DeWitt Planning Reviews
Reviews
4.8 out of 5 rating
4.8 out of 5 rating
13 Reviews
95% recommend it
Awards
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![Virginia]()
Virginia G. Sent on 07/29/2020So much more then a planner!
Jess is literally the first step to a dream team of wedding vendors! We often think of a venu + photographer when picking our first vendors but I highly recommend having picking a planner being one of the first things you do! As a wedding vendor AND bride to be myself I have not only seen the work of Jess personally, I have worked professionally with her on many shoots and weddings and she is always blowing me away each time! Her designs are unique, her personality is passionate and kind, and I happily refer my wedding clients to Jess! -
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![Jennie]()
Jennie T. Sent on 09/08/2021Jess is a magician with decor and florals!
We recently worked together on a destination elopement in Southern Utah with a tight timeline, and in 20 minutes, (not to mention the 103-degree weather) she pulled it all together flawlessly!
She is organized, has a great attitude, and is fun to be around!!!
As a co-vendor for weddings and elopements, I highly recommend her for your wedding planning and floral needs! -
![Sarah]()
Sarah W. Sent on 07/26/2020Creative, Kind and Dedicated!
I had the pleasure of collaborating with Jess on a styled shoot a couple weeks ago. She designed the whole shoot and it was the shoot of my dreams. The details were beautiful and fit the setting perfectly. You can tell Jess LOVES what she does and was so dedicated to making the day run smoothly and for it to look awesome. She was walking barefoot around in the mud setting everything up so she'd be perfect an awesome nature-loving couple! She even dug another photographer's shoe out of the foot deep mud. I'd recommend Jess to anyone planning a wedding! -
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Rebecca M. Sent on 07/27/2020
Photographer
I’ve been lucky enough to work with Jess on a few educations and literally cannot say enough about her. She is so creative and brought whatever convoluted vision I had to life for a beautiful elopement shoot. She was great at listening to me, coming up with things I had never even thought of, and executing those ideas to perfection. As a photographer I’ve worked with a lot of planners and designers that kind of end up leading the couple in the direction that they want (not the couple) because it’ll be cool for their portfolio or it’s the trendy thing to be doing but Jess actually listens to her clients and makes sure that their personality is reflected in the event and styling of the day, which I so so appreciate. Jess is also an incredibly fun and calming presence to have the day of. Whenever there’s an issue, which there always inevitably is, she takes care of it without the client ever knowing that there was something up in the first place. She takes so much stress away it is so invaluable. Also working with a planner is a long process and she’s just an absolute blast to have on your team throughout it all. When I get married I already know for a fact I’ll have Jess planning it all! -
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![Taryn]()
Taryn S. Sent on 10/30/2020So happy we chose Dewitt planning!
Jessica was amazing and helped make our day run smoothly and beautifully. Due to the events of the year, we had ever-changing wedding plans, including moving our wedding closer by two months! Jessica was flexible and responsive to everything. So happy we chose Dewitt planning to help with our perfect day! -
![Brittany]()
Brittany G. Sent on 11/01/2020Jess is the best
Jessica played a HUGE role in saving our wedding, as we moved our wedding venue from an established location to a backyard wedding. Everything was DIY and she took our items and vision and made it a masterpiece. Everything was BEAUTIFUL and everything we imagined and more. Not only did she set up and execute the wedding of our dreams, she coordinated our ceremony rehearsal in the pouring rain with no complaints and even brought a set of umbrellas for our wedding party and ensured everyone knew what they needed to do the following day. The day of the wedding was flawless - she arrived at the perfect time and took the stress right out of our hands. She coordinated with vendors as they arrived and set up, she directed us as we walked out of the ceremony to ensure perfect spacing and timing and she was our right hand woman throughout the entire event. Her personality is one for the books and we couldn't have chosen a better planner/coordinator. Jessica exceeded our expectations 100% and we absolutely recommend her for your special day! -
![Morgan]()
Morgan U. Sent on 07/23/2020Truly amazing
Honestly have so much to say about Jess and what she does, but all I can say is thank you. She made my wedding day, she was incredible! she was always there for my questions and concerns, she was down to help with my DIY projects, and day of she was truly amazing I had no stress in the world because I knew that she was working her butt off to make my day the best it could be. If you are on the fence about who to hire for any event, please don't hesitate to email Dewitt Planning & Design Co. amazing work for a truly amazing women behind it all! -
![Beth]()
Beth L. Sent on 12/11/2022Great eye for design but doesn't make the cut for medium weddings
If you're planning a medium+ wedding, I would not recommend hiring Jess.
First, I'll start with the positives: Jess did an AMAZING job with the flowers. We had hired her as our florist and I would highly recommend her for all of your floral needs. In addition to that I do think she has a good eye for design / aesthetics.
Unfortunately the negatives far outweigh the positives. We had a wedding of ~115 people. I believe Jess specializes in smaller weddings / elopements, and when we asked about her experience with weddings around our size she said it was no problem and she does these weddings all the time. Specifically, we were looking for a planner that was on the creative side as we do not have an eye for that kind of thing. That was the main reason we went with Jess - we really liked her vibe. The main lesson learned is that while creativity is nice, you really want to work with someone who is organized, proactive, and communicative. Jess was none of those things. We had to constantly stay on top of her, and if we didn't have a meeting we would go a month+ without hearing from her. When we did reach out, usually there was a huge time lag. Her auto-response said 48-72 hours, but I'd have to set myself reminders to follow-up with her a week later as I knew it was likely I wouldn't get a response. I do not believe Jess reached out to confirm vendors as I did that myself and one of our main vendors didn't even realize we had a wedding planner. Even simple things like putting together a schedule for the weekend to share with our family/wedding party, she just copy/pasted from the other vendors and didn't take the time to put anything in a chronological order to make it a comprehensive schedule. Luckily, I had a template from a friend that her wedding planner used and just did it myself.
We even had a meeting with Jess to talk about how poorly things were going and an action plan to turn things around (we were ready to fire her). While things got better for a short period, they quickly reverted back to lack of communication, disorganization, etc. My biggest regret is not firing her when we had the chance earlier on in the process. Working with Jess created more stress than I think it would have been just doing it myself and hiring a month-of coordinator.
If you're looking for someone for a small wedding or elopement, it seems like she does great with that from the reviews; and if you're looking for a florist I highly recommend her. But learn from our mistake and if you are having a somewhat larger wedding, hire someone who specializes in that size.DeWitt Planning's reply:
Hey Beth + Miles, Thank you so much for taking the time to review your services with us. We are so sorry to hear that your expectations weren't met in your time working with us. As you mentioned, we did have a discussion during our time working together, and new methods for us to communicate more effectively were established. Working in this industry, I work alongside all different minds, type A, creative.. people that prefer meeting in person, people that prefer phone calls... emails...texts etc, so finding a way to match my working style with every client uniquely is something I actively work towards. Some clients don't want updates unless there is something to update, some clients talk to me daily, and coming to me with your conversation during planning was so helpful for me to adjust what works best for you personally. The moment anyone brings any issues to my attention I want to make absolutely every effort to create a better partnership and I genuinely thought we did that successfully as I never heard of any displeasure post wedding. It was also in this call that I mentioned + clarified the package in which you had booked with us that was partial planning services. As there was some confusion + expectation of us to provide all the services of a full-service planner with the package you both currently had booked, so we went over expectations and attempted to clarify our roles moving forward so this issue wouldn't arise again. One of the main priorities in planning that was communicated with us, was the rehearsal dinner which was being planned by the father of the groom. The FOG wanted an entirely custom menu, and in many circumstances the rehearsal dinner planning took precedence over the wedding planning process at the time. The rehearsal dinner itself nearly surpassed the wedding in planning time + budget. We had faced many delays in working with the venue, and had to wait over 9 months to get the menu created as they worked with their catering team to even come up with a price. This did create a lot for many lulls in conversation, and response times were lower as I would spend weeks + even months calling nearly every three days to the venue for answers. Moving forward from our conversation, I looped you both in on the waiting game, even if I had no answer to report. I also offered to do weekly/bi-weekly update calls even if we had nothing to report, just to touch base as well. In our email kick back as well, there is a link for our clients to set up a time to speak with us at any time as well, and the majority of the time when you would send an email, you would utilize this to set up a meeting for the following days immediately after sending your email. In the meeting notes, you mentioned the your email is what you wanted to go over, so we would wait for the day of the call to go over the information rather than an email response as I thought that is what you had preferred. We had over 15+ meetings over that period of time, met in person at the venue, and up to the date of the wedding had nearly 10+ texting group chats. For the package you had booked, I was involved in every meeting involving the rehearsal dinner with FOG, wedding + brunch with MOG, and moving forward from this experience I have been a lot more firm in drawing the line on where my services start + end, as my intention of course is always to be kind + helpful, but the expectations moving forward get skewed and the line gets a lot more murky and I never want any confusion on what services I am contracted for. The fault in that is entirely my own, and something we have been very active in correcting + bettering myself on in being firm in the packages we offer. For example, for you two, you both contracted me for the wedding, and with the involvement of family, I allowed myself to move my focus to areas that I knew were pressing for you both + family, and I knew it was important for you both that your family was taken care of so that's where I put my energy and focus. At the end of the day, looking back on texts from the family after the wedding day, saying "good job" on rehearsal dinner or brunch are not my main priority, and the importance for me will always lie with my clients + their wedding day. I genuinely, wholeheartedly did everything in my power at the time to tackle all of the outside stressors and adjust myself in any way I could to be who you needed and I am really sorry to hear we still did not hit the mark. As for "copy and pasting" vendors' timelines, we did create a timeline for the event, and then we also received the timeline from the photographer that she had created on her own. I had coordinated with her as well on the timeline as I did not believe she allocated enough time for photos + I didn't want us to fall behind. Other items from her timeline were inputted into mine on honeybook as she had photo times laid out differently so I wanted to match, as well as updated in the shared google doc of the timeline you had created as well. On the day of the wedding, I was in group chats with both sides of the wedding party, and family members communicating the timeline. We sourced + recommended every vendor for all events including lighting, video, two seperate hair + makeup artists, as well as meeting with the venue/catering 15+ times, and photographer on the timeline. As for my qualifications in planning larger events, I have been in this industry for over ten years and while some of the weddings I do are micro-weddings + elopements.. I have worked well over 60+ weddings in my career from the 120-300+ range, in addition to working trade shows and events which have attendance in the thousands. Moving forward, we are not involved in planning events outside of the wedding day that we are not paid + contracted for to assure our main focus is where it needs to be. We have also utilized a new system called slack for us to have group chats with our clients to completely remove text communication altogether. This allows our clients to have direct communication with us like texting where we can send weekly updates, offer a "text-like conversation", and maintain our main communication being our couples. With every wedding we work with 8+ vendors, so that adds up to a lot of incoming emails daily, in this new system, only our clients are in it so it makes getting to + responding to their messages a lot quicker. We do have our email kick back to our office hours + our response times are listed within 48-72 business hours. We are in office Mon-Thurs, and at events Friday + Saturday, so emails sent at the end of the week or after hours have a longer response time in our policy. Thank you so much for taking the time to review your services with us. As for your review on the creative + floral side, I truly appreciate your recommendation + appreciate you adding that to your review. It was great to be able to create something I thought you would love.
Wish you all happy holidays! Kindness + love, Jess
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