FERRARI for the groom and best man... giant outdoor Jenga game for the children... chocolate fountain... ice sculpture... snowflakes. Snowflakes?

Yes, snowflakes. Laurie Pilkington is a wedding planner. One of her first clients wanted a wedding on the theme of a winter wonderland, which is why Laurie found herself painstakingly tying "snowflakes" onto the end of fishing lines, then perching at the top of a 35 foot ladder to hang them from the balconies of a Newcastle museum.

"The glass display cases were a problem too - not very wedding-y really - so I covered them with white material and fairy lights. It looked very effective. I was quite pleased," says Laurie.

So, thankfully, was the bride.

As weddings get more elaborate, more individual and more expensive (The average cost is now up to around £17,000) they need more planning. They are more a major dramatic occasion than a simple service, so need a producer, director, or, at the very least, a wedding planner.

They've been around for some time at hotels or department stores as part of the wedding day package, but Laurie is one of the new breed. She is entirely independent. For a fee, she will help you plan your wedding from start to finish. From the invitation to the final fireworks, tell her what you want and she can sort the lot, while you get on with your life, minus the panic.

And yes, of course she was inspired by seeing Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner. But it was also a logical step.

"I'd worked in the hospitality industry and then run a travel agent's, so I already had a lot of the right background and was used to dealing with people's dreams," she says at her home in Darlington.

"Then when I was on maternity leave it was an ideal chance to explore it further. There are quite a few wedding planners down south, who were very helpful, but there didn't seem to be much up here."

Laurie became a regular at wedding fairs and exhibitions, talked to hotels, stores, caterers, dress designers, florists, photographers - everyone possible involved in the wedding industry - gathering enough information to stock a small library.

Then as a trial run, she helped a friend organise her wedding.

"And I could see straightaway that even then, because of all the contacts I had made, I could do things more quickly, easily and cheaply too."

What she does, she says, is save people time and worry - as well as a lot of money.

"Brides want their wedding to be different. They want those individual touches, but often, even if they know what they want, they haven't got a clue where to find it, or the time to look." The Ferrari was a classic. "The groom and best man didn't want a vintage car or a horse and carriage. They wanted something special so I suggested the Ferrari. The men thought it was great."

Laurie can organise the wedding cake. "Lots of people have chocolate cake instead of fruitcake, or alternate layers. Or maybe even a chocolate fountain instead - now that's really fun. It's your wedding - you have what you want," she says.

She's organised an ice sculpture too, but that was a bit tricky.

"Luckily, I've found a firm in Newcastle now that does them. Not much good getting one from London because by the time it got here it would just be a pool of water."

As well as organising the venue, flowers, photographers, cake, cars and entertainment, Laurie's involvement will extend to supervising everything on the day, doing the table decorations - including dressing the room if needs be - and even designing the stationery.

"One bride had a colour scheme of turquoise and purple - sounds dreadful but it really worked well. When she couldn't find stationery in those colours, I designed some for her. I've always been artistic, so I enjoyed doing it," she says.

As well as stationery, she can also design the little boxes for the wedding favours.

"I'm working on some for men. Traditionally, it's always been the women who've got the little presents but increasingly, the bride and groom want the men to have something too - maybe miniature whisky bottles, or something like a Lottery ticket. All a bit of fun."

Despite her fee - ranging from £250 for supervising the day to £1,300 for the full package - Laurie says she can easily save the bride and groom money.

"When a modern couple start planning, they get carried away with their plans and it's easy to spend far too much. And often they haven't got time to really check things out, so they just take the first quote that's offered. The bill can soon spiral out of control. But if they give me their budget, I can keep them within it," she says.

The secret, says Laurie, is to be organised. And she is extremely organised and businesslike - as well as having a mind like the Yellow Pages. She also has a knack of squirreling away bits of information about venues and suppliers that could come in useful.

"It's one of those things that snowballs. And I love finding new ideas," she says.

She's worked out that organising a wedding can be the equivalent of six weeks' work and more, as people want something unique - ceilidh, casino, hog-roast, helicopter...

"Second weddings are very big too. Couples want to make them special but they also want something totally different from a first wedding, so that's quite a challenge," says Laurie.

The morning we meet, she's been writing rhyming clues to build up to one wedding's surprise entertainment for the evening.

"You have to be able to do a bit of everything, which is what I enjoy. And because every wedding's different, the job never gets boring, just more interesting," she says.

Currently Laurie works from home, in between looking after her young son Cameron. But she has plans for a One Stop Wedding Shop, which really would make life easier for everybody

But - here's the irony - the one wedding she hasn't yet organised is her own. Though she lives very happily with her partner, whom she's known since they were 11 years old, and Cameron, there are no winter wonderlands, helicopters or Ferraris arranged for them yet.

"Partly it's because I now know of so many choices and options, it would be almost impossible to choose. There are so many lovely ideas around. And partly because my partner is just so sick of hearing about weddings all the time.

"But it's also because he hasn't asked me yet!", laughs Laurie.

When he does, you can be sure the wedding will be perfectly planned - with or without snowflakes.

* Laurie Pilkington, I Do Wedding Services Ltd, Darlington. www.idoweddingservices.co.uk