Every once in a while another local blog will get my bargain flag waving. It happened most recently when I read a post by wedding planner Danielle Odil standing up for the worth of her work.

Odil is the owner and lead consultant of Something Classic Events, which offers a range of packages for wedding planning. Even though I’m a penny-pinching bride (who admittedly had never considered hiring a wedding planner), I also believe it’s important to pay people what they are worth, rather than inconsiderately latching onto the best deals.

I recently caught up with Odil and asked her to give us three reasons why wedding planners are worth the pricetag:

1. Wedding Planners Can Save You Dough (and Time). Odil starts by saying that a wedding is one of the major purchases of your life. Even on my small budget, I can’t think of many occasions when I’d throw around $5,000-$7,000 on anything except, say, a car.

“It takes a lot of time to plan a wedding (some estimates are 250 hours), and if you have a full-time job on top of that, you will be running around like crazy,” says Odil.  “This is her [the wedding planner’s] job: to plan your wedding and help you in any way possible.  She can assist you with your budget and tell you where you need to cut things.  She is up-to-date on costs and going rates and can tell you if you may be overpaying a vendor.”

2. You’re No Longer the Taskmaster. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, one of the most daunting parts about wedding planning is organization.

“A wedding planner is able to put together a comprehensive timeline for all other vendors,” Odil says. Planners also coordinate each element of your actual day, knowing “what the order of your processional is, where your favor is placed, where the table names go, and what your centerpieces look like, among many other details. She will make sure it is executed how you want it to be. If she wasn’t there, who would do it?”

3. Want to Enjoy Your Own Party? Having planned more than a few events myself, I know the happiest moments for the organizer sometimes come when the party is finally over and you can kick up your feet and breathe a sigh of relief. But I’m hoping that won’t be the case on my wedding day.

“You have given your planner all the details for your wedding day, and all she has to do is execute. She will take care of the setup and tear down of your wedding,” Odil explains. “Even though we plan as much as we can, sometimes there are small things that come up during the day—unexpected issues. If you hire a wedding planner, you may never even know anything out of the ordinary happened.”