Working with Katie leading up to the wedding went really well. She offered helpful guidance, worked with us to plan the design and aesthetic, and helped us stay within our limited budget, which I really appreciated. Unfortunately, the day of the wedding didn’t go as smoothly as we had hoped.
The weather was quite hot (90 degrees), and while I understand that managing an event in those conditions can be difficult, Katie seemed to struggle with stepping into the leadership role we had discussed. Instead of overseeing the setup and details, she left many of the tasks to our guests. The bridesmaid’s husbands were instructed to set up the table décor, arrange table flowers, napkins, and take on other responsibilities that were supposed to be handled by the coordinator.
To make matters worse, the flowers we had carefully selected and arranged by hand were left under the tables, not placed on them as center pieces as we had planned. The floral centerpieces were something we invested a lot of time, effort, and money in, and to see them go unused was so sad and disappointing. The taper candles had melted as well (though I think that may have been our fault based on where we stored them). It was frustrating to see the details we had planned for months not come to life as expected.
Additionally, there were a few issues that cropped up throughout the day that seemed to highlight a lack of coordination. The officiant didn’t have my vow book, no one knew where the rings were, and no one was telling us what was next on the schedule, so my husband and I were pushing the timeline along to the best of our abilities, rushing from the champagne pour to the cake cutting and so on. I was never prompted to bustle my dress in all the rush and had to do the first dance and father daughter dance with my full train out, which impeded that special moment. She told me she would pick up the bridal bouquet, but she actually had her husband pick it up, and by the time it got to me, it was wilted (though I am unclear the root cause of this). He then assisted her throughout the wedding and he was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt which was surprising, considering it was a black-tie optional wedding. I was not aware her husband would be there.
I had hired Katie to handle all the details so that I could enjoy my wedding day, but instead, it all felt a bit chaotic. Overall it was still the best day of my life, so it is certainly not the end of the world, but I wish the day of coordination had been smoother.
Katie saved the day at our wedding, literally. Her expertise and familiarity with our venue really came in handy to stage our ceremony and reception. Katie helped us put together a detailed timeline and responsibility tracker to ensure that day-of events and cleanup/teardown was streamlined. Doing that leg work really came in handy closer to the wedding date with vendor communication and allocation of responsibilities for those that were helping with tear down. Katie also helped immensely with tear down, consolidating everything into the bridal suite for tear down.
Most importantly, Katie had to advocating on our behalf to ensure all of our guests seated when the venue set out the wrong number of seats for the ceremony. If Katie did not convince our venue to put out more chairs (which was their mistake), we would have had ~30 people standing for our ceremony. Katie, thank you for handling that and confirming that we did not in fact have any wedding crashers. Thank you for helping to sort that out so that it didn't actually become an issue. Katie was awesome to work with and my family and other vendors were overwhelmingly impressed and happy to be working with her.
11/10 would recommend!!
Using Katie as my day of coordinator was one of the best decisions I made in our wedding planning process! She was so attentive to my questions throughout the process and was even flexible when I wanted to change services. She helped me put together a full detailed timeline and spreadsheet laying everything out and made sure all my other vendors knew she was point of contact for the wedding week. The wedding day went so smoothly with her! Our venue had a coordinator already but having them together made things much less stressful! She was attentive to making sure we were taken care of, she had no hesitation to answer questions from my wedding group. She was just an absolute joy to work with! Thank you so much for your help, Katie!! We appreciate it so much!! Much love.
We got married 9/24/22- and we had the pleasure of having Katie as our wedding designer! We really wanted to have a wedding that felt special and unique to us. We are huge Disneyland fans- so we really wanted a wedding that highlighted our passion but also felt classy! Katie totally got our vision- and helped us create a mood board and design direction on how to make our vision come to life! She created a color pallet, decor inspiration, wedding suite inspiration, and more! It truly felt like a Disneyland fairytale- but still felt very romantic and magical which was perfect for our wedding day. She also helped communicate with some of our vendors who needed design comments, which was so helpful and put us at ease knowing she had our back! She also has a huge list of recommended vendors - which was so helpful! We found our photographer, calligrapher, and invitation designer through her! Last thing was communication- which she excelled at! We could always get a hold of her even if it was just for a quick question or just needed some advice! We will miss working with Katie so much, and I would highly recommend booking her for your wedding planning and design needs! You won’t regret it!
Katie is an angel on earth! The only thing I would have done differently is to hire her sooner in the process. We used Katie for coordination and I don’t know if I can convey in words what a relief it was to have her on our team. We both had event experience and felt comfortable planning the details and design plan of the wedding so we were originally hesitant to hire a coordinator but, we decided to and it was the best decision. We had some family emergencies very close to the wedding and Katie handled them with such grace and professionalism. When we needed to focus on family instead of a wedding she ran with the punches and allowed us such flexibility and kindness. Day of, everyone involved felt so calm knowing that our vendor team was so put together and it resulted in a beautiful, fun and well run day. She’ll provide guidance when you need it and a steady hand when you need that. Trust that she will be a great team member and she will execute. Highly recommend!
Jeff and I hired Katie as our day-of coordinator for our San Diego Zoo Safari Park wedding. As we hired her for day-of services, she started becoming very responsive two weeks prior to the wedding. She went above and beyond in her delivery and helped style all the decor way better than I had set up myself in previous mock-ups! She kept things going on time, was very communicative and made our day so smooth, even though we used multiple different vendors she didn't work with before! She is such a genuine, kind human being and professional. She is also multitalented: she does photography, styling, rentals and more. I really enjoyed getting to meet her and her husband around our wedding day and she really made our special day that much more special! We also hired her for a one-hour photography service the day before and she helped so much in doing same-day edits, which was amazing! We'll do an updated review after photos come back!