You’re having a dinner at Carpaccio Restaurant in Bal Harbor, Miami, when your boyfriend surprised you with a marriage proposal!

Ohhh what a inexplicable feeling , that turns everything upside down, unexpected and thrilling!

This happened to me a year and a half ago. It was December 5th.

After all my excitement and happiness for the moment, and after saying “YES" - I thought: "What about now? When? How will we do it? Where to start?"

This are the first questions of all new brides! Just follow my column about etiquette and you will find these and other responses. Here I’m going to use my wedding planning experience to help you organize yours!

From the get-go, let me tell you that it isn’t a easy task, because a wedding is a different level of event. It involves a lot of emotions, two different families and dreams. But I assure you, that when we do everything with love and stay true to ourselves, the result is so satisfying, that you’ll want to do it all over again, with the same groom, of course!

So, get to work!

The first thing that you need to keep in mind is that you can’t do everything by yourself. You ‘re going to need a wedding planner. This person will work like Cinderella's fairy godmother! It’s true!

There is a large quantity of this professionals in the market. I encourage you to meet three or four of those to research how their work, their price, their service, their portfolio, their market image and their reliability. And please, choose a professional with whom you get along very well. Because you and your groom will spend an extensive period of time with this person!

A wedding planner needs to be able to show you the best wedding suppliers of the market. This person must be proactive and have a lot of experience in this area. She/He should be open to hear and accept the ideas of the bride and groom, and also to show alternate ways to facilitate the event, according to the couple's budget.

As a marketing professional, I'm very used to organizing and planning events. So, I already knew the kind of professional that I was looking for. And our wedding had a particular characteristic: the guest list contained people from different countries and our desire was that everyone felt at home. So I was looking for a bilingual professional with plenty of experience in multicultural events and knowledge of cross-cultural etiquette. Yes, I’m a picky person when it comes to this.

On this first step, I spent two weeks ( from scheduling the meetings to chosen the person). I met four professionals from Porto Alegre area in the South of Brazil. I confess that I was somewhat surprised that there are people in the market that don't have the least idea how to deal with customers. Just for you to have an idea of what I’m talking about, our wedding was in October, 17th 2014 and until today I still haven’t received the proposal of a well known wedding planner from Porto Alegre. Of course its not like I’m waiting for it.

So, I ended up with Paula Constantino. A professional with years of experience in international and corporate events and with weddings for government officials, for example.

Don’t forget that your wedding is yours dream, and it can’t become a nightmare!