My first draft of this review end up being four pages long. I scraped that because I know from experience you probably don’t need that much detail (yet) but just know: this is scratching the surface of what I have to say about my and my family’s wonderful experience with Gabrielle Stone and Stone Event Planning.
My now husband and I got engaged in December 2016. We live in the Bay Area and knew we wanted to have our wedding celebration in Boston in late summer with about 175-200 people. My parents, who live on Boston’s North Shore and generously hosted our wedding, suggested that we start by finding a skilled local wedding planner who could help make this dream a reality.
In January 2017, we interviewed a few different people by phone and found that we really clicked with Gabrielle. Before we even spoke to her, she had us fill out a questionnaire, which I thought was brilliant. It helped my fiance and I get on the same page about what mattered to us, and it signaled Gabrielle’s thoughtful approach (centered on understanding our hopes and facilitating our getting on the same page). During our first conversation, Gabrielle was prepared, curious, clear, firm, and funny. It felt like she got us - what we were/were not looking for, the constraints of our work lives, the way we want to approach this experience. She and my mom really hit it off too. We were off to the races.
(I cut about five paragraphs that essentially amount to the timeline of our wedding planning since you probably don’t actually need or want that detail.) The headline is that Gabrielle helped make our dream become a reality, in part by helping us figure out what the dream actually was. She framed all the key decisions; presented us with a tailored set of options that made sense for our priorities, style, and budget; connected us with creative, professional, generally wonderful vendors; built a planning timeline that balanced what she has learned from 13+ years in the industry with our own serious scheduling constraints; and facilitated periodic conference calls to ensure we were all on the same page and progressing as needed.
A note about the vendors. One of the coolest, most unexpected parts of this process was coming into contact with an amazing set of creative, talents professionals - from photographers to florists to musicians to make up artists and hair stylists and more. Gabrielle knows the industry and has built strong, enduring relationships with people across it; she helped us select great people to work with, who did an exceptional job delivering on our “vision.” It was a thrill to be part of their processes and to work collaboratively with them. And their work speaks for itself! It says a lot about Gabrielle that every single person we ended up choosing raved about her, her style, and her business. It made me realize anew that we working with a really special woman.