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Vendor coordination checklist
Not a list of things to buy. A list of the points where two vendors have to agree with each other — and the week each one has to be settled by.
Large — 120 to 250 guests
Twelve to fifteen vendors, a room flip that has to be staffed rather than improvised, and guest transport that turns the timeline into somebody's job rather than a document. This is the shape of wedding the whole coordination problem is named after.
Typically on the day — 14 trades
Venue · Planner or coordinator · Photographer · Videographer · Florist · Rentals · Caterer · Band or live music · DJ · Hair and makeup · Officiant · Cake and desserts · Transport · Stationery
New at this size: Rentals, Band or live music, Transport.
15 things to settle, in order
As soon as the venue is booked
Get venue access and finish times in writing
Not the rental window — the time the first vendor may be in the building and the time the music has to stop. Every load-in on your timeline is counted back from the first, and every send-off from the second. Venues quote both from memory and remember them differently in June.
As soon as the venue is booked
Ask who is allowed to use which door
Historic properties and hotels frequently route vendors through one service entrance with a lift booking attached. A florist with eight-foot arrangements and a caterer with hot boxes cannot share a fifteen-minute window, and both were told it was fine.
Eight weeks out
Agree one timeline, and say who owns it
Not who wrote it — who changes it. A day with two people editing a timeline has two timelines by the Wednesday before, and the vendor working from the older one is usually the one nobody thought to re-send it to.
Six weeks out
Confirm the certificate of insurance for every vendor
Most venues require a COI naming them as additionally insured, and most vendors send one that names the wrong entity. It takes an insurer three to five working days to reissue, which is fine six weeks out and a crisis on the Thursday.
Four weeks out
Settle the room flip: who, how long, and where the chairs go
One venue and one room means somebody strikes the ceremony and sets the reception in under an hour, in front of guests. Caterer, venue and rentals each assume one of the others has it. Name the crew and the storage space in writing.
Four weeks out
Give the photographer the family formals list
Written, in shooting order, with a person named to call the groups. This block overruns on nearly every wedding, and it overruns because the list is being assembled in the room rather than read from a page.
Three weeks out
Confirm meal counts, dietaries and vendor meals
Vendor meals are the ones that get missed, and a photographer eating at the same time as the couple is a photographer not photographing dinner. Agree the count and the time, not just the count.
Two weeks out
Match the music list to the timeline, moment by moment
Processional, recessional, entrance, first dance, parent dances, cake, last dance. The DJ or band needs each one against a time, and the photographer needs the same list so nobody is reloading during the first dance.
Two weeks out
Book guest transport against the real end time
Coaches are scheduled against the time the event ends and guests leave against the time the music stops, which are rarely the same. Getting this wrong strands two hundred people or pays for an idle coach for an hour.
Ten days out
Send the timeline to every vendor and ask for a reply
A timeline nobody has acknowledged is a timeline you are guessing about. Ask each vendor to confirm their own arrival time back to you in writing — the ones who cannot are the ones to call.
One week out
Circulate the contact sheet
Every vendor, the name of the person actually working the day, and a mobile number. The day-of coordinator is often not the planner who booked the job, and load-in is a bad time to meet somebody for the first time.
One week out
Write the rain call: who decides, by when, and where it moves to
An outdoor ceremony needs a named decision-maker and a named time — 'we'll see how it looks' is not a plan, because the flip takes ninety minutes and the decision gets made in forty.
Three days out
Confirm the load-in schedule with the venue, in order
Read it back to them as a list of times and trades. This is the moment a venue says 'oh, there's an event that morning' — which is recoverable on the Wednesday and is not on the Saturday.
Two days out
Reconfirm deliveries that arrive without a person
Cake, rentals, signage and flowers frequently arrive with a driver who leaves. Somebody has to be there to receive them, and somebody has to know where they go.
On the day
One phone number for changes, and everybody knows it
When the ceremony slips twenty minutes, eleven people need to know in one message rather than in eleven. Whoever owns the timeline owns that message.
Save this and share it with your vendors
This page is the whole checklist and the address bar holds your answer, so you can bookmark it or send the link on. What a link cannot do is record which of these fifteen has actually been answered, by whom, and show the other eleven vendors the same list.
That is what Runsheet does. Inviting the other vendors on a wedding is free and always will be — they do not need an account to see the wedding you invited them to.
What this assumes
- Every line is a point where two vendors have to agree with each other. Anything that is one vendor's own admin — their contract, their insurance renewal, their second shooter — is deliberately not here, because it is not where a wedding day breaks.
- The dates are counted back from the wedding and are the latest sensible moment, not the earliest. A certificate of insurance takes an insurer three to five working days to reissue, which is why it sits at six weeks rather than at two.
- The vendor list at each size is what is typically on the day. A wedding with no band, no video and a friend officiating is a real wedding and simply has fewer lines.