Part 1, Spring 2020
Our first phone call (before even hiring her) was an hour long. She wanted to know who we were as individuals and as a couple, what we wanted for our wedding, and what services we might need. She's entirely a la carte, so we... could pick and choose our services, and she was not the least bit pushy. We decided that in addition to day-of coordination, she would also provide vendor recommendations, a timeline with planning tasks, monthly check-in emails, and contract review.
She knows the local vendors and has their previous contracts, so if they've offered deals to previous clients, she'll advocate for you to get the same. When it comes to actually asking for changes or addressing questionable policies, Jaclyn handles the dirty work for you in a professional way. Most of our vendors already knew her, and they sang her praises from the start. Her monthly check-in emails with my monthly "to do's" were fantastic and flexible. I was impressed in our first year and a half together, but once COVID started ruining our wedding plans, that's when we realized just how lucky we were to have Jaclyn on our team.
We decided on a Sunday evening at 9:30 PM that we needed to reschedule our wedding. My fiance and I are residents working 80 hour weeks, so no way we were going to be able to handle all of this coordination. But we never had to because we had Jaclyn. The next day, at 7:52 AM she texted me that she had new contracts for our band and florist. At 9:42 AM she had confirmed the makeup artist. At 9:49 AM, the venue. At 10:55, she had identified an associate of our original photographer (who would not be available on the new date) who could fill in and had sent me links to her work. Who is capable of this?! Jaclyn. Jaclyn is capable of this. Our friends and family kept asking how they could help and saying how stressful rescheduling must be. While the decision to postpone was difficult and sad, the rescheduling process was a breeze for us because Jaclyn took that on for us.
Part 2, After May 2021 wedding actually happened!
As if we could have loved Jaclyn more. We finally got to hold our celebration in May 2021, after two postponements. Jaclyn handled both postponements beautifully, rescheduling our vendors and obtaining new contracts without us ever having to lift a finger. Beyond that, she never asked for additional fees to extend her services. In the meantime, before our rescheduled wedding celebration, my husband and I had a baby, so we had that added to our plate in the months leading up to our event. Jaclyn again stepped up, communicating directly with our vendors and advocating for us when our caterer imposed some questionable COVID policies. On the day of, she was accompanied by two assistant planners, who were just as organized, attentive, and thorough as Jaclyn. It was clear that she sees them as extensions of herself, and we loved seeing them work together as a seamless team. They even checked in with me to see if I needed pumping or breastfeeding breaks during the event, grabbed food and drinks for us, and one of them looked after our son while we took photos outside. Members of our bridal party made multiple comments about how impressive Jaclyn and her team were and half-jokingly asked if she offered life planning. If we had to redo our whole day and could only rehire one vendor, Jaclyn and her team would be that vendor, no questions. Thank you, Jaclyn!!!