We worked with Cassandra for our June 2022 wedding, and I am so glad we did! She was so kind and easy to work with. She made the whole process so easy. She listened to all our requests, and helped fill in the gaps with amazing suggestions when we weren’t totally sure what we wanted. She really brought our vision to life, and our day was more beautiful than I could have imagined!

There is no doubt...Choose Cassandra Vack of Anthony Gowder Designs! I am a professional Chicagoland officiant who has worked with Cassandra on two weddings thus far: One at the Palmer House and the other at InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile. Both weddings were challenging in their own way... the each had large parties, fun personalities, different languages, different faiths, and in the case of the Palmer House wedding... a lot of alcohol. Cassandra was wonderfully kind, enjoyably professional, helpful, organized, and appropriately assertive when necessary. In short, she was the epitome of grace under pressure. Everything went off seemingly effortlessly and without a hitch. There was nothing but laughter and tears, hugs and kisses, because of Cassandra's stellar work. I look forward to the opportunity to work with Cassandra again toward another flawless wedding! -Rev. Brad, LoveStoryWeddings.org

The absolute BEST! There is not much more we can say to sum it all up! My husband and I worked with Stephanie at Anthony Gowder Designs for our February 2019 wedding and could not be happier with our decision. From the moment we met Stephanie until the moment we walked into our venue on our wedding day, we knew she would do everything possible to make our visions come to life! She exceed ALL of our expectations. Stephanie is vibrant, professional, communicative, has strong attention to detail & truly wants the best for her clients—not only qualities that we admired, but also greatly appreciated while planning our wedding.

Our first meeting with Stephanie consisted of listening to our wedding ideas and narrowing down what exactly we were looking for when it came to floral arrangements, centerpieces, lighting, etc. Our second meeting was our “mock showing.” Stephanie had created a mockup of our wedding day and truly brought our visions to life. Our family was extremely important and involved throughout the wedding planning process and Stephanie was more than accommodating and understanding with all of our requests. She worked with our budget, gave recommendations & truly had our best interest in mind.

We are forever grateful that we chose Stephanie and the Anthony Gowder Design team to be a special part of our wedding day! Thank you for all of your hard work and for making our day a dream come true! XO- Jordan and Caitlin

Thank you Anthony Gowder Designs especially Stephanie Gowder for making our dream wedding come to life! Best Florist and design in Chicago by far... I appreciate everything you did for us and recommend everyone to AGD!!! Can't thank you enough.....

My husband and I worked with Cassandra from Anthony Gowder for our month of wedding coordination services. She was an INVALUABLE ASSET to our wedding planning experience. We joked afterward that we don't know how anyone could've gotten married without a Cassandra in their lives. She was available to answer any questions, timely in all of her responses, professional in her work with all of our other vendors, and so much fun to work with. She takes great pride in making the wedding day perfect for each of her couples. She anticipated needs that we hadn't even though of. Most importantly, her presence on the wedding day itself allowed our families to relax and enjoy every moment as opposed to answering questions from guests and vendors. Hiring a wedding coordinator, and making sure that he/she comes highly recommended, is our greatest advice to newly engaged couples. We could not recommend Cassandra and her team more.

Oh my gosh my bridal bouquet was the most beautiful I have seen! Stephanie at Anthony Gowder listened to all of my wishes, went through photos with me, and showed me samples of my centerpieces. Everything was set beautifully by her staff. I would definitely order from them again!

Gowder is absolutely wonderful, and if I ever have to order floral arrangements for any big event again, they will be the very first people I call. My mom and I met with a long list of florists before we discovered Gowder, and we left each florist meeting confused and in sticker shock. Our meeting with Stephanie at Gowder was a completely different story – we had found our perfect florist.

Stephanie asked great questions and worked hard to understand our taste, our goals, and our budget. My mom and I know very little about flowers, so we greatly appreciated Stephanie’s guidance. From that very first meeting, my mom and I felt completely confident that Stephanie understood what we were looking for and that she would execute that vision flawlessly.

I think the biggest compliment that I can pay to Stephanie and Gowder is that in the days leading up to the wedding, when we were stressing over what we needed to remember to do with/for each vendor, floral wasn’t even on my mind. I trusted Stephanie completely to just make the arrangements beautiful, and she did. Thank you so much!!

Anthony Gowder Designs was amazing. Not only was our decor to die for but Stephanie Gowder, our day of coordinator was our lifesaver. We got married on June 20th, 2015 at the W Lakeshore. Our ceremony was in the great rooms, which is another word for conference room :) Stephanie and her team completely transformed that room. There were candles and flowers and draping. The room looked incredible and really set a romantic tone! Which was quite an amazing feat considering the way that room looked without any of that! Our reception room has an amazing view of the city and lake. To enhance that Stephanie suggested using tall floating candles and some flower satellites around them. It was exactly what we were looking for, simple and won't take away from the view. We were so pleasantly surprised when we walked into the reception and it was even more gorgeous than we thought! Besides decor, Anthony Gowder does day of coordination services as well, we knew we definitely wanted this from the beginning. It was so nice to have everything be a one stop shop! Stephanie was our lifesaver from the day we hired her all the way through the wedding day. She contacted all my vendors, set up times for everything, and made an amazing day of timeline. I didn't have to lift a finger. The day of our wedding went so smooth and I know it was because of Stephanie. Our whole family and bridal party loved her, she was so sweet and incredibly organized! We really found a fantastic company when we found Anthony Gowder Designs. If you want quality and professionalism all the way, then you should definitely hire them!!

I had a very positive experience working with Cassandra Vack from Anthony Gowder. First of all, she was respectful of my budget. Sometimes there are vendors who don’t want to work with you if you don’t spend a certain amount, or some who only treat you nice if you are spending a lot, but Cassandra is NOT like that. I felt valued as a client from day one, and she never proposed anything that was too expensive for me.

Cassandra was also really flexible and responsive. I revised my order at least five times, and each time she was patient and answered emails within 24 hours. On the day of the wedding, the flowers looked fresh and beautiful. The bridesmaid bouquets complimented the girls’ dresses really well and helped make our ceremony look really elegant and romantic.

If you look at their pictures, Anthony Gowder usually does more modern-looking designs, but my wedding was more rustic looking and they worked to fit my look. I think they do just as well with simple, rustic weddings as they do with ritzy hotel ones.

The last thing I appreciated was that they did a free floral showing where they show you samples of how your flowers will look on your wedding day. Some florists make you pay for a showing so make sure you ask about that, because Anthony Gowder doesn’t! Overall, going with Anthony Gowder was one of the best decisions I made because they made me feel like I didn’t have to worry about the decorations on the day of my wedding!

Anthony Gowder Designs is fabulous to work with! Being an event planner, I have used them for years for our corporate events and they have always done an amazing job within the budgets we have given them. So when it was time to plan my wedding I knew that I would be getting top quality work and wouldn't have to worry about a thing going with Anthony Gowder Designs. They did not disappoint!

Stephanie Gowder was, as always, fabulous to work with. We met with her for an initial meeting to discuss our vision, color scheme, likes, dislikes, etc. Then a couple months before the wedding we had a second meeting where Stephanie had examples of the actual arrangements to show us. At this time we were able to make changes to make sure it was what we wanted. It was super helpful to actually see the arrangements in person as I do not know a lot about flowers.

The day of the wedding Stephanie's team took care of everything. Our bouquets were gorgeous and showed up right on time as we were taking photos early in the day. The arrangements and candle lit aisle they did for our ceremony were breathtaking and the reception room looked amazing! About a month before our wedding, I also asked Stephanie to do the floral decorations for our cake. I sent Stephanie a few photos of cakes I liked and left the rest up to her. When we walked into our reception I was blown away by how beautiful our cake was!

When I talked to Stephanie after my wedding to thank her, she mentioned how pleased she was that I was so happy with everything because apparently there had been heavy rains in California which made our purple flowers hard to get so at the last minute they had to make some substitutions on the types of flowers in the arrangements. I didn't even notice! All I noticed was how beautiful everything was!

I cannot say enough about my great experience with Anthony Gowder and would definitely recommend them for anyone looking for a wedding or event florist.