’t do this beforehand, you may end up in a bind, wondering how you’re going to make ten different things happen in a span of five minutes. No one wants that.

When things don’t go as planned, anxious travelers are about as easy to handle as an emotional bride.

Let’s be honest. No one functions well after a bumpy overnight flight to a different time zone, while living off of airport food. It’s not possible to land on the other side and feel human. No one is at their best when their flight gets cancelled at 11pm.

Or when the only bus of the day doesn’t stop for them, and they have to walk 4 miles through rural England to their AirBnB (ask me how I know what that feels like).

 

We can be honest about emotional bridal clients too. Truthfully, I don’t come across bridezillas often – it’s usually the moms that need a bit of extra TLC. Nonetheless, emotions are high, and tempers flare, and things get said that you wish you could take back.

Both wedding planners and travel agents will have to handle high emotions at some point. It’s a part of the job description.

But being able to convince people that you’ve got them covered when their plans have gone out the window? Turning a full blown anxiety attack into a smiling face with nothing but a calm, can-do attitude? That’s a skill, honed and perfected. *insert flex emoji here*

Truthfully, a wedding planner and a travel agent do the same job.

But a wedding planner has one large event in one place (or maybe two), while a travel agent has several smaller events taking place in a bunch of locations. The biggest benefit to brides is that one person can handle EVERYTHING wedding related – proposal, engagement party, rehearsal dinner, wedding, farewell brunch, and honeymoon details!

Either way, they are there FOR YOU, and their goal to help you create the best experience possible.

Would you prefer to have your wedding and honeymoon planned by the same person? Why or why not?