[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: This is the EMG podcast.
All right. Welcome back to another episode of the EMG Podcast. I'm Michael Softball. This is my partner, Michael Carleo.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Yes, we are back.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: We are back today talking about what you should be doing if you are about six months out from your wedding.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: We are getting close.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Yeah. This is getting down to crunch time
[00:00:29] Speaker A: and this is the point of panic, I think. Right?
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Well, no, after you listen to this episode. No, we're providing.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: What are we providing? Just comfort.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Comfort and brevity.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Reassurance.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Yes. And it's giving relaxation. So this is what we're going to do today. We're going to give you your top five things that you need to be doing right now, six months out from your wedding. We are not going to delay. Mike, what is number one?
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Number one, you actually want to start finalizing and contracting all of your vendor partners. So. So the big ones, right, that should have happened around 12 to 18 months out were like obviously your venue, entertainment, photography, videography, those big ones, florists, that type of stuff. But you really want to start getting in the nitty gritty of other things like transportation, some rentals, and then we'll go into some of the things, particularly for entertainment. But those small, I don't want to say smaller venues, but smaller detailed. Not venues, vendors. Smaller detailed vendors.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Well, and they could be vendors that start to come into the realm of possibility once your budget opens up. Correct. So let's say that you sat down 12 to 18 months out, you dig your big budget. You earmarked this for this, this for that, and then you realize, oh, we've got a few extra shekels here that we want to. We want to invest in not the smaller but the ancillary things. So like content creators, cigar rollers, the people that paint the live portraits.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Any sort of like experiential vend that you might want to add on this is. Becomes the timeframe to book those.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: So let's, let's talk about. We're going to take a little pause here because one of the great things that we offer our clients because if you're listening to this, you're most likely signed with us, which is great.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: If you're not, you're not going to have access to this. So is our, is our, is our client area. Right. The client area for us was a thing that we wanted to bring to our clients that really brought more of an experiential things, either wedding or wedding adjacent. And you can talk about those and go to A little more detail.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So there are, you know, the big ones there. We have a photo partner, a video partner.
What Mike's talking about, wedding adjacent, are things that not don't necessarily happen on your wedding day. Like, for example, a travel agent, right. That specializes in honeymoon travel. So it's adjacent and that's a really great service. But another one that's on there and this leads to sort of what you should be doing. Point number two, when you're six months out, we do have a beauty partner, right? So we have Sabrina at Sabrina's Beauty Works.
Six months out is the time that you should start locking in your day of.
You called it the glam team. I think that that's good. But like hair, makeup, anything that is tied to, like day of services. This six to eight month out mark is, is really the sweet spot for booking those.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: It's also a tire base too, right? At this point, you should be locking in your wedding dress. That six month actually is a pretty good lead time. It's also important, especially if you are renting a tux or a suit or buying one, because you actually ran into this. Now it may not be the same anymore because of the way that supplying supply chains work now, but because Mike, when you got married in the middle of COVID or at the end of COVID 19 was fabrics, right? And making sure that they have fabrics and especially for a larger wedding party, right.
We both got custom suits. Mike got a really, really better one than we did.
And because you know, you have two years on your belt, you know, more, more things. But when you're ordering these types of things, you need a lead time, right? That what a lead time is, is how long it's going to take for that stuff to come in. So, so that it's fitted, it feels good, you like it, there's any sort of tweaks you need to make. So definitely lock in the attire, whether it's your wedding dress or suit or tuxedo. And then also the glam team. That's really, really important.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Mike, number three, where are we going?
[00:04:04] Speaker A: So number three, I think we're going. Oh, yeah. To the. To guest communication. Right. This is important because at this point in time, if not a little bit before those save the dates should have gone out, right. You usually want to try to do that between six and eight months out and to let people know that, hey, we're having a wedding this day.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: The invitations haven't gotten officially because those go out around three months.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah, three or four months.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Three, four, Months out again, because like we said in the last episode, we think in years, most people think in.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: If somebody hits me up in like in three months, I'm having a wedding. I'm not saying until November of next year.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: I'm like freaking out.
Probably have something booked that day. Yeah, you really want to get those out because that's what's going to help you finalize your room blocks. That's really important.
We mentioned this before, the complimentary versus the guaranteed. It's really important to do that. You can obviously then start updating all of your wedding website stuff, your details in there. Because now these websites are giving like a whole itinerary in one swoop with your, with your, your finger on your phone. Like, it's really, really easy to read.
So those are really important to start finalizing as well.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: All right, the next point. This is very important. You want to start building out your detailed timeline of the day.
And that means that's the keyword.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Detail timeline.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah, Correct. And that doesn' mean like, oh yeah, we're gonna go to the church or be at the venue at 2 o' clock and then cocktails at 5. You really wanna start to think about the. You wake up and what happens.
I work in the industry, so I know I'm a bit of an anomaly, but I, that was one of the first things I did. I actually didn't wait until six months out as I started booking vendors and I was talking to photos saying, okay, like typically what time do you get there? Oh, we get there four hours before. So I'd mark that in like a Google Doc. And by the time that you're six months out, it all was coming into life. Right. Like you have to be at the venue here, hair and makeup here, you know, pick up the suit there, do whatever it is that you need to do all the way through your actual like reception timeline. Yeah, right. Very, very important.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And in that you'll start really finalizing services with us as well. You should start thinking about if you haven't added on ceremony and or cocktail hour, this is the time to do it. If you haven't added in those extras. The way that our event design team works in our consultations, we, we always recommend for our clients to start out with the foundation first, think about the extras later. And the reason is because now that you're starting to finalize all of your vendor partners, you now have all of your money. More like it's better allocated towards the entire aggregate budget. So like Mike said before, if you have some Extra money. You could start putting some things into the photo booths. The lighting.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: The extra musicians, what we love the most, the hybrid. Right. Those are all things that you need to start thinking about as well, because that's ultimately what's going to affect what the experience is going to be at the end of the night.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Tip of the week.
Tip of the week for EMG clients. Six months is also a sweet spot if you're going to add those things that we typically still have, for the most part, availability of them on your date. Yeah, we see availability, service item availability, like lighting, photo booths. Those start to run out the closer you get. Typically about two to three months out.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: We're.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: We're out.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: So if you want to get a jump on some of those things six months out, you still, for the most part, should have good elbow room to do so with us.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Yep, yep. And so that I think is super important and which leads to our last. Our fifth point is really refining what the guest experience vision is going to be. And so what I mean by that is, is like you want to think again beyond decor. Right. I mean, everybody knows what the flowers are going to look like by that time. But what energy are you trying to bring that ultimately affects what you'll be putting in the planning app with us, right? Yeah, that's super important because that's the cadence of the day. The flow of the day is really important to really navigate through and it ultimately affects how the party is going to run. I think that's important.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: What I'm about to say, I hope, is taken with a grain of salt. One of our venue partners. I was just with Raul from the Grove. He said something that made a lot of sense to me. Every event really is like a show or it's like a production. And I don't mean that like you've got to be showy, but I mean, you've got to think about it in the. The way that you would like a movie. Like an event should have a first act, a second act and a third act. You should think about how is the day developing if it's just like, oh, yeah, we show up and we drink and we party. There's no moments, there's no cadence to it. Memorable events have a memorable flow, an arc and flow, whether that be the way that the music compliments it as a soundtrack, whether it means the moments that are happening. So when you're working on your detailed timeline six months out, or you're thinking about those guest experiential things like lighting or Cigar roller. You know, you want to think about how that develops throughout the course of the evening.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
The way that lighting can affect an event space is so great and also could be so bad if you don't do it correctly. Right. And. Or if you don't do anything at all.
The way that our music is going to kind of shape the first half of the night into the second half of the night can ultimately affect how the party's going to be. Right. And so you need to start thinking about things now because at the next meeting that's going to happen around two months out, which is what we're going to speak about in a little bit, it ultimately will affect the final product. One of the things I wanted to end with, with one of the points that we made before is now that it's leaving my. Leaving my head is you need to make sure that the run of show. Right. That you were talking about before is just planned. Right. Just like how you were planning your budget. Right. And you don't really want to go into it ad hoc, lean on us as the experts, but have. The more you put into it, the more you're going to get out of it. And. And what I mean by that is the more individualistic it's going to be for you, because that's really what you deserve. You deserve your stamp on your wedding. So when people leave it, they know that was a reflection of you too.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: I want to make something very clear. Minute by minute timelines do not work.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: They do not.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: We see them, we laugh.
When I say make a timeline again, you have to have some flexibility within that. Right. 5 to 10, 15 minute sort of buffer times. But the more organized you are going in, the better design the day will be and the better flow you'll have. It's not all going to go according to the minute, but it's certainly something that you're definitely going to want.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's wrap this up with all five points.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Right. Okay. So number one, you want to finalize your. All of your auxiliary, I'll call them auxiliary or supplemental vendors.
You want to launch your guest communication.
You want to lock in your attire and your day of glam team. You want to build out sort of your guest experience and start thinking about that. And now I don't remember what the fifth one was.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Well, it was the detailed timeline first, then the guests, the one we've been
[00:10:35] Speaker B: talking about throughout this entire detailed timeline.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Again, not just like, all right, we have ceremony, cocktail, reception. It's like, okay, what happens beforehand that type of thing and then what goes into those things.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: So, speaking of timeline, this now wraps up what you should be doing six months out. The next episode that will be coming out here in about three months is when you are two to three months out, what happens there, and we'll see you back for that episode here on the EMG podcast.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: See you later.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Bye.
You can find
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[00:11:06] Speaker A: at Elegant Music Group.
