I had the pleasure of working with Robin Lewis for nearly a year while planning the wedding of our daughter held on May 26, 2019 in St. Helena. I had interviewed a few local wedding planners but the moment I connected with Robin the search was over. From the get go, Robin made feel at ease. I felt I could rely on her to guide me through the stressful wedding planning process. She listened to me, respected my perspective but as and when needed, she did not hesitate to offer candid advice. Most of all she worked diligently with my daughter, who lives in Chicago, to execute the wedding plan and to translate her vision into reality. As expected, the wedding turned out to be an amazing success and we received countless compliments from family and friends who told us that it was one of the best weddings they had ever been to.
The wedding itself was much more involved than a typical wedding (almost an 8-hour long celebration) and required a herculean effort to orchestrate and stick to the timeline. This was because both a Hindu ceremony and a Christian ceremony were performed on the same day and involved a change of wedding attires, makeup and hair, and reconfiguration of the Mandap (Chuppah) to an Altar. This required Robin to make numerous iterations to the time line, make sure that the wedding party was on board, and to seamlessly transition from one ceremony to the next.
The ceremonies were outdoors-- the day before the wedding it became clear that it was going to rain, so we had to scramble to rent a tent. This. however, would throw off a very carefully planned wedding timeline that Robin had created for the vendors and the guests unless the pitching of the tent started between 6.30- 7 am. Robin, a consummate professional, rose to the occasion and drove 25 miles at the crack of dawn to get to the venue, well ahead of the arrival of the rental company. From then on until almost midnight, she worked tirelessly to make sure that everything went as planned and that every minute detail was taken care of.
As a wedding planner, Robin did all that was expected of her and then some. She was easy to contact, and responsive to our needs. She recommended vendors for me to interview, reviewed each vendor contracts with a fine-tooth comb and made sure that even a tiny omission did not go unamended before I signed the contract. Robin conducted rehearsal, and coordinated vendor arrivals and deliveries with our venue. She ensured that ALL our personal items including wedding gifts, mementoes, the guest book, memorial pictures, champagne flutes, polaroid guest pictures, the wedding cake etc. were returned to us safely and that the venue was left clean. It was a blessing to be able to enjoy the wedding day without much stress at all.
Robin was not only a wedding planner to us but also like a member of the family. I could sense that she too wanted the wedding to be as perfect, magical and successful as the family had envisioned, and Robin used the tools from her vast and varied experiences to navigate the process and to actually ‘Make it Happen!’ If you are looking for an excellent wedding planner, I highly recommend that you reach out to Robin Lewis.