Bella Destinee

Katie and her team helped us plan and execute the wedding of our dreams. We loved working with Katie and she was especially graceful in getting us through a difficult pandemic-troubled wedding. We ended up having to postpone our wedding and Katie helped us navigate us through with ease.

Katie gave us just the right amount of guidance. She ran with our ideas and nudged us in the right ways. She was also great in helping us decide where we could cut and where we should splurge to stay within our budget.

She was extremely reassuring throughout the planning and especially on the day itself. Everything came together even better than we thought and she managed everything so smoothly that we were able to actually enjoy most of our wedding (instead of worrying about logistics).

Her experience in the industry and with the venue (The Ebell of Los Angeles) really showed, and she steered us towards some really great vendors. She took care of the minutia (think fire permits, pandemic re-scheduling, and vendor price negotiation) without bothering us, and also kept us in the loop for important updates.

Hiring Katie was one of our best decisions and we highly recommend her to friends and family. We sincerely hope and expect to see Katie again at a future wedding!

My husband and I chose Katie as our wedding planner after video interviewing several planners. The main reasons we chose her were (1) she was clearly passionate about wedding planning and viewed it as much more than a mere job and (2) she is a bilingual Korean American, which was important for our majority Korean guests. We decided to go with the partial planning package. Over the months of planning leading up to the wedding, Katie was very detail oriented, responsive, and listened carefully to what we were envisioning. It was clear to us that she was going above and beyond to try to make us happy. She recommended many excellent vendors (especially for Korean clients) and created a very thorough wedding worksheet that we completed with all the details leading up to the wedding. We were fortunate in that Katie had previously worked at our venue numerous times and had a good relationship with the team there. She was also present for our menu tasting, meeting with our florist, and rehearsal and was very helpful at all of these.

Our main complaint regarding the planning process is that Katie did not seem to be tracking our budget. We felt that the onus was on us to stay within our budget despite the fact that we had discussed the budget with her at the start and reminded her multiple times throughout the planning process. She presented multiple options for our wedding and vendors (usually on the expensive side which was understandable given our venue and taste) and we were the ones who had to choose among the many options to fit our budget. This was certainly a source of stress for us during the planning process and definitely something we expected our wedding planner to help us with more.

As for the day of coordination, Katie and her team got the job done smoothly and there were no major errors on our wedding day. She coordinated with all our vendors and ensured that everything was running smoothly. A few minor hiccups on our wedding day:
- Katie had mentioned that she would time us at each table during our table greetings but she was nowhere to be seen at that time on the wedding day and we did not end up having enough time to visit each table. This was certainly disappointing as it meant that we didn't get a chance to personally greet a number of our family and friends.
- Katie never mentioned a champagne toast or family introductions during the reception. Many of our guests were left wondering why these never occurred.

Despite the above minor hiccups, overall our wedding day was a great success and we acknowledge that there are countless moving parts that Katie and her team were able to successfully coordinate. We would be happy to choose Katie again as our wedding planner.

This was a difficult review to write because I don’t want to miss any details about how amazing Katie was for us as she was planning our wedding. My husband and I got married in upstate New York this past May, and I had found Katie when we were living in Los Angeles. I worked with her as an assistant wedding planner for about 3 years before my husband and I made the cross-country move, and from the first wedding I worked with her, I knew she was the only person I would ever want to plan our wedding. She was one of the first calls I made after getting engaged, even though we both already knew she was going to be our planner. : )
Katie does not miss a single detail. Our day was beyond perfect. Everything went off without a hitch, and that was all Katie. She puts so much work into the details prior to the wedding so that everything is set and ready to go on the day. Her communication with vendors is quick and detailed – everyone knew exactly where they were supposed to be and when they were supposed to be there. Because I’ve worked with Katie in the past and enjoy wedding planning, I wanted to be a little more hands on with the planning and the vendor communication, but closer to the wedding my husband and I really handed everything off to her. There was one vendor who caused me a little bit of stress, but I called Katie right away and before I could even explain, she said, “I saw the email. Don’t worry about anything – I will call them right now and get to the bottom of this! Do not stress about this at all. I will handle everything.” And that is exactly what she did – for EVERYTHING. My husband and I felt so taken care of; we felt that she really, truly understood the vision we had for our wedding, she spent so much time listening to what we wanted and what we felt was most important, and she carried out our vision to a T.
**See full review on The Knot or Yelp - Wedding Wire cut off the end of mine!