Summer Sisters Weddings & Events

If you are considering hosting a wedding on Block Island hiring Katie and Lauren is an absolute must. My then-fiance and I went back and forth for quite a while on whether or not hiring a wedding planner really fit into our budget. From the moment we started working with Katie, we knew we had made the right decision. I cannot tell you how many times throughout the year++ we were engaged that we looked at each other and said "Thank god for Katie though". Our venue changed management, COVID surged, vendors did not respond for months, our welcome party venue cancelled (then un-cancelled), a hurricane hit the week before the wedding and through it all Katie remained calm and more important than that she made us feel confident that our day would go off without a hitch. I love my husband infinitely but I would be lying if I didn't say that in the days leading into our wedding I may have loved Katie more.

After multiple postponements of our Florida Keys wedding plans, my fiancé and I decided we did not want to wait any longer to be married. Block Island holds a special place to both of us, so we began to plan a microwedding around our families’ existing summer vacation plans. Given we only had about four weeks to pull this together, we reached out to Katie at Summer Sisters for assistance. She provided design ideas and local vendor suggestions, as well as talked us through the ever-changing event restrictions due to the pandemic. She was available for weekly calls and frequent e-mails throughout our quick planning process and — although she was unable to be on-island for the event — put us in touch with her business partner’s niece, Georgie, who (along with her own fiancé, Pete!) was the most amazing day/weekend-of coordinator we could have asked for. Our wedding and after party seriously looked like we had spent MONTHS in designing and planning — it was absolutely beautiful! Every detail was as if we had done it ourselves, yet all we and our families really had to do was show up. Our 30 guests were thrilled with how the evening turned out, as were my now-husband and I. Even though it was not the date or venue or really anything we had initially imagined, our wedding was so, so perfect. Thank you Katie, Georgie, and Summers Sisters!

Lauren and the summer sisters team were absolutely incredible. From the moment we started working with Lauren her professionalism and knowledge set my mind at ease. Her organizational and planning skills were top notch, I truly don’t know what we would have done without her. Lauren went above and beyond to ensure nothing ruined our day....not even a hurricane! If it wasn’t for Lauren and her quick thinking/ crisis intervention our wedding could have been a complete disaster. Thanks to Lauren, both myself and our guests were astonished how we were able to pull off such a perfect wedding following a hurricane. Thanks to Lauren and her team, our wedding weekend was truly unforgettable .

I can say without a doubt that hiring Lauren of Summer Sisters was the best decision I made in the whole year of wedding planning. I grew up on Block Island and knew most of the vendors I wanted to use, have helped a lot of my friends plan their weddings there, and am a pretty organized person, so I started out the whole process thinking I (along with my very patient and wonderful mom) could pretty much handle the planning. Ha! Between working full time in a job that has me traveling frequently, moving into a new house, and dealing with all the Block Island factors from across an ocean (we live in London), I was overly optimistic, to put it lightly. A few months before the wedding, I had a lot of the major boxes ticked but my plans for a wedding day coordinator fell through, and I reached out to Katie and Lauren to see if they still had space to help me out. Despite already having two weddings booked on BI the same early September weekend, they worked out a plan to provide us with their day-of coordination services. Lauren had check ins with us on a regular basis leading up to the wedding, then they brought another expert planner who they’d worked with before for the weekend to be our day-of coordinator. After our first conference call with Lauren, my mom and I texted each other immediately afterwards feeling like a huge weight had been lifted now that we had someone keeping us organized, and who we quickly knew we could trust with anything to do with the wedding, from small details to big coordination. Throughout the months of working together, we got to appreciate Lauren’s vast knowledge of everything Block Island wedding related, her can-do attitude, and her practical and organized approach. To top it all off, she is an absolute joy to work with! Fast forward to the week of the wedding, and Hurricane Dorian was creeping up the East coast, threatening the arrival of about a third of our guests, the stability of our tent, and our general sanity :) Lauren kept me calm, was always one step ahead of things with a Plan B (and C, and D), handled speaking to all our vendors and getting our two off-island vendors over to the island early, and generally saved me from a boatload of stress! After a Friday filled with 40+mph wind gusts, cancelled ferries, and sideways rain, Saturday dawned clear and beautiful. Kelly, the person Lauren brought in to execute all our day-of plans, stepped in seamlessly and was absolutely wonderful to work with, too. Everything went off without a hitch, and I was able to enjoy every minute of the day because I trusted all the details were in the best hands. Even if we might have been able to pull off the planning ourselves, I am certain that, if it weren’t for Lauren and the Summer Sisters crew, I would have not been anywhere near as relaxed and able to focus on the joy of marrying my person in front of all of our dearest family and friends. Which, at the end of the day, is what it’s all about! Thank you again, Lauren; we are extremely grateful for all of your help and cannot recommend you and your team enough.