Natalie and Aimee were nice but I wouldn’t hire them again to plan an event.
I will start by saying, my wedding was beautiful and the best day of my life but it did come with some issues that were definitely avoidable.
Natalie and Aimee were... hired as partial planners for my July 2023 wedding, although I would not say they were needed for more than month-of. Because I had a backyard wedding, they would not do just month-of coordination, so we settled on partial planning. The difference only included a few extra zoom meetings of check-ins and tips and communication via email between meetings.
We communicated via email only, besides the few zoom meetings, and there were a few incidents in which my emails were not responded to within a day. I am definitely a planner and I like to have things ready way in advance. I had already hired a few vendors before even speaking with Consilium. I showed up to each meeting with a thorough checklist that I had made of details that I want, making their job much easier.
Natalie and Aimee arrived at 1pm for my 4pm wedding. I do not remember being told they would arrive this close to the ceremony time and was rather stressed about it to the point where I had to text them. In their official timeline, that was sent to me, it did not specify when they would arrive. Apparently in their contract, it says they will arrive "at least 3 hours before start time" but I still anticipated earlier and was not checking contracts on the morning of my wedding. They then didn’t set up my welcome sign or gift table in the agreed upon location. This impacted the entrance flow for guests into the ceremony section. Other little details were misplaced throughout as well, but it didn’t impose on the overall guest-experience. All tables were spoken about during meetings, the placement was physically shown during rehearsal, written in their AllSeated program, and still not done right.
The biggest issue of the day was the lack of communication when guests arrived. I intended them to enter through one gate on the far side of the yard, right into the ceremony, which Consilium was aware of. Because a lot of family was familiar, and nobody was outside to guide guests, they entered through every door and gate available. Guests didn’t sit right down in the ceremony area and we’re in the house and under the reception tent, all which should have been avoided. Meanwhile my planners were inside talking to guests and I had to tell them to go get people to their seats. Guests were in the house, seeing the entire bridal party, the BRIDE, in the way of catering… it was a chaotic mess. Then, because of this and the wrong placement of the card table, guests were handing us their cards later in the evening and some got misplaced.