Ok. Today's post. Just whoa. Awesome whoa. For a very long time I've been a very big proponent of the fact that You Can't Be In Charge On Your Wedding Day. Maybe it's because I started out as an event manager, but I'm very aware that managing an event is a job, and getting married is an experience, and you can't have both at the same exact second. Now, that doesn't mean you have to hire someone to help you out ( you don't), but you have to get someone to help you out, and sometimes hiring is the way to go. And there is this other problem: sometimes you want someone to help you with wedding planning itself. Because, you know, you have a job, and you're not actually that good at organizing things in the first place. And help. But then the problem comes: finding a wedding planner who's not bat-sh*t (and is affordable). Which is tricky. Which is where today's post comes in. By which I mean to say, I could not be more delighted to introduce Ang Jandak, the powerhouse behind Lowbrow Events.
Ang is also community manager of the Offbeat Bride Tribe, which means you know she's good people. Plus? I really, really like her. She is not even a little crazy. Ang's company is Lowbrow Events, a virtual/remote wedding planning service, aimed more at DIY brides who need someone to talk logistics with, brainstorm, occasionally vent with. The service comes with a log in for the Lowbrow site, so you have a wedding related email that you can give out to vendors instead of opening up your personal account to spam, as well as a series of spreadsheets and documents to keep track of all the wedding-ness. Ang describes what she does this way:
You want to know what supplies are left on your DIY list? BAM! Heard a song on a commercial and want it at your wedding? Send me an email, not only will I find it, but I will update your wedding playlist sheet, and include a link to the MP3 if you want to buy it. By the time the big day comes around, you will have a somewhat anal retentive, but completely idiot proof schedule/checklist/detail set of documents that you could hand to a wandering vagrant, and as long as they follow it, your wedding will go off without a hitch.
Which leaves me to wonder if she has a monthly rate for organizing one's life, but I digress.
Lowbrow Events offers several services:
- The Booty Call - For $250 (Marked down to $110 for APW couples, holy what!), you get two hours of phone consultations (in one session or two), and a log-in for Lowbrow Events, with scads of wedding planning documents and a personal wedding email adress. Or! As an APW couple, you can start with two hours of phone consultations for $75. Bam.
- Remote Wedding Coordinator - You can hire Ang to be your everything, up to the day of, for $1,500. And may I just emphasize, even on a small budget, this might be the best money you ever spend. Serve cheaper wine and save your sanity.
- Day-Of-Coordination - starting at $700 in the Massachusetts area, with reasonable travel fees everywhere else. So New York City ladies? You are SO SET.
- The Something Else Package - Yeah. Are these packages not working for you? Contact Ang. She's not all about the rules. She'll work something out with you.
Just in case you didn't believe me about Ang being super awesome, and totally who you want to work with, she told me this:
I want to work with APW couples because their heads are in the right place. It hurts me to see couples setting themselves up for failure, of having this expectation of this ginormous epic day, with little to no thought of the marriage that follows. In what universe do you plan to launch an enterprise and focus all your time and energy on the launch party without giving a thought to actually running the enterprise and making it successful? With APW couples there's no un-brainwashing, they WANT a wedding to strengthen and celebrate their relationship, they have the right priorities and it makes them a joy to work with.
My big philosophy is, "A wedding is a party. A marriage is forever and as such, the greater part of your focus should be in preparation for the forever thing." Good God, you have found someone who loves you, who wants to spend the rest of their life with you! Who wants their names next to yours on ancestry.com for the next thousand years. Who wants to make sure that their identity is tangled up with yours forever. All the place settings and flower arrangements in the universe pale in comparison to that.
And beyond all the philosophy stuff, which is key to working together, there is the Ang-has-mad-skill stuff. She has a background in everything from venues, to offbeat weddings, to budgeting and spreadsheets, to customer service. She's going to take your wedding and kick it into shape, leaving you time to stop crying in the corner, shake it out, and go to the beach. But the thing that sold me on Lowbrow Events more than anything else? It might just be this testimonial from our very own APW-er Tanya:
Would this be an inappropriate time to tell everyone how much I love Ang? I think that woman needs to get a job as a mind reader, and get paid a f***ton of money for it, like as a consultant for wayward companies that are too incompetent to figure out what they want out of meetings. She just walks up to the CEO, reads his/her mind, and comes up with a mission statement. Come to think of it, I think every CEO should have one. Anyway, Ang rocks in that apparently you can send her long paragraphs of disorganized wedding-related vomit, and she can figure out the exact right two sentences to summarize it into something coherent. It's like a super power. All Hail Ang.
So ladies. If you are needing some wedding organization, even if you're not sure how much you need yet, email Ang. She'll help you figure it out. And with the $75 APW rate for two hours of consultation with an organizational goddess? Yeah. You pretty much can't go wrong, by which I mean it will go so, so right.
PS Also, you really want to check out her Wedding Guidance Counselor jam, which is a series of e-courses and workbooks taking life skills and applying them to wedding planning. It's a kick-*ass series with information on conflict resolution, budgeting, negotiating, and goal setting. Yum.
YAY! We found Ang on APW, and are working with her for our wedding in a few months. Let me tell you, folks, she is awesome and so earth-shatteringly sane it made me want to cry. Seriously- do yourself a favor and talk to her!
March 22, 2011 9:40 am
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Aww, I am so excited to work with you guys!
March 22, 2011 3:14 pm
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Oh wow, the timing on this could not have been better. I have all the big pieces in place, but I really need help with figuring our logistics.
March 22, 2011 11:52 am
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Omg. Every time I need something for the wedding, APW posts about it the next day. WHAT ARE YOU, MIND READERS?!?
March 22, 2011 11:52 am
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Yes.
March 22, 2011 12:06 pm
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I’ve told every person who will listen to me that a good Day of Coordinator is worth their weight in gold. Seriously. Finding one who isn’t horrified when you don’t have a “theme” for your wedding is another story entirely…
Ang sounds awesome, and sane, and with reasonable prices to boot!
March 22, 2011 12:08 pm
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I feel like I should add that when my official DOC backed out 2 weeks before my wedding, Ang totally kicked ass for me– last minute emergency style.
March 22, 2011 12:39 pm
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Ang is seriously awesome. I know her from Offbeat Bride Tribe and the woman has mad skillz. She really does care about the people she works with and is honestly invested in not just the wedding day but in the relationship behind it. She’s easy to talk to and you can bet your stuff will be in good hands.
March 22, 2011 1:30 pm
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I wanna know who does her art, because I’m kind of in love with it.
March 22, 2011 2:44 pm
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I commissioned a metric s*** ton of my favorite artists to do some work, so there’s a whole bunch of different art on there. Here’s the list of what’s showcased here, email me if you want to know prices, how they were to work with, etc:
Logo – http://leighyoung.com/
Undercover Punk – http://s-harkey.deviantart.com/
Rockabilly – http://nojitsu.deviantart.com/ *WARNING* Bare boobies on her front page
There’s more on the website too, but Meg has picked some of my faves.
March 22, 2011 3:10 pm
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YES! Thank you! I’ll definitely check them out and contact you if I want to scoop on them. You’re the best!
March 25, 2011 7:39 am
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I love Ang’s view on weddings! And I adore the artwork!!!
March 22, 2011 6:27 pm
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Ok any tips on how to convince my FH that we need Ang? There’s a year until the wedding and I’m clueless on what all else I need to do without going crazy. He doesn’t see how it will help to hire someone who doesn’t even live nearby.
March 23, 2011 9:14 am
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I’d suggest you sign up for the two hour consult ($75? Super affordable for what you’re getting). Maybe that ends up being all you need, maybe that helps you both figure out that you need more. But at the very least, that will probably lay out all the stuff you need to take care of, at which point he’ll be like, “I’ve got this! We’ve got this!” or he’ll be like, “Whoa. This is a lot of work.” Either way you’ll figure it out.
Put it to him this way: when you don’t know what you don’t know, sometimes you want to find out what you don’t know… and not the hard way. (You can give me credit for that sentence structure.)
March 23, 2011 10:10 am
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We just had a call with Ang and when she asked us what some of our concerns were, my fiance said “I’m worried about Jen taking on too much for the wedding day.” (HOLY CRAP, I AM MARRYING THE RIGHT DUDE.)
So I second the notion that just having you guys in a conversation about all that there is to do and who is going to do it, prompted by Ang, might be all he needs!
March 31, 2011 8:54 am
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