PLANNING WITH THE WEDDING PLANNER
Mel Tasker, found of Wedding Taskers, chats wedding planning nuisances ...The fact that you’re looking through this magazine right now probably means that you’re either planning your wedding already, about to plan your wedding or are very close to someone who is. You probably have mixed feelings about the process. On the one hand, you’re probably quite excited about making this day special with your partner. On the other hand, you might be feeling stressed with all the decisions and pressures. Join Western Australia Wedding & Bride’s Belinda Coleman as she discusses the nuisances of wedding planning with Mel Tasker, founder of Wedding Taskers.
Wedding Taskers was formed after Tasker herself got married and realised just how stressful it all was. It wasn’t that she and her partner didn’t want to plan the wedding – they were both keen to be involved in the planning side – but the constant pressure of trying to make everyone happy and making so many decisions in general made the experience more stressful and less enjoyable than they would have liked. This experience led Tasker to realise that she didn’t want a wedding planner to plan everything for her, instead she wanted a wedding planner to be “someone calm and experienced to walk beside” her in her planning journey. And that’s exactly what she’s done with Wedding Taskers. Tasker explains that her “role isn’t about planning a wedding for couples, but about walking beside them as they navigate the journey together.” Beyond her own wedding, Tasker adds that her experiences of weddings played a large part in her desire to start this wedding planning business.
“I had the honour of being a bridesmaid eight times for close friends. I saw so many different weddings up close, the beautiful moments, the stressful moments, and the little things that truly mattered in the end.”
Image courtesy of Johansson Photography
Written by Belinda Coleman
BRINGING METHOD TO THE MADNESS
Wedding Taskers offers a whole suite of different services. Not only does she provide supportive, caring wedding planning and advice, but Tasker has also created the Wedding Taskers Wedding Planner and a Self-Care Journal. The heart of the service offered by Wedding Taskers is helping couples feel calm, supported and confident to plan this meaningful life event together. Tasker aims to bring wedding planning back to a joyful celebration of the things that matter most by making the extras less stressful.
She adds that “both the planner and journal are proudly Perth-created and women-made, something that was very important to me from the beginning.”
THE ‘I DON’T’ IN THE ‘I DO’
The wedding is all about saying ‘I do’ to the person you love and starting a life of ‘I do’ with them. But often in the planning ‘I do’ is the wrong approach. So many couples get bombarded with well-meaning advice, expectations and excitement from friends and family all around them. Tasker has noticed that as this happens, the couple can get so stressed about trying to keep everyone else happy and they end up absorbing worries and pressures that just make the planning so much more complicated than it needed to be. Tasker also points out that when couples try to please everyone, they ultimately have more stress and anxiety in their own relationship. Sometimes they best way to start on your journey of ‘I do’ is to learn when to say ‘I don’t’ to the people around you. In the weddings under her care, Tasker helps her couples to remove this pressure.
“It becomes less about managing numbers and more about making the thoughtful decisions together about the kind of celebration they want to make” she says.
TIPS & TRICKS
Tasker has a few general areas of advice picked up over her experience in the wedding industry …
Don’t carry the financial pressure alone
Many times, Tasker notices that one person is taking most of the stress of managing budget and trying to keep the wedding within price range. “When couples approach these conversations together it becomes a lot less stressful,” Tasker adds.
This is not ‘Her day’ it’s ‘Their day’
Often weddings are seen as the bride’s day, but it’s so much more special when approached as the celebration of two people and the life they are building side by side. Tasker advises that “when both partners feel included and heard in the process, the wedding naturally becomes more meaningful, balanced and reflective of who they are as a couple.”
The quiet responsibilities are there too
Often people think of wedding planning as the flowers and the venue choices, what they often don’t realise until they start planning, are the several emotional and practical tasks that can take far more energy than first expected. Protecting time and balance in your relationship through this is very important.
When the wedding rolls around, there is often a calm experienced by the couple as all the little worries fade away. Afterwards, the planning tends to fade away, leaving the feelings, love and connection of the day, as well as the joy of stepping into the next chapter of your life together.