In Food and Wine, Weddings

We think Benjamin Franklin said it best when he said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” For that reason, we at Markovina pride ourselves on taking preparation seriously – it is after all, a huge part of our business and thankfully, is something that the brides and grooms we cater to understand.

Weddings can be logistical nightmares, wound up with additional family and emotional based tensions. While there is a degree of preparation our brides and grooms can do to prepare themselves for the emotion of the day, it is more the logistical part of bookings, placement, ceremony and reception that we are most equipped to help them with.

Wedding planner specialists say its all in the preparation

In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin and our approach to preparation, we have compiled a pre-booking Wedding Planning Guide question list.

We find this list very helpful in terms of getting a fuller understanding of a couples’ needs without digging too deeply and causing them any burden of an added workload, There is no need for seeking minor details on all aspects of the wedding, like asking for colour scheme or playlists.

For us, our list is more a question of asking “what do you want us to do?”

And when dealing with multiple requests and to-do lists, it tends to be somewhat refreshing for brides and grooms to hear the words “how can we help you make this day special and as burden free as possible?”

Wedding planner specialists say its all in the preparation

If you are in the preparation stage of your wedding, here is a look at our “wedding planning preparation”. We hope it will help you to work through your options and may bring up aspects you hadn’t yet considered.

– What time would you like the ceremony start time, please take into consideration the daylight hours. Click here to find out when the sun sets here in Auckland.

– Which location in our grounds would you like to hold your ceremony (if onsite). Markovina has five outdoor ceremony options to choose from as well as an indoor option.

– Would you like to extend your wedding day beyond our standard seven hour stay package?

– What time would your guests enter the reception area inside?

– Would you like to have speeches before or after dinner, or both before and after?

– What time would you like dinner?

– Would you like a buffet or platter meal option? Or perhaps plated.

– Are you having a wedding cake, if yes when in the day would you like to cut the cake?

– Are you having a first dance?

– Are you having any other kind or performances during the reception?

– Would you like to have our white drapes?

– Would you like to have chair covers?

– Would you like to hire our starlight dance floor or digital photo booth and props?

At Markovina we go over these questions and more at pre-set wedding planning meetings with our prospective brides and grooms. We tell them all, don’t worry if you’re not sure where to start, we are here to help and after all this is what a planning meeting is for.

Planning meetings take between 30-60 minutes and during this time we cover all aspects of the day and ensure we go through any questions and queries.

We often find it useful to direct the brides and grooms to our FAQ page, it’s a wealth of information and an excellent planning resource.

Wedding planner specialists say its all in the preparation

Planning is a huge part of what we do, it is however a two-way process and we need our couple’s input for the process to work and for each and every wedding to go off without a hitch (pun intended).

As venue hosts we prepare for every event and have contingency plans for power outages, acts of god, crazy weather patterns and much more.

We live by the motto of ‘fail to prepare and prepare to fail’.

Combine this with years of experience in hosting weddings, and Markovina are the wedding hosts you can feel confident will deliver you the perfect wedding day, exactly as you have prepared and designed it.

For a unique testimonial on Markovina’s preparation skills in play, have a read of this blog post where Cyclone Lusi is no match for skilled venue staff.

For an equal level of dedication applied to your wedding, get in touch w

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