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My favorite wedding moments are rarely the ones on the timeline. I've seen a lot of beautiful ceremonies, spectacular rooms, gorgeous flowers and very good parties. But those aren't always the things I remember. I remember the father who stood quietly for a moment after seeing his daughter in her gown, with a single tear in his eye. The couple who just stood on the dance floor and promised themselves to each other. The granddaughter that danced with her dying grandfathe

There is something I've noticed in both events and business. A client brings a difficult problem to an expert.. And sometimes the first response is a list of reasons it can't be done. The budget isn't enough. The space won't work. The timeline is too tight. The logistics are complicated. That's not our process. That's not how it's usually done. Sometimes NO is absolutely the right answer. However, expertise should expand our options, not shrink them. Experie

Pinning Ni's Bout You may be hiring the wrong wedding planner for the right reason. A bride recently described a decision between two planners. Both were organized. Both communicated well. Both had strong experience. Planner One had the beautiful website, the polished Instagram, weddings that looked like what the bride envisioned. Planner Two had decades of experience, knew the area, knew the venue extremely well, had extensive experience with multicultural familie

Kirstin and Jim Let me tell you about my event this weekend. It was a smashing success. The client was happy, the guests had a wonderful time. The party looked exactly like it was supposed to look. What the client didn't know was that their caterer arrived late. The food wasn't ready when the guests arrived. The bar wasn't ready. And the catering team simply wasn't prepared to execute the event at the level it required. So my event team stepped in. They did th

Seeing What You Don't, but What Your Client Might Your business may be working exactly the way you designed it. That doesn't mean it's working well. There is something dangerous that happens inside successful businesses. People adapt. The awkward process becomes “how we've always done it.” The confusing hand-off becomes normal. The space nobody knows how to sell sits unused. The inquiry that takes too long to answer doesn't look like lost revenue — because nobody eve

Danielle's Decor at Aldie Mansion There are many things that can disguise the hidden problems at a successful venue. A full calendar can. A beautiful property can. A recognizable name can. So can awards, glowing social media, impressive photographs and years of doing business. When customers keep coming through the door, it's very easy for a business to assume the experience must be working. But sometimes customers come because they love the venue, or the food, or the

Kevin and Victoria's Ceremony I recently read a comment from a bride who was being made to feel guilty because she chose to have her wedding on a Friday. Not because Friday created some terrible hardship. Because other people didn't like her choice. She chose a holiday weekend, which gave her guests an extra day to travel and for her sister who is in medical school and has a break so she can attend. So, I thought: when did planning a wedding begin to require this much

Photo Credit: Kate Neal In 2019, I wrote an article called Integrity. I went back and read it recently. Seven years later, after thousands more conversations, decisions, problems, customers and experiences, I realized something. I wouldn't change the principle behind it. At the time, I wrote about the different chapters of my professional life. I had spent more than twenty years in the restaurant business, including running some of Philadelphia's best restaurants.

Jacquiline Not every couple needs a wedding planner. There. I said it. After more than 20 years of planning weddings, I know there are couples who are perfectly capable of handling much of the planning themselves. You may already have your venue. You may have hired several of your vendors. You may even have a very impressive spreadsheet. But that doesn’t mean you won’t reach a point when you think: Are we doing this right? Maybe your budget isn’t behaving the way

Parque Ridley Creek Photo Credit: Kate Neal Apparently there's a money saving wedding strategy making the rounds: don't tell your vendors you're having a wedding. Call it a corporate event. A gala. A team-building event. Anything, apparently, except what it actually is. The theory is that once the word wedding disappears, so does the mysterious "wedding tax." There's just one problem. Your wedding professionals need to know what they're planning. When I raised this

Alyssa and Nick I recently read an account from a bride who attended a post-booking event designed to introduce couples to elements of the wedding experience they had already purchased. She arrived excited. She left worried. The name of the company isn't important. What happened to the customer's confidence is. The bride described disappointing food and drinks, as well as an element of the event she had specifically been told she would see that wasn't there. These

You may not need a wedding planner to tell you what time the florist is arriving. You need one when the florist isn't arriving. You don't need a planner simply to tell you what's written in your venue contract. You need one who understands what isn't written there, and knows which questions still need to be asked. You don't need someone standing beside you all day holding a clipboard. You need someone who has spent enough years doing this to notice the problem developing

As a customer, when you ask a question to a venue or a vendor, the answer, “I don't know” isn't necessarily bad customer service. Sometimes the person you're speaking with genuinely doesn't know the answer. The problem begins with what happens next. “I don't know. You'll have to call someone else.” “That's another department.” “I'm not sure who handles that.” And suddenly the customer has been handed an organizational problem they didn't create. Where is the chain of c

Businesses spend enormous amounts of time creating brands. The right logo. The right photographs. The right website. The right words: Luxury, elevated, curated, exceptional, bespoke. There is nothing wrong with any of that, marketing matters. But eventually something happens that no amount of branding can control. The customer walks through the door and that's when the brand promise meets the business. The beautifully designed hotel website doesn't matter very mu

Wave Hill- Wendy and Steven A beautiful wedding is not necessarily evidence of a good planning experience. I've been thinking about that distinction a great deal lately. I read it every day, brides who want to fire their planner weeks before the wedding, who review after the wedding and are disappointed in the performance of the planner. We see the photographs after a wedding. The flowers were magnificent. The room glowed. The couple looked beautiful. Guests danced. D

Meghan's bouquet Photo Credit: Kate Neal There was a period in my life when I was caring for my dying mother. At the same time, I was helping care for my grandmother. My young granddaughter was struggling through tremendous upheaval in her family and needed stability and reassurance. My adult daughter was struggling. And, as if life hadn't provided quite enough, a chimney collapsed in my 200-year-old house and filled it with soot. I was exhausted. I was overwhel

Kate and Dakota at the Family Farm Somewhere along the way, wedding planning became very complicated. There are venues with rules. Vendors with contracts. Families with opinions. Social media with expectations. Trends telling couples what they should want. And an entire industry of professionals, including planners, with very definite ideas about how things should be done. What I have learned after years of doing this work, I still come back to one very simple princi

Wendy and Steven's Wedding at Wave Hill Years ago, I wrote something that probably wasn't very popular with parts of the wedding industry. I told couples not to be overly impressed by awards. More than a decade later, I haven't changed my mind. In fact, I may believe it more strongly. We live in a world filled with badges: Couples' Choice. Top Professional. Editor's Pick. Award-Winning. Featured. Preferred. They appear on websites, social media profiles, email signa

Tented Wedding On An Estate In Bucks County We have become very good at counting stars. I'm not sure we've become equally good at reading what's underneath them. Reviews matter. I read them. You read them. Most of us wouldn't book a hotel, try a restaurant or purchase something unfamiliar without at least glancing at what other people have experienced. And when you're choosing someone to help with something as important—and expensive—as a wedding, of course you should

Observing How This Wedding Should Look When you first begin planning a wedding, you naturally focus on the things you know to ask about. The venue, the flowers, the photographs, the music, the food. But after more than two decades of planning weddings and events, I've learned that some of the most important questions are the ones couples don't yet know they need to ask. What isn't included? What happens if the timeline changes? Who is responsible for this at the e