I'm a take-charge kind of girl, so a few of my friends expressed surprise when I told them we've hired a wedding coordinator. It's possible I'll look back on this experience in a year or so and think, "Yeah, I could have done that myself." But as of right now, I'm pretty sure we've made the right decision.

I spent years as an administrator at an East Coast summer camp, and I still go to Massachusetts for 10 days every summer to coordinate special events at a volunteer-run camp in the Berkshires, so I've got plenty of event-planning experience under my belt. But there are some pretty significant differences between planning Gold Rush or Olympics or MTV Night for 300 kids and planning a wedding for 300 guests:

-- Resources. At camp, we had milk crates full of spray-painted rocks for Gold Rush, plywood booths for Carnival, and set after set of premade letter tiles for the Alphabet Game. What we didn't have on hand we could easily order since we knew exactly what we needed and where to get it. If I were in the habit of routinely planning weddings in Anchorage, I'd probably have a go-to caterer, florist, bartender, dressmaker, rentals company, etc., but I don't, and sifting through the possibilities has seemed overwhelming since the beginning. Our wedding planners are helping us narrow the field by offering recommendations and doing some of the legwork, like calling caterers for quotes.

-- Time. Unlike camp, where planning events was part of my job, my wedding is an extracurricular activity. I'm fortunate that my job has some flexibility that allows me to leave for an hour in the afternoon to tour a venue or meet with a vendor, but there are limits to what I can accomplish in the course of a day. It's been really great to have someone who has the time to make phone calls and collect some of the information for us to review at our convenience.

-- Logistical knowhow. With some help, I can get 300 kids seated, quiet and engaged. (Or at least, like, 290 of the 300. You almost never get all 300 to listen at the same time.) But there's no way I'm going to manage the movement of our wedding guests from arrival to ceremony to cocktail hour to reception -- nor do I want to pin that responsibility on any of my friends or relatives. That day-of coordination will fall to our planners, who will make sure our vendors show up on time, our reception is set up properly, and our guests know where to go. (And who are at far less risk of bursting into emotional tears than I -- or my mother -- will be.)

-- Experience. At this point in my life, I could plan MTV Night in my sleep with both hands tied behind my back. I'm sure if I planned a few weddings, I'd start to hit my stride and get pretty good at it, but I'm really only planning on having the one. (You hear that, Seth? This is for keeps.) I like the idea of working with someone who can offer me some hard-won advice based on personal experience.

I'm not kidding myself into thinking a wedding planner is a necessity. I realize it's a luxury. If we had to, we could plan our wedding on our own, and it would probably work out just fine in the end. In fact, we weren't sure we wanted to work with a coordinator, but we went ahead and scheduled a meeting a few weeks ago based on the recommendation of a friend who hired the Designing Divas as day-of coordinators for her wedding last summer and said it was "the best money (she) spent."

When we walked out of that first test-the-waters meeting with Connie and Andrea, Seth turned to me and said "OK, we're at least going to hire them to do day-of coordination, right?" It was the first time since we started planning the wedding that we'd been really relaxed. For the first time, we didn't feel like we were working without a net.