About this vendor
Your Dream Wedding, Authentically Crafted, Expertly Guided.
Planning your wedding should be a joyful experience, not a source of endless stress. We understand the overwhelming feeling of navigating countless choices: the perfect venue, finding the right vendors, blending cultural heritages, and crafting a unique design that truly reflects your personalities. You've poured hours into research, only to be met with more questions and uncertainties. It’s starting to feel like you need a vacation from wedding planning.
That's where we step in.
We specialize in creating unique, elegant wedding celebrations that authentically reflect you. We understand the beauty of diverse unions, especially cultural and multicultural weddings, and bring expertise in blending traditions seamlessly.
Here's how we help:
Personalized Experiences: We go beyond simply organizing events. We design weddings that honor your heritage, personalities, and dreams, ensuring every detail resonates with your unique journey.
Creative Vision & Solutions: We bring your unique vision to life, regardless of style, color, or concept. From grand celebrations to intimate gatherings, we handle it all. We help you create the perfect blend of traditions and design elements that tell your story.
Honest Guidance & Expert Support: We're your trusted advisors, offering transparent communication and expert assistance. We’ll answer your questions about menu choices, design, timeline, and anything else you need.
Inclusive Celebrations: As a woman and multiracial-owned business, we celebrate love in all its forms. We are experienced in blending cultures and religions to create a harmonious and meaningful celebration.
Your Wedding, Your Way: We empower you to create a wedding that is a true reflection of your dreams, taking the stress out of planning and allowing you to fully enjoy your engagement.
Let us transform your wedding vision into a beautiful, peaceful reality so you can focus on celebrating your love.
Elegant & Sophisticated Affairs is a wedding planner and designer based in Chicago, IL.
Details
Business Attributes
- Woman-owned Business
Destination Weddings
- Destination Wedding Packages
- Destination Wedding Planning
Planning
- Budgeting
- Day-Of Coordination
- Destination Wedding Planning
- Full Service Wedding Planning
- RSVP Tracking
- Wedding Design
Wedding Activities
- Getting Engaged
- Engagement Party
- Rehearsals & Parties
- After Party
- Bachelor Party
- Bachelorette Party
Reviews
Your trust is our goal. Our community relies on honest reviews to help
you make those big decisions with ease.
5
out of 5.011 reviews
Elegant & Sophisticated Affairs is a best-in-class wedding planning service that is committed to bringing your wedding vision to life. From their collaborative and logical communic...
ation style to their solution-oriented and insightful approach, they were an invaluable partner throughout my wedding planning process. Christena, our planner, kept me organized with her awesome planning tools and check-ins, and was always accessible via email to answer any questions I had in a timely manner. She was incredibly efficient and dependable on my wedding day, ensuring everything ran smoothly with minimal interruption. I highly recommend Elegant & Sophisticated Affairs as your planning partner for your special day!
Words cannot describe how much my partner and I appreciate Christena. We truly do not think we would have come away from the planning and execution of the best day of our lives wit...
h as much sanity as we did without her. We opted for the "day of coordination" package and it was PERFECT for us. We were pretty confident we could handle the beginning and higher level stages of planning such as vendor selection and broad design/style, but knew we would need a lot of help when the rubber hit the road in the last few months before the big day.
Christena was there for us every step of the way to offer advice and assistance along our initial planning phase, includING contract review which was KEY, but really became life saving when it got down to the nitty gritty later on. Christena is a magician when it comes to vendor management and timeline creation, and was super up front with us when we got overwhelmed with different vendors handing us different timelines by letting us know that that her timeline would be the one others would work off of, so we could start to ignore that other noise from other vendors. Being able to email her with one-off questions for advice, having the giant checklist of all the little things you would never think of, and her monthly checkins were incredibly valuable to us as well.
The month leading up to our big day when we started to transition things over to Christena, was definitely overwhelming. Without her support throughout the month helping sanity check us, we definitely would've been committed.
The day of, Christena was a master at managing family members, different vendor arrivals, and all the behind the scenes that helped our day be perfect. I can honestly say my partner and I had ZERO concerns that everything would be taken care of and were able to enjoy our day so much more because of it. It also helped that Christena has such good relationships with Chicago vendors in general, even texting our venue manager when we expressed concern we hadn't heard from him about our DJ yet (that he was providing). Within 10 minutes he texted her back and we had a DJ. That is the magic of Christena! Could not recommend her or her team more, and couldn't imagine our day without her!
Christena was so helpful throughout the wedding planning process! Her knowledge and experience with weddings made our wedding go seamlessly from start to finish! So much so our gue...
sts even noticed!
The team at Elegant & Sophisticated Affairs could not have done a better job in helping us put our vision together for our wedding day. We could not be more grateful!
I hired Christena as a partial wedding planner for my June 2023 wedding. Christena did such an amazing job as our wedding planner it's hard to put everything into words! She was a ...
consummate professional throughout the entire wedding planning process. She does it all including coordinating with vendors, helping with contract reviews, dealing with day-of logistics and more! Her tireless and dedicated work made my wedding everything I dreamed of. She made the day of the event go as smoothly as possible so that I could focus on the things that matter to me like getting the perfect pictures and spending time with my husband and our guests. When we had an issue with one of our more difficult vendors trying to back out of something they were supposed to do, she was somehow able to get them back on track and avoid a huge issue and loss of a large sum of money. I am a very particular person and needed a lot of reassurance during the process and Christena was able to meet with me many many times to help make sure things were going how they should be. She has a ton of experience with weddings so she knows what works, what doesn't, and what problems to anticipate, and can help guide you along the way. She went way above and beyond and I would highly recommend her to anyone looking for a phenomenal wedding planner.
I am so glad we had Christena and her team with us on the big day. I spoke with quite a few planning companies and I immediately clicked with Christena and her pricing was super re...
asonable. We did "day-of" planning, but she really was there every step of the way. She was very responsive and professional throughout the entire process. She was just as excited as I was to create our dream wedding. I was planning the wedding in Chicago from a distance and she was so helpful in finding vendors to fit our vision and budget. It is incredible how many things you need to remember and Christena and her planning tool made the day go so smoothly. I LOVED the itinerary we prepared. I heard some people feel like planners take over the process and brides don't get a say, but I definitely didn't feel that way with Christena and the team. The team helped the day go incredibly smoothly, my family couldn't believe how easy and enjoyable the day was and I know it was because of Elegant and Sophisticated Affairs. Thank you ladies for making our wedding the best day ever!
My now husband and I interviewed multiple wedding planners, and sifted through dozens of online reviews until we came across Christena from Elegant & Sophisticated Affairs. She was...
EXCEPTIONAL. Thorough, organized, thoughtful, funny and so kind. I was dreading wedding planning before meeting her. She created a timeline that adjusted to our schedule, and with vendors/industry insiders. She gave tips and things to look out for that I would not have known if planning on my own. She understood our wedding vision, and brought us ideas/options that aligned, which made wedding planning simple. And she is incredibly affordable. I would not have gone through with a 200+ person wedding had she not been on our team. And on the day of my wedding, I had no single thing to worry about or coordinate - she handled everything, and my husband and I were able to fully enjoy, laugh and let loose the whole day. Our guests were so impressed. She and her team were one of the best parts of the wedding experience!
We used Elegant & Sophisticated Affairs for their wedding management service, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Calling Christena a "day of coordinator" or a "month of co...
ordinator" does not do her justice, because she was consistently available for questions and phone calls in the months leading up to our wedding.
Christena took the stress of logistics off of our plates, and made it so my husband and I could just show up at our wedding, have fun, and focus on our guests and each other. Christena was thoughtful in asking many questions in advance so she knew all of our preferences on the wedding day (where our decor should go, how we wanted her to handle certain scenarios, etc.) It was so helpful to have her expertise in working with our vendors. Everything went super smoothly because we were in great hands! I would recommend Christena to anyone looking for wedding management.
Was referred to ESA from someone in my opinion whom was less than professional in her communcation. So there was a little trepidation at first. However, from our first interaction...
with Christena at ESA to the end of the event Christena conducted herself in a professional and exceptional manner. From her initial communication, to vendor recommendations to all of the questionnaires to ensure the events moved smoothly were all investments that showed Christena cared. We used ESA for day of wedding coordination as well as a surprise birthday party the day before the wedding g. Yep, busy, busy, busy. Christena was there for a walk through at the venue which was 2 + hours from her home base. She stayed in contact throughout the mo ths leading up the the events and take the lead with vendor a onto or so before. She helped to keep us on track and was available via email with short turn around times. Although their was a LOT of planning prior to the wedding, Christena was more than helpful keeping us on track and ensuring the wedding day could be enjoyed without worrying about last minute pop up issues, and there were a few. Her team was able to resolve a bartender issue causing minimal interruption for guests. In the end Christena felt more like a guest as much as a vendor for each event. We are grateful for the servi e Christena provided and would highly recommend her and her company, ESA to anyone wanting a coordinator to help ease the stresses of such and important and joyous day!!
Christena did an INCREDIBLE job coordinating our wedding. I seriously don't know what I would've done without her. She was on top of everything and our day was absolutely perfect -...
exactly what I envisioned!
I was never concerned about Christena’s ability to get the things done that she said she would. She demonstrated she was able to do that long before wedding day came, so I trusted ...
her and was very confident in her ability overall.
My husband and I didn’t know where to start with wedding planning. Christena is knowledgeable about the area, has so many connections with vendors, and was flexible with being hands-on. We highly recommend her.
Christena was very helpful every step of the process. She made wedding planning super easy, was able to work within my budget, and was very accommodating. Christena made sure that ...
things felt right — that I was making my own decisions, and no one else’s.
I chose to work with Christena because she had worked with other couples with diverse backgrounds. She was able to bring in touches that celebrate both the American side and the Korean side of our cultures so that both were honored in their own special way. Christena was very thoughtful in that way.
Contact
Chicago and beyond
Elegant & Sophisticated Affairs