LAUREL IS AMAZING.

How can we ever express the depth of our gratitude to the person who made all our wedding dreams come true? Laurel is beyond incredible, and asking her to plan our wedding was the single best decision we made in our entire planning process.

When I first met Laurel, nearly a year before our wedding, I was immediately drawn to her sincerity, organization, and poise. She asked insightful and thoughtful questions about our hopes for our wedding, fully understood and embraced our vision, and used all her talent and dedication to elevate our wedding to a level beyond what we had ever imagined.

Our wedding, an Indian-Western fusion held at the Carneros Inn in Napa, was an enormously complex event to plan. The wedding lasted over 9 hours, with two ceremonies (Hindu and Christian), a baraat (groom’s parade on horseback), a Farmers Market inspired cocktail hour, gourmet wine-country dinner, dessert bar and dancing, all spanning 2 separate outdoor venues and 2 indoor ballrooms. We asked Laurel to create a wedding that would honor both of our cultures, embrace the natural beauty of Napa yet still be modern and sophisticated, highlight the amazing local food & wine, and be filled with personal details and surprises for our guests. The logistics of planning such a large and complex event were daunting -- but Laurel rose to the challenge with tireless dedication and enthusiasm, and she made every detail fall into place flawlessly. It was more beautiful than we ever could have hoped for.

Every time we met with Laurel over the past year, we would walk away feeling inspired, energized, and confident. She really is the total package. A list of her skills would be endless, but here are just a few highlights:

- Insane organizational skills: I honestly wish she could plan my whole life. She made us detailed planning checklists (including dozens of important items I would have never thought of on my own), created gorgeous to-scale layouts of every area of our wedding venue, wrote a minute-by-minute wedding day timeline, and managed all of our vendors flawlessly. We tried to learn the secrets of how she stays so incredibly organized, but concluded she must be some sort of superhero.

- Creative vision and design skills: Laurel has impeccable taste, artistic vision, and the actual hands-on design skills to make it all come to life. She created a stunning inspiration board that served as the anchor for all of our wedding planning. She also designed and produced most of the details for our wedding day, including all of our print pieces (gorgeous programs, welcome booklets, menus, and thank you notes) and beautiful signs. She lovingly designed and arranged our welcome stations, food and wine displays, and amazing dessert bar. Her background in design is a huge advantage!

- Poise under pressure: Laurel is graceful and lovely in every circumstance, no matter how hectic or delicate the situation. Her even-keel personality helped us stay calm and confident throughout the entire planning process, as well as the wedding day itself.

- Dedication: To say Laurel goes above-and-beyond would be a huge understatement. One example among many: During our reception, she hand-delivered a huge box of sweets from our dessert bar to our bridal suite, because she knows I have an epic sweet-tooth and would want a chance to taste everything.

As the wedding day approached, I felt confident putting all the details and decisions into Laurel’s capable hands, knowing that she would execute everything perfectly, with our vision and tastes always in mind. On our wedding day, my husband and I were able to enjoy every second and live fully in-the-moment, because we trusted Laurel completely. Our vendors were also deeply impressed with Laurel – many of them told us that she is among the best wedding planners they’ve ever worked with.

Laurel is an absolute gift, and my husband and I will be grateful to her forever. Not only did we get a gorgeous wedding, but we also gained a wonderful friend.

Choose Esla Events to plan your wedding -- it will be the best wedding decision you can possibly make!

I'm only a few weeks into working with Laurel but she's AMAZING. She's incredibly organized, thoughtful, passionate and talented. I considered quite a few wedding planners and most were either the planner-type (checklists, vendor mgmt, etc) or more creative/design-types (visual, layouts, etc). Laurel is BOTH!!! And she helps you stay in your budget, and saves your bacon at last minute details. Today she mailed a check out to hold a spot for a vendor for me since I was traveling.

I'm 2 months away from my wedding, and wish I'd hired Laurel from Day 1. If you're at all considering a wedding planning, Laurel should be at the top of your list.

She is printing our addresses on our envelopes and somehow managed to find our exact font from our Minted invites, to match it for the font for the envelopes. How did she do it? I have no idea, but it was genius.

I have about 20 stories like that already where she far exceeded my (high) standards!!

I was a bit nervous about paying for a wedding planner, but with the time, creativity, and love she puts into it, Laurel is a true bargain.

We were recently married in San Francisco at a venue in the SOMA district. The venue space was very cool but we had to coordinate all the vendors ourselves because the venue came “as-is”. Needless to say, we had a tremendous amount of work to do so we hired an AMAZING wedding planner, Laurel Anderson owner of Esla Events, and it was the best wedding decision we made. Laurel started with us from the beginning by helping us to develop and create the overall "mood & feel" of our wedding. She took all the words and expressions we had in mind for our wedding and turned them into a design booklet filled with beautiful imagery and language that perfectly described our vision. I was stunned at how perfectly she was able to capture the essence of our wedding and then create imagery and mood boards to describe it.

From there, Laurel helped to finalize all of our vendors through endless phone conversations, negotiations, and planning meetings. She had an amazing way of taking limited information from me and my fiance (which we loved) and executing on it seamlessly. Laurel was calm, organized, and she had every single detail under control when it came to communicating and interacting with our vendors. Another wonderful part of working with Laurel was that she was always available. I cannot tell you the number of times a question or idea popped into my mind and Laurel was always just an email or phone call away.

Most importantly, Laurel has a stunning sense of design and is able to work within your vision but find creative and special ways of enhancing every detail. She was responsible for all the special details and finishing touches of our wedding day, including the design, fabrication, & installation of all our programs, place cards, table cards, seat cards, directional/designed chalkboards, table settings, styling of the bar, styling of the bathroom area, and oversight of the venue lighting (which was extensive). Laurel is a designer AND planner in one which was the reason we selected her. She was both professional and easy to work with and made our wedding planning process and wedding day experience FLAWLESS!