We have a wedding planner!

We finally have a wedding planner! We brought Nancy Park of So Happi Together onboard several weeks ago and she has been great so far! MrLovebird and I debated long and hard on whether we needed one for the entire year or just needed one for the day of. Our venue requires that we have one at least for the day of the wedding. We seriously interviewed no less than 6 planners. Some didn't offer enough evidence or photos of their past work, a couple were great but priced for the superstars, and still another that we were really excited to meet turned out to dissapoint us with her lack of quick communication and unimpressive first meeting.

Enter Nancy. I came across her via a blog post on StyleMePretty about her own wedding. She had planned basically her entire wedding (with a wedding planner for the day of). She had incorporated the most beautiful DIY elements into her wedding including hand made invitations. She was also so gracious and offered her designs she and her husband made to the StyleMePretty community. I was impressed and when I found out she had switched careers to become a wedding planner, I wanted to meet her! I emailed her around 1am and she literally emailed me a hour or so later around 2 or 3AM! Love it! (Since then her response time via email has always been super fast)!

We met her at a local coffee bar on a Wednesday night. She had driven from Orange County to Los Angeles and had just started to get sick from a wedding she did the weekend before. Despite all that, she was a breath of fresh air. She was sweet and warm and genuinely wanted to get to know us. We were a little apprehensive at first since she was fairly new and our venue is rather complicated because we have to bring in every single vendor, but she exudes a confidence and a calm strong presence that put us to ease. The latter also gives me confidence that she will not freak out if something goes wrong on the day of the wedding. She had about 5 weddings under her belt but over 20 more booked before our wedding next June. We figured by then she would have done so many there would be nothing to worry about.

We left the meeting excited. I really wanted to book her then and there. But we had one more meeting with another planner. Needless to say, after that meeting we knew Nancy was the one. We were so excited to realize we had found the planner that would be perfect for us. The next day Mr.Lovebird and I called her together to let her know and she was excited!

Since then, Nancy has come through with a list of photographers that are more within our budget, has received a fabulous quote from a caterer we would have never thought of, has come with us to do a site visit (and offered great ideas while we were there), re-evaluated and revised our budget, negotiated with videographers, and given us a timeline to follow.

So far we are very "happi"!