Part 1
Initially, my husband and I knew that we wanted someone to help plan our day, particularly since both of our mother’s had passed away and generally Mother’s are a huge support during this process. We also knew that we wanted a destinati...on wedding and as a I read about that particular type of wedding, it seemed that while there were benefits to this option, you had to rely on the staff at the resort for majority of your planning, which could be unpredictable and as a Type A bride, that was not gonna work for me. So I began searching the Knot and other sites for anyone (local or not) that could support with this. I came across Couture events and sent Suzanne the same information I sent to a half a dozen other wedding planners who stated they did “destination weddings”. Within the day, I had a reply back from Suzanne asking to have a phone conversation. During that initial conversation, she asked very poignant questions about what my vision was and why. She asked for a few days to look into potential venues (at this point we had not even discussed hiring her) & would come back to me with a few options. She came back with 3 options. It was now that I knew we had to hire her. Just from that 20 minute phone conversation, she had found 3 venues that were exactly what I wanted. It was clear to me that from this point on, she was going to understand what I wanted and make that happen. We had our first meeting with Suzanne and she had started outlining how she envisioned our wedding based on what we wanted. That is the best part about Suzanne. While she does tons of weddings, she knows how to ask questions to mold the day to what you want, not just follow what she thinks you should do or what’s on trend. The center of her “design” for our wedding was always about what we (and I mean we because she also makes sure my husband got his say during this process) wanted. We hired her immediately. Suzanne then quickly became my wedding planner, mother in carnet, and most frequent person in my email. She had meetings with us quarterly (we began the planning about a year out) to keep us focused on decisions and what items were next. But its not just keeping things organized that Suzanne did (which is what I hear most wedding planners do, and that’s about it). Suzanne helps design your wedding, she went dress shopping with me and friends, helped us decide on cool luggage tag save the dates and how to package them (she ordered a sample to ensure we’d like it and measured and weighed out all the packaging) so all we had to do was order them and follow her directions on how to put them together. Even though, we were having a destination wedding in Mexico, I’ll be as clear as I was with Suzanne this was not a Mexican wedding on the beach, this was a regular semi formal wedding just in Mexico. So the planning was on par with a traditional wedding. This required a ton of contact with vendors and the resort, which Suzanne managed impeccably. She was constantly negotiating different rates & added benefits for our guests, and keep in mind, the planning of the wedding becomes more complex when you have 70 people traveling to Mexico for 4 days. But Suzanne allowed us to stay on schedule with what we needed to do when & helped bring us options to make decisions against what we envisioned. For example, the early meetings are focused on are you having a bridal party, what’s the theme and colors, what are your budget priorities and had examples of those options.