Brides and grooms (mostly brides) spend hours and hours of planning and coordinating their wedding days. Many of those hours are spent making sure you are who she ultimately wants on her “dream team.”

Phone calls, e-mails, text messages, reading testimonials and reviews — you name it. Through communication, she’s bit by bit putting together the most important day of her life.

Like many couples, we even had a timeline we shared with our bridal party to communicate with them what was going to happen when.

Timing is everything. Coordination is everything.

I may be preaching to the choir here since I’m sure you’ve been in the wedding business for a long time, but sometimes it’s good to have a refresher.

You understand how important communication is. Communicating is your livelihood.

But I want to ask you, sincerely, are you really communicating and doing it well?

Lack of communication is the one thing that could seriously damage your client relationship. It’s also one of the top ten things couples hate about wedding pros.

As a bride who was all about the planning, I agree. Here are three communicating tips I have for you.

1) Not coordinating your timing with the bride.

Just as much as you need to know her timeline, she needs to know yours.

Three to four weeks out, tell her when you will be arriving. This has a chain reaction and can affect the rest of her day.

For example, I started with my hair salon. I told them what time the ceremony was, and they told me, by working backwards, what time I needed to be there and how long I could expect my visit to be.

From there, I spoke to my photographer and told him what time we’d be back at the house for him to come, but long before that conversation, he told me how long pictures usually take and helped us weed down our location shoot.

Then the florist and limo company needed to be told what time to arrive.

If you know you are going to be your bride’s first vendor of the day, make sure you communicate with her constantly. You will have more impact on her day than you will ever know.

2) Showing up late.

DO NOT BE LATE!!! This may be a no brainer, but this doesn’t mean show up on time; this means be early!

Showing up early (though not too early) eases the bride’s mind, makes her calmer, makes her confident in the fact that she chose the right people for her day, and makes you look like a superstar. It’s that going the extra mile, even though it may just be 10 minutes.

Additionally, the bride could be running late, and getting there early might help her get back on track.

If you are running late due to circumstances beyond your control, make sure you have contact info of the bridal party. Call anyone and everyone BUT the bride.

3) Not having a Plan B.

Weather, traffic, illness, car problems can all play a huge part in your role and your impact on a bride’s special day. Brides want to know you always have a backup plan.

What if you get stuck in traffic? What if your assistant gets sick? What if it rains? How are you going to help her?

A bride wants reassurance, but you have to make sure you tell her things you can live up to. However, here’s the predicament:

A bride wants to know all this stuff ahead of time, but if you do encounter any of these issues day of, do not say a word!

That’s your little secret…unless she asks.

A bride wants to be happy on her day and just wants to know everything will go smoothly. She doesn’t want to know that your assistant has the flu and you had to call your other assistant, who was on vacation to come and fill in, and then on the way, there was an accident and you had to take a detour, and, on that route you drove over a pot hole and got a flat tire, then it started raining.

Ugh, I’m getting anxious just writing that, but you get the point.

So, what are your top communication secrets? Have you ever had a dilemma on a wedding day and needed to use a backup plan?