I'm frugal and I don't like paying people for things that I think I can do myself or something I can have a family member do for much less cost wise. So when my wife wanted to get a wedding planner for our San Francisco wedding I wasn't completely on board. But now looking back, it was one of the best decisions we made regarding the wedding and it was definitely worth the extra money.

Wedding details: SF City Hall. 300 guests, 22 bridesmaids and groomsmen, 30 dinner tables, string quartet for ceremony, two bus shuttles, band for cocktail hour and DJ for dinner and dancing. We also had the caterer, equipment rental company, florist, lion dancers, photographers, videographers, lighting and audio visual company. Not to mention all the other small details my wife had to have to make the wedding perfect, flip flops, candy bar, photo booth, accompanying name tags for seating, magnum champagne bottle to sign, etc.

Everything went off without a single hiccup and went perfectly. They only had two and a half hours to have everything set up before the ceremony and only an hour to turn over the Rotunda from our ceremony to dinner and reception. Out of all the things that could have gone wrong, nothing did. Everything started on time and we were done with dinner, cake cutting, first dances, toasts and the same day edit film before 9:30 pm, which left our guests plenty of time to party, drink and dance the night away in City Hall.

Our wedding day was everything we worked so hard for and had dreamed of. Every guests that I have talked to since then said it was the BEST WEDDING they had ever been too and will probably be the best wedding they will ever go to. Words like best, amazing, epic and awesome are just some of the things our friends and family were saying when talking about our wedding.

We met three times before the wedding. Shannon was there at our walk through, a separate planning meeting to get everything organized and our rehearsal the night before. She helped us with to do lists and kept track of all of our vendors and even met a few days before the wedding to take some items and favors off our hands to have ready for that Saturday.

I know our wedding wouldn't have been as smooth or as perfect if it weren't for Shannon Leahy. Shannon and her team, especially Julie, were on top of all the big and small details from keeping everyone on time to the little things like having extra bobby pins in their pocket for whenever my wife's hair fell out of place. She was there whenever we needed her but was never overbearing. And she would periodically check in on us to make sure we were okay or if we needed something to be changed all without being a bother.

My advice for those planning a wedding, you've spent a lot of money and time planning your special day, make sure you get a wedding planner so you can actually enjoy the day because it goes by fast. And the last thing you want to do is take time away from your wedding to deal with the situations and problems that will arise.

My wife and I were so happy with Shannon Leahy Planning & Design. She was great and you will not regret choosing her. Below is a link to our wedding video if you want to see how perfect our day turned out thanks to Shannon.

http://vimeo.com/29217512

We hired Shannon Leahy for our wedding in Baltimore from Oct 2022-Feb 2023. We had hired them to be an all encompassing planner and were tremendously impressed with their organizational skills. We had weekly calls with our lead planner who was amazing. Everything was organized, thoughtful and meticulous. However, about 2 months into planning our lead planner had a personal emergency. We encouraged the planner to take time and we'd put our wedding planning on hold - we 100% understood and believe that family comes before all else. However, we were disappointed that during that time Shannon didn't reach out to us, communicate, or step in. About a month later we found out that our wedding planner wasn't going to be able to continue working. There were two main issues at the time: (1) SL didn't have anyone available to plan our wedding, and (2) there was a disagreement over what vendors to use. For the first one, we were disappointed that there wasn't a clear planner to step in and complete the job. For the second one, we're more understanding that it was a misalignment. Shannon wanted us to use their vendors, which when we price checked were double the price of some of the quotes we were getting. We ultimately really wanted to work with SL team, and were very impressed in the first few months, but decided to part ways amicably. My two cents: the SL team is really talented but this was an unfortunate situation that resulted in a lot of stress to our planning process.