Highly recommend!
My husband and I got married in June, and we hired Vennissa to be our
florist and event planner (after lots of searching). We had a tight
budget and figured we would save money by hiring 1 instead of 2
separate vendors. In a nutshell: she was AMAZING. Our venue provided
us a day of coordinator, but I honestly can't imagine what our day
would have been like without her. Weddings are chaotic. There's just
no getting around it, so the more confident you are in your
day-of-coordination team, the better. We had good rapport with
Vennissa right from our first email and phone call. We were initially
considering her as our florist, but she had such a warm and calm
demeanor--which is pretty critical if you're a nervous bride like I
was--that I ended up booking the coordination package as well. Me and
my husband were very thorough with all our vendors, probably more than
most... asking tons of questions, reading contracts word-for-word,
conducting reference checks... and we felt really confident when we
booked Scarlett Expressions.
She was always responsive over email or text and really helped us work
through a lot of logistics in the 6-8 weeks leading up to the
wedding... referring and calling vendors, negotiating pricing, putting
together a timeline, coordinating with the venue... she attended our
initial and final walk through and no matter what the question she was
ready to assist, offer input and just give advice on various aspects
of the wedding planning. She would check in regularly and make sure
we stayed on top of our to do list. Even though I pride myself in
being highly organized, her assistance was invaluable. And when it
came to our floral design, she worked off my pinterest boards and our
conversations to come up with design proposals that reflected our
vision.
The day of the wedding was a little tricky because one vendor
obviously can't be in two places at the same time, but her assistant
Debbie (who was wonderful too) handled the coordination of first look
photos/timeline, while Vennissa was setting up at the venue. We had an
outdoor beach ceremony and wanted a simple tropical vibe using our
wedding colors (green, gold, purple and peach) which she achieved, and she even found a way to incorporate my old raffia fans that I had pulled out of
a closet super last minute, into the ceremony design. She paired them
with palm leaves and flowers and arranged them on the aisle chairs.
When one of my nephews was about to throw a fit because he didn't have
a boutonniere or petals to throw or a ring box to carry, Vennissa and
her team quickly made him a boutonniere on the spot and avoided the
meltdown...this was literally right before he had to go down the
aisle! The ballroom was magical. Each table represented a different "tribe" and instead of having identical centerpieces, she came up with 4 floral
themes to arrange amongst our 12 tribes... each was a subtle variation
of a combination of palm leaves, greenery, peach/purple flowers,
and/or candles. It reflected the diversity of our guests but
also how we are all connected. Such a small but super meaningful
touch for us. And our sweetheart table was absolutely perfect... I
literally almost cried. From the moment we sent out our save the
dates, we knew we were going with a Black Panther/Wakanda theme
throughout our wedding and our sweetheart table really reflected that,
incorporating our wedding colors and palm leaves and an overall regal
African vibe. There were so many elements that we just trusted her to
handle and honestly never had to worry about or even think about.
That's exactly what you want when you hire a planner.
Ok, I've gushed long enough. I HIGHLY recommend booking Scarlett
Expressions for your wedding. You won't regret it.