If you want a wedding planner who will actually roll up their sleeves and run the traps on all of the nitty gritty details of your wedding from start to finish, no matter how complicated things get during the planning or on the day of your event, and who will do it with grace and professionalism, you should hire Cathy. If you want to leave all of that up to chance, hire someone else, but I promise you will regret it. My husband and I were in no position to take on the complexity of our vision on a 9 month timeline and Cathy was honest with us at every turn about what it would take to get things done. On the day of my wedding when a forecasted squall threatened the evacuation of our tent, Cathy calmly came to find me during hair and makeup, helped me appreciate the options, and then personally moved heaven and earth to make an alternative cocktail hour plan happen as the storm passed.

Cathy is a hard-working, honest, experienced planner. She knows every vendor in the Hudson Valley. She chases people down and will not rest until there's an answer (e.g. given a very bad peach harvest this year, how will I source 250 peaches to achieve my client's vision?) When you’re writing check after check for your wedding and the thought crosses your mind — “can I even trust this person?” Um, yes, I would trust Cathy with most anything. She is not the wedding planner you see on TV or that your friends lament “didn’t even do anything”. Oh, no. Cathy will keep you on track week by week, organized in GoogleDrive, and even on top of things she’s not contractually responsible for (e.g. have you selected accessories yet? How is honeymoon planning going?), and then, when cocktail hour is going swimmingly and the first rain drops start to fall, she will just APPEAR with an umbrella over your head like she is ACTUALLY MARY POPPINS. She excels at the knowledge work, the hard work (turns out this can be a very physical job!) and is very service-oriented with families and guests.

I was perhaps the happiest I have ever been on my wedding day and I know that having a trusted, experienced planner like Cathy (and her team!) — who genuinely cared about us, our families, and our friends — gave me the freedom to enjoy my day to the maximum. There is no greater gift to give yourself.

If you’re considering hiring Cathy as your wedding planner, let me do you a favor, stop looking and just hire her. Hiring Cathy was the best decision we made for our wedding (after, of course, my husband and I choosing to marry!). She was on our venue’s preferred vendor list, and when I asked our venue contact who stood out, Cathy was the only name they gave me. We got married in Kingston in Fall 2026 and began working with Cathy in Summer 2025. I loved working with her so much that I genuinely miss our regularly scheduled calls!

Cathy’s knowledge and connections in the Hudson Valley are invaluable. She is incredibly organized, a master of logistics, and always several steps ahead. When something unexpected comes up, she finds a solution and advocates for her clients.

Cathy never pushes you toward a particular vendor or decision. Instead, she lays out your options and explains the considerations, whether budget, logistics, or otherwise. You always feel informed and supported, never pressured.

She also really listens to what makes your wedding meaningful, beyond design choices. She takes the time to understand important traditions, personal touches, and family dynamics, finding thoughtful ways to ensure everyone feels comfortable and included.

One experience particularly illustrates how much Cathy goes above and beyond. We encountered significant challenges with our wedding weekend accommodations and welcome dinner venue, requiring an extraordinary amount of follow-up. Cathy advocated for us at every step, and the time she invested was remarkable. Some issues persisted through the wedding weekend, and she has continued helping us address outstanding concerns even after the event. She could have considered her job done once the wedding was over, but she continues to stand by us. That level of commitment says everything about the kind of planner she is.

As a fun example of her resourcefulness, just before our ceremony, one of my husband's friends realized he'd torn his pants and was about to attend in jeans. Cathy said, "Absolutely not," disappeared for a few minutes, and returned with a spare pair of pants borrowed from our photographer. It's a small example, but it perfectly illustrates her ability to think on her feet!

I also work in corporate event planning, so I understand what goes into executing an event. I hired Cathy because I didn't want our wedding to feel like an extension of my job. Weddings and corporate events are very different, and I wanted to enjoy the process and be present on the day. I have tremendous respect for Cathy's work ethic and how consistently she advocates for her clients.

Cathy is thoughtful, capable, resourceful, and genuinely invested in making your wedding everything you want it to be. I cannot recommend her highly enough. Hiring her was one of the best decisions we made, and we would do it all over again without hesitation.

Cathy did an incredible job planning our wedding in Kingston, NY this fall. As we began planning an event "abroad" from Chicago, it was very important to us to work with someone with strong knowledge of the various venues and vendors in the Hudson Valley. Cathy delivered and then some! She has strong relationships with everyone across the board and made the process incredibly smooth. Cathy is super organized, reliable, reassuring, and responsive at nearly all hours of the day. We couldn't have done it without her!

More importantly, Cathy will go above and beyond for her clients throughout the process. One instance stands out. With two weeks to go before our post-wedding mini-moon, our accommodations abruptly cancelled our reservation; of course, Cathy knew their head of operations, and immediately went to bat to solve the issue. Within two hours, we had received a comped upgrade at another property, with nearly zero interruptions or stress.

This speaks to how tapped into the Hudson Valley event planning scene Cathy is. Having someone like her is invaluable for planning one of the most important events of your life, and we are incredibly grateful to have had Cathy in our corner.

Hiring Cathy was hands down one of the most important and best decisions we made for our entire wedding. She is so much more than a wedding planner. She truly becomes your right-hand woman, and there is no task too big or too small for her.

From the very beginning, Cathy had an incredible ability to understand our vision, sometimes before we even fully knew what we wanted ourselves. She listened to every idea, paid attention to every detail, and somehow always knew exactly how to bring everything together. At one point, she literally went to a flea market to find the decor inspiration we had been looking for. When I was having issues with my dress alterations, she had the perfect words and plan to calm me down. She goes so far beyond what you would ever expect from a wedding planner.

I can genuinely say that I miss wedding planning because Cathy made the entire experience so enjoyable and positive. Throughout the planning process, she made herself incredibly available and kept us organized and on track without ever making the process feel stressful. She is extremely professional, organized, honest, and fair, and we always felt like we knew exactly what needed to happen next.

And then there was the wedding weekend itself. Cathy made sure that my husband and I never had to worry about a thing. If something went wrong, she had already handled it before we even knew it had happened. We were able to be completely present and enjoy every moment because we trusted her so completely. Our guests absolutely loved her and her energy, and our wedding weekend turned out to be more beautiful and special than we ever could have dreamed.

It is so evident how much Cathy genuinely loves what she does. This is so much more than a job to her. It is truly her passion, and she pours her heart into every wedding and every couple she works with. She was a math major, which makes perfect sense once you see her spreadsheets and the incredible level of organization she brings to the entire planning process. But beyond how meticulous and organized she is, what makes Cathy so special is how much she genuinely cares. You can feel how personally invested she is in making your wedding everything you dreamed it would be.

We truly do not know what we would have done without Cathy. By the end of the process, she felt like so much more than our wedding planner. If you are considering hiring her, do it. Having Cathy by our side was the best investment we made in our wedding, and we could not recommend her more highly.

Cathy and her team are simply the best - easy to work with, highly organized, efficient, and creative. Our wedding (August 2026) was in a non-traditional space (a theater) and I had a number of ideas I wanted to execute to ensure that my wedding felt like my own. Cathy was on board, asked the right questions, created step-by-step plans so that everything could happen, and also set expectations around what was achievable versus what was a stretch. She took all the headaches of the process out of my hands so I could focus on what was important to me. The wedding itself was smooth sailing. She took care of everything so that my husband and I could be fully present with each other and my guests. (I even had a minor dress mishap, which she fixed *on the spot* with a travel sewing kit she kept on her person!) Cathy and her team go above and beyond while staying warm and welcoming (and often funny)! I felt so cared for throughout the process. For an organized, thoughtful, and enjoyable wedding planning process, choose Cathy!

Cathy Ballone is, hands down, the very best of the best. You hear horror stories about some wedding planners, so we went into our own planning journey with low expectations. But working with Cathy makes us want to do the whole thing over again (and again!), because yes, she’s that good.

Words cannot convey how fortunate we are to have found Cathy, and that she was willing to take us on with such little notice. Our first venue unexpectedly fell through with only months to spare, and she literally saved the day. We were recommended Cathy’s services while searching for a new venue, and needless to say, our wedding quite literally would not have happened without her incredible professionalism and stellar attention to detail.

Hiring Cathy is like having a new best friend who is on call, 24/7, to help you achieve the wedding of your dreams. She’s warm, she’s funny, and she strikes just the right balance between keeping your nerves calm while gently nudging to make sure deadlines are met and vendor agreements are finalized on time. We had weekly planning phone calls in the months leading up to our wedding, which we genuinely miss having. During these calls we ran through a multitude of meticulously organized checklists (that Cathy provides, via Google Drive) which helped to keep everything on track, ensuring that every task item was completed on time and that there was plenty of buffer space in case contingencies arose. But outside of planning, Cathy always took the time on every call to ask how we were doing and how life was going, which was an added personal touch that made the process much more enjoyable and much less formal than you would expect.

Additionally, no matter what time of day or where she was, Cathy was available (and promptly replied) to every inquiry and question we had, regardless of how small. This was especially impressive given all the other weddings she was simultaneously planning, and made us feel like our wedding was the only one she was focused on. Very few people on this planet have that kind of energy (she wakes up every day - naturally - at 4 AM!) or knack for high-level multitasking, but Cathy is truly blessed with both. Truly a white-glove service experience.

Following our weeks of planning together, we went into our weekend with full confidence — not only that things would go smoothly — but that our vision would be realized. But nothing could prepare us for just how great the weekend went and how beautiful everything turned out to be, from the seamless vendor coordination to the flowers & decor to the venue setup, with all credit going to Cathy (who was equipped with, along with her team, a wireless comms system, not unlike an NFL coaching staff orchestrating your very own Super Bowl). As an added bonus, Cathy – a fan of many things outside of planning, including birding and meteorology – has her own weather forecasting spreadsheet (containing formulas she developed herself!) that kept us calm about the forecast in the days leading up to our date. Her weather predictions ended up being spot on, and even though the official NOAA forecast was calling for rain, it ended up being -- as her spreadsheet had predicted -- a perfect, cloudless, sunny weekend. Talk about going the extra mile!

All in all, we cannot more highly recommended Cathy Ballone to anyone looking to plan a wedding in the Hudson Valley area and beyond. No one does it better than her. With Cathy on your team, you are in the best of hands.

Working with Cathy was truly one of the best decisions we made for our wedding! She partnered with us for over a year and a half, guiding us through every step — from the venue search and vendor selection to decor, design, and all the tiny details in between.
Cathy is the most organized person you will ever meet. She kept us on track with regular calls, detailed timelines, and comprehensive documents that made the entire process feel manageable and stress-free. Beyond her impeccable organization, Cathy was always our biggest advocate — whether negotiating with the venue, communicating with vendors, or helping navigate delicate family dynamics, she always had our best interests at heart.
Her vendor recommendations were spot-on, and she was endlessly patient when we wanted to talk through every little decision (no matter how small!). We always felt supported and heard, and on the wedding day itself, everything ran seamlessly thanks to her meticulous planning and calm presence.
We truly can’t imagine going through this process without Cathy! She’s professional, thoughtful, and genuinely cares about her couples. If you want someone who will make your wedding vision come to life while keeping you sane throughout the process, Cathy is the one!

Cathy planned our wedding in September of 2025 and we are so happy and thankful that we had her leading our event! We would 100% recommend Cathy to any couples interested in hiring her and her team.

Cathy’s communication from our first call through the wedding day was best-in-class and she was always available to answer any questions we had. In the wedding planning process, it can be daunting to even know where to begin, but Cathy made everything so clear for us and set us up for success by using her deep experience and knowledge of local vendors to simplify the decision-making process. From there, Cathy did an incredible job of keeping us on track with bi-weekly calls and a running to-do list for us to tackle, while behind the scenes working with all of our vendors to allow for everything to come into place.

When it came to wedding day and the weeks leading up, Cathy made everything so smooth for us, our families and our wedding party. On the wedding day, we were able to just focus on enjoying the day knowing that Cathy had everything handled!

Cathy was a wonderful and thorough wedding planner at our son and daughter in law’s wedding. We teased her that she had a “Mary Poppin’s purse.” For example, one of the groomsmen’s tuxedo arms were too long. Cathy had a supply of safety pins in her purse and was able to fix the tuxedo before the ceremony. Cathy was around and available at all times but wasn’t in the spotlight. We highly recommend her.

We knew Cathy was the right fit for us as soon as we got off the first call. We needed somebody to bring structure, experience, honesty, and attention to detail for an 7 month planning process. Cathy gave off that first impression and delivered in spades.

To illustrate an example of Cathy's approach that worked well for us: Cathy set up a shared Google Drive, budget, timeline, and biweekly calls, where we only focused on the decisions / discussions that had to happen at that point in time and didn't needlessly worry about the rest. We were in a very busy season at work, and this allowed us to direct the limited mindshare that we had to the right things at the right time.

Furthermore, Cathy has experience working with the best vendors across the Hudson Valley. We trusted her to give us honest advice and a range of options that honoured our preferences and price points - particularly helpful for a couple based in Brooklyn and could not always visit vendors ourselves. She also knows the best sandwiches in town for when we did visit.

Finally, Cathy worked tirelessly behind the scenes during our actual wedding weekend to make it truly more than we could have hoped for, while we got to be carefree and present (seriously, we went jogging through the trails and had bagels the morning of!) She monitored the evolving rain situation all day, with backup plans in place. She translated every detail from our conversations to execution (including pulling off adapted Chinese / British tea ceremony, and making sure we both had change of clothing for the after party in case of rain or sweat). And she coordinated with our vendors and wedding party, so we didn't have to field any questions.

Thank you, Cathy! We strong recommend her planning services.