Dream of dreams
Sara was an absolute dream from day one. I knew from the get go that our wedding would be exceptionally complicated, with a full weekend of events, 225 guests, and a cast of very interesting characters including my wonderful but at times high-maintenance parents (including my dad, who officiated and was therefore adorably overbearing throughout the whole process). A wedding planner was an absolute must - one of the first vendors I hired - and I couldn't possibly regret it less!
I interviewed several planners around the Baltimore area for our wedding in Frederick, and Sara IMMEDIATELY put me at ease. She truly stood out from the crowd. She is just SO real - the perfect balance of calm and boundary-setting - keeping us squarely within our budget (as best she could...LOL) and setting appropriate expectations at every turn. She recommended vendors that fit within our price points and often exceeded expectations to keep our costs reasonable (florist! band! transportation!) She kept me on task even as I moved across the country 3 months before the wedding - no small feat - and never once did she let me let my stress get the best of me. She even won over my mother (who was - in a cute way - slightly offended that I hired a planner in the first place, and filled with a million opinions of varying degrees of sanity). Sara made wedding planning seem like the easiest of tasks, even through my intermittent moments of weakness (and the occasional temper tantrum).
On top of this, Sara went above and beyond behind the scenes to deal with the Jekyll/Hyde that was our venue coordinator. As stunning as the setting was, this person did nothing but create drama and stress for all vendors involved - ugh! Unbeknownst to me, she was suddenly changing answers to important logistical questions less than a week before the wedding, all of which involved details that had seemingly been worked out months before. It created a huge amount of work at the last minute for Sara and her crew, who still managed to take everything in stride, and keep me at an arm's length from anything that didn't absolutely require my participation. To this day I could never fully understand, nor will I ever know, the full extent of the headache - Sara works with the utmost professionalism in every single thing that she does.
AND THEN - the big day. I think we can reasonably say that we gave her a run for her money. We were barely on schedule. There were issues with the ceremony music that almost caused my dad to lose his nerve right before walking down the aisle. The bathrooms clogged and flooded, forcing guests to use the catering port-a-potties. The decorations required an additional hour or two to set up (my DIY was a little over-ambitious, as it turns out...), forcing the crews to work during the ceremony. Sara even had to run out and purchase table numbers because the ones I made were too small to be seen by the guests. Yet somehow, Sara tackled these issues so seamlessly that not a single person remembers a single hiccup from the entirety of the day. In fact, I have had no fewer than 50 guests compliment how smoothly every single thing went from start to finish - all thanks to the workhorse that was our incredible wedding planner!
Finally, I can safely say that Sara is a vendor's vendor. Every single company that we worked with (and it was essentially ALL a la carte) had nothing but compliments and love notes for Sara - the photographer, the set up crews, and the caterer to name a few gushed to me unprompted on several occasions! And the kicker - EVEN THE VENUE COORDINATOR had only good things to say and told me she can't wait to work with her again (lol...)
All in all, NOT an easy wedding - for a variety of reasons - and truly, Sara went above and beyond at every turn and made our logistically challenging day a perfect marriage, literally and figuratively, of people, places, and many, many moving parts. A plus plus plus plus!!!!!!