We booked Lola Grace after meeting Laura at a wedding expo event over a year before our wedding. Laura has a bubbly and energetic personality which is one of the reasons that drew us to her. Given that both myself and my fiancé were working ful...l-time and I knew that I would need help planning our wedding day along the way, we booked Lola Grace for Laura's Partial Planning Package. Since I am pretty detail-oriented and was incredibly excited about the design portion of planning our wedding, I thought that booking a vendor for Full Planning Services would be more than I needed. However, I thought that Day-Of Coordination wouldn't be enough to ensure that us, our family, and our friends wouldn't have to stress and help do set-up/tear-down during the wedding day.
We met with Laura over Zoom every-other or 1x/month to discuss timelines and to keep us on track as we were 8, 6, 3, and 1 month(s) out from our wedding. Some of these meetings were helpful, but given the amount of info that is on the internet, podcasts, and other resources to help couples during wedding, I am not sure if we needed the partial planning services. The partial planning package with Lola Grace does not include vendor communication which is one of the most time consuming part of wedding planning. Laura gave some recommendations for certain vendors like transportation and photo booths, but overall, we did the heavy lifting for researching which vendors would be best for our needs, finding our own contacts/navigating the hotel blocks (which can be very complicated), sharing information among key vendors (venue/catering, photographer, florist, HMU artists, etc) and brainstorming how our design vision would be executed. I didn't quite expect to do all of these planning pieces on our own. Had this been more clear, I think we would have gone with booking day-of coordination. However, the day-of coordination did not include full event break-down which was one of the major perks of the partial planning package for us. Perhaps booking for Day-of or the Full Planning package would have been the better value for what we actually needed. Communication could have been a bit stronger throughout the planning process. During the months leading up to our wedding, Lola Grace relocated to northern Wisconsin so meeting in-person or having Laura visit our venue (in Milwaukee) before our wedding day was tricky.
That all said, Laura was INCREDIBLE during the day of our wedding and I think Day-of Coordination is where Laura truly shines. She arrived at the venue early to start set up and then drove back to the hotel to greet us during the late morning to check in on the wedding party. She communicated with the photographer, videographer, florist, and venue coordinator to make sure that the timeline was on track. The decor was set up to bring my vision to life. The ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception transitioned beautifully and Laura was impeccably attentive to our and our immediate family's needs (making sure we had water, drinks, and food throughout the night as well as being mindful of any "issues" that came up). At the end of the night, Laura did the break-down of the decor elements and organized everything back in boxes for us to pick up at the venue that next morning which was so helpful.
Overall, our wedding day ran smoothly and Laura was key in making this happen.