It depends on whether you're buying a look or a space. A decorator supplies and installs elements — stage, flowers, drapes — usually from a range they already own. A designer starts from your story and the venue's architecture, then conceives how the whole space should feel and flow before a single element is chosen.
Here's the honest test. If you've seen a setup you love and simply want it executed well, a good decorator is the right, efficient choice. If you want your wedding to look like yours — responding to the site, the light, the way guests move — that's design, and a decorator's fixed inventory can only approximate it.
The confusion is that many decorators call themselves designers. The tell is the blank page: ask whether they'd design something new for your venue, or fit you to what they have.
Our studio is architect-led, so we design the space the way an architect designs a building — from the site and the brief outward, never from a catalogue. That's the difference between decorated and designed. Which you need depends entirely on how much that distinction matters to you.
