My son and his intended are getting married in Sept, in Manteo, NC.  A 'destination wedding' is the phrase, since they're both up near the VA-DC border and all festivities will take place here on the coast of NC. 

When the Wedding Planner she hired sent the contract for all of us to review, I laughed out loud and said geez that must be the biggest career joke in history.  If you can find vendors online, and you can, loads of them, couldn't you just call and interview and ask for references and hire them that way?? Over and over, the contract read like this:

Facilitate meeting with florist.
Facilitate meeting with musicians.
Facilitate...

A wedding planner doesn't actually *do* anything, just *facilitates* it all.  It became a joke between me and my friends that if title got any worse we would all become wedding planners. 

Then we went to Manteo last week to meet the planner and I learned a good lesson about judging and got a sharper vision of the long-distance title situation whether India, FL, or CA.

First we all met at the inn where the ceremony will take place.  Looking around, it was obvious the little bride should come in here and end up here..no, the wedding planner disagreed.  That's a better place to display the cake since the light will be perfect that time of evening through those windows.  The photography is brilliant and look, she had photos to back up her opinion.  Over here is a better place for the ceremony.

Ok, how about dining here, and musicians here?  Again, no.  Blocks the servers, hems in the guests.  Better to have this here and this here.  Ahh, much better, we could see it so clearly now.

Well we were thinking of using this person for this job, what did the planner think?  Hmm, well, up to us but she wouldn't recommend it since there was a nasty divorce going on with that group right now and the poor woman had cancelled several events due to stress.  Better to choose one of these three.

I could go on and on with examples but you already see the correlation. I left there with a new respect for wedding planners and an even stronger opinion on title being done by local abstractors instead of people far away who think it's a piece of cake as long as they can 'find it online'.

Wedding planners know their job.  They know all the locals and all the little details that can make or break an important event.  They've seen literally thousands of examples right there in their own counties and can not only offer suggestions but head off any potential problems by guiding you along the proper path.  Wedding planners are worth their weight in gold and probably save you just as much.

It's a shame we can't require title CEOs to plan a wedding online and then send them to Manteo to meet with our wedding planner.  The example would open their eyes in a way we haven't been able to.