Denise Lillie Engagements Reviews
Reviews
5.0 out of 5 rating
5.0 out of 5 rating
67 Reviews
100% recommend it
Awards
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![Shikha]()
Shikha Sent on 08/27/2019Our Royal Wedding
Brides, if you are looking to book Denise for your big day, I wouldn't hesitate even for a second. Hands down, the best decision we've made.
My husband and I are both originally from Chicago but we decided to have our wedding in the Bay Area as we fell in love here. Being the control freak that I am, I decided to originally tackle the wedding planning myself. About 6 months in of planning while working my full time job, I was so completely overwhelmed and exhausted. Cue in, the best decision I made in the wedding planning process! I interviewed a few wedding planners but Denise immediately stood out. I hired her for partial planning which included set check in calls a few months out, bi weekly as we got closer, and every single day as our wedding day approached. As the day approached, my stress levels decreased as my trust in Denise grew.
Given our wedding weekend involved 4 different events, there were sooo many moving pieces which involved constant coordination. Denise and her team handled it with absolute ease. Everything ran on time and smoothly at every single event - we got SO many compliments from guests who were so happy that the Sangeet started on time, baraat didn't run late, the ceremony was wrapped up early (which never happens in long Indian weddings), and that the dinners was served on time. My husband and I also appreciated how Denise looked out for us the entire weekend. She made it a point to bring us food after the ceremony and during our reception to make sure we were taken care of, listened to all our needs and executed them flawlessly. Denise is truly the reason that my husband and I could enjoy every moment of our wedding events to the fullest extent. Our parents were also able to relax and enjoy our events because coordination was being taken care of so well.
Denise's passion, drive, and execution is unparalleled and I want to thank her and her team for helping us create such happy memories for us. I would recommend her & her team wholeheartedly to any bride looking for a seamless and beautiful wedding experience. Thank you for everything Denise!
Denise Lillie Engagements's reply:
Thank you for these lovely words ... most importantly thank you for trusting our team we Loved every minute Of working with you both ! -
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Natalie L. Sent on 03/27/2019Fairytale Wedding Comes True
Denise and her team are exceptional to work with. I only interviewed one wedding planner and the moment we met Denise, we knew we would be in good hands because I am a A type and so is she, therefore we both know we get stuff done! :) I did partial planning with Denise and having her guidance was so helpful through my whole wedding planning process. She a great listener, super sharp, solution provider and is always there when you need her at anytime. Through stressful times, she kept us calm and made us realize that things were not as bad as them seemed! She also has great taste and has great expertise in design and built great relationships working with other vendors. The day of our wedding, we had some last minute situations that came up and she and her team handled everything so well. My husband and I got to enjoy every moment of our wedding stress free and we got to eat everything! I truly miss working with Denise, but now we have became friends and I'm so glad I picked her to be my wedding planner. Denise and her team are one of a kind, I would pick them all over again in a heartbeat!Denise Lillie Engagements's reply:
Aww thank you so much!!!! Loved being your wedding planner! It means so very much to us that you trusted our team!
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Joypreet K. Sent on 02/19/2019Unforgettable Sikh Punjabi Indian Wedding
A professional wedding coordinator is one of the best investments that a bride and groom can make for their wedding. I cannot begin to imagine how we could have celebrated our traditional Punjabi Sikh wedding events without Denise and the Royal Engagement team. Most Indian and Pakistani weddings are very complex, and consist of multiple events over a period of 4 to 8 days or longer sometimes, and for each event, there are decorators, photographers, videographers, musicians and/or DJs, food caterers, make up artists, hair stylists, drivers, florists, dress makers and tailors, and so on, and so on. Denise Lillie and the Royal Engagements team were a tremendous help to us in the final month of our wedding.
My now-husband was reluctant to hire a wedding coordinator, and it took a lot of time to convince him, by which point, we were only about one month away from the start of the wedding. Even with such a limited timeframe, Denise was still willing and able to take over almost all aspects of the wedding planning, which was a huge relief to us. Denise and team Royal Engagements are very reliable and proactive. I was the bride, I am white / Caucasian, from an Irish-American Catholic family; the groom, my now-husband, is Punjabi Sikh, he and all his family from Northern India. Our wedding could be described as intercaste, or interracial, or intercultural, etc, although all of our events and rituals were of the Punjabi Sikh and Indian tradition, and our wedding ceremony was in the Sikh Gurdwara Sahib of San Jose, as I converted to that faith.
I really wish that we had hired Denise sooner, but that was our mistake. If there had been more time, Denise and her team could have taken over literally every detail. It was not possible to take over everything in such a short amount of time because there were so, so, so many events and vendors, and so many to-do lists, papers, schedules, accommodations, cars, houses, apartments, shops, salons, online retailers, shipped packages, so many guests and family, and international arrivals both people and packages from India, Canada and Pakistan. My goal as the bride was to relax; I did not want to have to deal with planning, and especially last minute errands or lots of phone calls. I just wanted to enjoy my wedding and enjoy hosting our love ones and people we care about; also, I wanted to be pampered like a traditional Punjabi Sikh bride, and not stress about anything. This is where Denise was very sympathetic; she came and took all the burden away from the me, so that I could just relax and enjoy being the bride.
Denise is very skilled at respectfully interacting with individuals of all types of personalities, cultures, religious faiths, races/ ethnicities, genders, ages, and moral attitudes. To put it lightly, not everyone accepts the concept of a wedding coordinator, especially in traditional Indian culture, where --at least in my experience -- it is expected that the bride's and groom's family members do everything. There were countless conflicting opinions and disagreements about how the wedding should be, and how the bride and groom should act, and so on. Sometimes, my now-husband, as well as some of our Punjabi Indian family members, even a few of our Punjabi friends, would challenge Denise or confront her (which they were never supposed to do); other times, some of our Punjabi Indian family members wanted to take charge of certain aspects of the wedding (like the ladies' henna, for example) and were very reluctant to work with a professional wedding coordinator. However, during such times, Denise was able to skillfully navigate through these difficult interpersonal situations, to reassure everyone with positive and helpful responses, and, all the while also, to focus on the vendors, itineraries and to-do items for the wedding events.
Denise and the Royal Engagements team were able to prepare the South Hall for the pre-wedding ceremony breakfast and post-wedding ceremony lunch at the Sikh Gurdwara Sahib in San Jose. The South Hall is a multi-purpose room, sometimes used for children activities, other times used for education classes, still other times used as a cafeteria and reception room. For our wedding ceremony breakfast and lunch, which would occur there, we wanted the South Hall to be converted into a traditional Sikh Langar Hall. Specifically, we wanted white sheets covering the entire floor (it was a very large room of more than 4,000 square feet of space), and atop the white sheets would be long strips of carpet for the guests to sit and eat their meals. In the Sikh faith, the religious participation in "Langar" is always done with everyone sitting on the floor to eat the meal. The preparations for the South Hall included a major clean up and moving of lots of random furniture, then hanging an end-to-end curtain 50 feet wide and 16 feet tall to conceal all that random furniture and clutter. The morning of the wedding ceremony, Denise and her team were arriving at my apartment at 4:30 AM to get my hair and make up started, as well as my mom and sisters, with the hair and makeup team, and then they went driving to the Sikh Gurdwara Sahib around 5:30 AM to finish the preparations and make sure that the South Hall was ready for the decorators and caterers. Ultimately, Denise and the Royal Engagements team completed the transformation of the South Hall into a beautiful Langar Hall. Better still, is that Denise knew and had already worked with most of our vendors (caterer, photographer, decorator), and therefore the coordination of the wedding ceremony events at the Sikh Gurdwara Sahib went smoothly, as planned. Denise is an honest person, and she truly wants to be helpful to people. We definitely recommend Denise and Royal Engagements for Pakistani, Indian, Punjabi, Hindu wedding events including Sangeet, Mehendi / Mehandi, ceremony, and reception party. -
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![Nina]()
Nina S. Sent on 12/17/2018Denise at d.Royal Engagements will give you a wedding better than you could have ever imagined!
If you want the wedding of your dreams, work with Denise and her team at d.Royal Engagements. You will be so taken care of, you will have the most personalized and tailored service, and, as a HUGE bonus, you will get to plan your wedding with hilarious, sweet, and kind Denise. PLEASE benefit from the extensive research, vetting, phone interviews, etc etc etc that I already did and that all led me to Denise!! Our beautiful, seamless, dream wedding was three months ago, and it still feels impossible to try to put into words how grateful we are to her.
We worked with Denise to plan our multi-day, blended Hindu/Christian destination wedding in the Bay Area. We live on the east coast and our parents are in the midwest and the south, so we really relied on Denise to be our major point of contact and coordination in every way. To add to the distance, we also had three separate events at two locations: our Friday night Sangeet/Mehndi was at a hotel venue (where all of our guests were staying), our Saturday morning wedding ceremony was at a vineyard about 45 minutes from the hotel, and finally our Saturday night reception was back at the hotel. If that sounds complicated, it's because it was! I promise you - nothing is too much or too complicated for Denise.
First, Denise put together the very best vendor team for us and for our wedding. Her recommendation is all you need, and it's impossible to overstate how comforting and how much time you will save when you know that you can trust your wedding planner implicitly. Denise is honest about each vendor's strengths and their weaknesses - even the ones she loves and works with all of the time. In the end, Denise matched us with the absolute best people for our specific vision (not just a cookie cutter wedding) - drawing on her extensive experience, contacts, and instinct. We really feel like we had the best of the best for EVERYTHING - food, decor, flowers, music, mehndi, hair/makeup, photography, videography, etc.
Second, because we all live out of town, we had to get a lot done during the few times we were able to visit San Francisco leading up to the wedding. Denise put together amazing and efficient power-planning weekends. She maximized the number of vendors we were able to meet with and ensured we left town with all of the information we needed. It is hard to imagine planning a destination wedding without Denise’s organizational prowess.
Third, Denise did so much more than help us plan our wedding in the weeks and months leading up to the big day. She was also a coordinator to make sure all of the wedding components came together seamlessly during the weekend itself. From making detailed schedules with vendors to make sure they were set up when they needed to be, to running all over town to pick up last minute pieces of decor, wine, and cocktail ingredients, Denise took so much off our plate. We were able enjoy the events as they occurred, confident that Denise was running everything behind the scenes. As an example, our priest accidentally drove back to the city after our ceremony before signing our marriage license. Neither our parents nor we had any idea this had happened until weeks later. Denise had one of her assistants slip out, meet the priest, and get the license signed before anyone noticed it was missing. That is the kind of last-minute unforeseeable accident that could unduly stress out the bride and groom and their families on the day of the wedding. With Denise, you don’t have to worry about it! We can’t tell you how much our guests gushed about how smoothly everything went.
Fourth, because of the scale of our wedding, it was very important to us to get the best price possible for each aspect of the weekend. Denise doubled as a skilled negotiator in helping to get prices down whenever possible by leveraging her relationships with vendors and deep knowledge of what the market rates are. When Denise told us we had gotten the best deal possible, we knew it was true. And when Denise told us something or someone was worth splurging on (always with a recommendation for how to accommodate that in the budget), we trusted her opinion.
We could not have been more pleased with Denise and the role she played in making our wedding perfect. She has an eye for design, a talent for learning what her clients like and what they don’t like, an incredibly friendly disposition, and the strength of personality to bring together dozens of vendors, hundreds of guests, and a VERY type-A couple. We recommend Denise without reservation. We love and miss you Denise!!Denise Lillie Engagements's reply:
Nina and Mark!!! I’m so speechless..thank you for the epically kind words... of course you’d form your review as a legal argument.... I miss you guys so much already and feel so honored to have shared this experience with you! -
![Har]()
Har Sent on 10/06/2019Book her!
This review is long overdue! I totally completely and wholeheartedly agree with all of the other reviews posted here. I hired Denise for my wedding and it was one of the best decisions we made. First of all our wedding was a luxury wedding that lasted a week long including two big Indian Sikh Punjabi families. She was responsive, creative, very respectful to what everyone wanted, and most importantly fun to work with. Very easy going and easy to talk to. The best part was she included unlimited text communication. I felt like I was constantly texting her on WhatsApp and Instagram every time I got inspired about a new wedding idea, not only did she keep track of it but she was always excited to hear for me. The most complicated part about our wedding she handled with ease And grace. A week before our wedding week we had to postpone ...Denise handled all of our vendors and closed everything out leaving us in a good place to pick up our wedding six months later, keeping most of our deposits to be reused with many of the same vendors. Since then we have had her plan and decorated my baby shower and daughters first birthday party( which was like another mini reception(125 people)-Indian style). Definitely will continue to use Denise and Denise Lili engagements for all of our family events and functions. I couldn’t imagine working with anyone else. book her! You won’t regret it! -
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