You're engaged - yay! And you've started shopping around for a venue, and maybe a caterer, and you're realizing that weddings are expensive. And you just might be looking at ways to trim your budget.

You might be tempted to say, "I don't need a wedding coordinator, I can plan my own wedding and my mom and aunt and friends will help me on the wedding day!" And yes, it's very true that you can plan your own wedding, and you can enlist family and friends to help with wedding day tasks. But do you want to?

First, let's get some terminology straight.

• A wedding planner is someone that helps you throughout the planning process. He or she will help you with selecting your venue(s) and team of wedding professionals, help you with the overall design of the wedding, and keep you on track with you to-do list and budget.

• A wedding coordinator or event manager will begin working on your wedding 4-6 weeks before the big day, and will handle all the logistics. He or she will be the point person for all of your wedding professionals in the weeks leading up to the wedding, and will help you with any final details including orchestrating the rehearsal and wedding day.

• A venue coordinator is the person at your venue that oversees the venue staff, food and beverage if provided by the venue, and makes sure that the facility is set up properly.

In the North Florida area, the average cost for wedding day management (typically called "day-of coordination") ranges from $1,200 to $2,000. For our calculations, let's use $1,750 for the fee for an average wedding. You might see that the wedding coordinator's package includes 8 hours on the wedding day, 1 hour for the rehearsal the day before, and a little bit of prep work, so you assume that he or she will spend 12 hours working on your wedding. Wow! That's almost $150 per hour!

But wait!

Before we get to the hourly rate, we have to take off the fixed expenses it takes to run a business, like advertising, software, business license, insurance, credit card processing fees, etc. Plus most packages include a minimum of two wedding coordinators on-site on the wedding day, so add the cost of paying the second coordinator. Now our $1,750 has become $1,000.

For a typical wedding, a coordinator will spend the following time dedicated to one wedding:

• Initial sales process, proposal and contract preparation, onboarding tasks like setting up online tools: 5 hours

• Final detail meeting and venue walkthrough: 2 hours

• Email and phone communications with vendors leading up to the wedding day: 10 hours

• Email and phone communications with the client leading up to the wedding day: 5 hours

• Preparation of all wedding day paperwork (timeline, vendor list, etc.): 2 hours

• Travel time to and from venue walkthrough, rehearsal, and wedding: 3 hours

• Time on-site at the rehearsal and on the wedding day: 9 hours

• Post-wedding follow up with clients and vendors: 1 hour

This brings our total to 35 hours, and our hourly rate to $28.57.

When you break it down this way, it's a bargain! It's been said that a wedding coordinator is equivalent to the conductor of the orchestra. Each musician is a talented and competent professional, just like each of your wedding professionals is - but they need someone making sure they are playing the correct notes at the correct time.

Your wedding coordinator's job is to make sure that all of your vendors are in the loop when there are last-minute changes on the wedding day (which there always are), to make sure everyone including the wedding party and family members is where they need to be, and to make sure that your family and friends (and most importantly you!) can be present in the moment and not wondering what is happening behind the scenes. What is your peace of mind worth?