The Wedding Planner who can make dreams come true
If you watched the Wedding Planner with JLO, know that Jaclyn Hamilton is 100x better! I am a resident physician and I work 80-100 hours a week with only 4 days off a month. Essentially, I had little to no time to plan an extravagant 3 day wedding with a total of 6 events. From our very first meeting to the last second at the reception, Jaclyn took care of us like we were her family!! My father quoted this multiple times after the wedding! Jaclyn was so dedicated in ensuring we first found the dream location. She created extensive spreadsheets detailing each venues price per head to the cost of table cloths, alcohol, and food. She also would travel all over the state of North Carolina to see the venues with us and in the end creating an extensive pro-con list! I am an extremely particular and picky person and Jaclyn was incredibly patient but amazing in directing me during my times of indecisiveness. Jaclyn also has the most incredible and beautiful taste, creativity, and design skills! I essentially briefly told her my vision for each event and she created a spectacular design plan draft document and the end result was even better an MORE! I had multiple people ask me whether I chose these specific designs or decor and I said nope I told Jaclyn a very quick and rough idea of what I wanted and she cultivated, created, and executed the beautiful decor from flowers, color schemes, stage decor, rentals, and so on and so forth. In particular, the Tumeric event was so beautifully colorful, unique, and fun. She would coordinate with other vendors in making the vision be just perfect! My family and I barely had any design inputs except for the initial rough draft. This is extremely rare! I gave Jaclyn full reign and she did SUPERB—you would think Jaclyn grew up in South Asia or is one of the designers from the Netflix show, “The big day” (a show about extravagant Indian weddings in India).
On multiple occasions, I would have an idea and Jaclyn too had the same idea and before even sharing with her, she was one step ahead in the execution process! When this continued to reoccur, I essentially just trusted her and placed all my faith and trust in her to make all the decisions, design, and execute how she thought was best because 99% of the time it was exactly what I would have wanted or sometimes better than what I envisioned or dreamed of! From the beginning I told Jaclyn I want a very different wedding I dont want the designs or ideas to be the same as every other wedding or look like every other Indian wedding. Jaclyn too is all about being original and unique and one of a kind which was so helpful because I would drive myself insane trying to be unique but she naturally has all the “never done” ideas that could become viral on Pinterest!
Jaclyn and I literally were always on the same wavelength. To reiterate again I am very detail oriented and micromanager but with Jaclyn I was able to sit back, relax, focus on my career, and only had to do the fun parts of wedding planning like cake tasting, food tasting, picking out table setting, etc etc. However, if it became too detail oriented and it was “unfun” like the exact design and dimensions of a cake she would take over and I would just get to enjoy instead of stressing about these very specific details I know nothing about. Most people hate wedding planning because it is so stressful with all the super specific details but honestly Jaclyn made it so enjoyable and I had so much fun doing all the fun big picture aspects of it! I never felt too stressed because she would handle it. There were multiple times I did feel overwhelmed such as the time we couldn’t get our first choice wedding date or the rising costs or indecisiveness about vendors. However, Jaclyn would call me at any moment at random hours of the day during my peak times of stress before it escalated and would talk me down from a ledge. She literally was like one of my best friend available at any moment to calm me down and take the time to help me! Even after the wedding Jaclyn was extremely responsive, reliable, and provided me lots of reassurance as I continued to have lots of questions regarding security deposits, items I forgot, or concerns whether the wedding was amazing.
A few friends around me had wedding planners and they would tell me how the couple would be doing x,y, and some being huge tasks like finding a furniture rental company while some would tell me their planner would be MIA for weeks. I was in shock when my friends would tell the things they were doing when planning for the wedding because I would reply “shouldn’t your planner be doing all that. My planner, Jaclyn does ALL of that for me. Here let me show you all the different spreadsheets!”When another group of friends would tell me their planner would be MIA, I was in disbelief because there wasn’t a single day Jaclyn and I would not be in contact and if she is planning to be MIA she would always inform me and give me a heads up so first I could mentally prepare and so we would plan around her absence to ensure everything was covered. If she was busy especially during peak wedding times, I would send her lengthy emails of questions and she would always try to squeeze in time to answer my emails! This is a huge positive aspect of Jaclyn that is extremely rare in comparison to my friends wedding planners is how accountable, reliable, and dedicated she is to her clients. Jaclyn is also extremely organized, google-drive/excel pro, and will make or has a document for everything and anything. As someone who is visual and loves lists, graphs, and tables, Jaclyn would create or have pre-existing excel sheets or documents on every aspect of the wedding from budgeting, itineraries, timelines, and comparing vendors in specific detail of each category, such as florists, photographer, videographer, and so on and so forth. I noticed my friends planners were not nearly as organized, resourceful, or had all these tangible/visual tools.
The important aspect about a wedding planner no one thinks about also is you have to be very comfortable telling your planner “no, I can’t afford this or this is too expensive” otherwise you could be falling in a very deep hole because you didn’t feel comfortable speaking up. I appreciate and LOVE Jaclyn’s honesty, direct to the point advice and thoughts. She was always real with me and this is also a very crucial quality everyone must have in a wedding planner. She will tell you when something is flat out ugly or tacky or “everyone does that.” Jaclyn is also your biggest advocate especially in ensuring the clients wishes are fulfilled with other vendors and making sure no vendor is taking advantage or trying to overcharge the client.
In days leading up to the wedding and especially during the wedding, Jaclyn was blowing out fires left and right. She truly truly treated us like family as she ran all around making sure everything was perfect! We got married during a hurricane with an electricity blackout during one of the events. We were all frazzled and I had forgotten a million things and Jaclyn was so incredibly sweet running back and forth trying to help me, my family, and my in laws with our crazy requests. On wedding day there are lots of things you can’t control and there lots of curve balls my wedding guests threw in which Jaclyn handled so well! One example is in the middle of this hurricane Jaclyn ran to the house in the rain to get my mother in law a hair dryer because her hair was damp and frizzy. Jaclyn was so sweet to make a cute gift basket of our wedding cake, champagne, and florals—it was such a sweet touch for us to snack on after the wedding. Importantly, Jaclyn ensures the bride and groom are fed and hydrated as she spoon fed me multiple times as I was dancing or running around. She was extremely flexible every time a different obstacle occurred—let me tell you there were tons and Jaclyn overcame each gracefully!
Jaclyn’s assistant, Linda is so incredibly sweet and so calming in the midst of all the wedding chaos and stress. She truly goes above and beyond to make you feel de-stressed, calm, look and feel beautiful and confident!!! In addition to your maid of honor, Linda is exactly the person you need by your side during your big day! In fact, there was one event Linda was not working and I truly missed her and her lack of presence was quickly noticed and her sweet calming presence was deeply needed!
In summary, Jaclyn and Linda are a fire duo! Anyone would be a darn fool if you don’t hire Jaclyn she is worth every single penny!!!! She can make your wedding extremely chic and beautiful with her incredibly creativity and design ideas, manhandle and organize a stampede, and create a fun wedding planning experience that doesn’t have to be stressful!! I can’t reiterate this enough for future couples, I would hire Jaclyn in a heartbeat as she is extremely talented, flexible, accountable, honest, patient, and she truly views and treats your wedding like she’s planning her own family members wedding! I plan to hire Jaclyn for every one of my and my families life events in a heartbeat!!