I just beam when I see lovely letters come in from our brides about our team.  Of course I know we do a great job for our clients but it’s nice to be reminded now and again.  Here’s a fabulous letter from one of our October brides that I couldn’t help but share:

Hi Cristin!

We’re just back from Grand Cayman (I actually kissed a stingray!!) and I wanted to write a quick note to say a HUGE thank you for everything you did to make our day so awesome!!!  We truly couldn’t have done it without you!!  I know people always say that, but this time it is really, really ture!!  You made everything run so smoothly and we all felt so comfortable with you organizing the day!  From your quick, helpful responses to emails when we were far out, to communicating with vendors the week of, to lighting a million candles, tipping folks at just the right time, fixing my mistakes on guests’ names (oops!), and keeping us on schedule throughout the night, you were fabulous with ALison, our flower girl, and that wand was perfect and taking her to get her sundae first!  Her parents were so impressed with you and your skills.  You’re AWESOME and I “wish” I knew someone getting married soon so I could recommend you to them right now!!!  I’ll be singing your praises for a long, long time!  You made our wedding a success!!

All the best & much love,

Holly

Thanks for your note, Holly!

“Meghan and Eric’s wedding ceremony and reception were Saturday at Oatlands Plantation.

The event was absolutely perfect! – and in no small measure due to the attention to detail and determination of Rebecca. She was everywhere – but most importantly she was exactly where the action was before something could go wrong – and made sure nothing was allowed to go wrong.

Her recommendations covered the gamut from decorations to organization – and the kudos I received from family and friends from all over the U.S. and several foreign countries really belong to her.

I’ll recommend Rebecca to anyone as a wedding coordinator!  That recommendation also extends to your whole staff.

My sincere thanks for a job done extremely well – with courtesy and a professional attitude.

Jerry Kelly

FOTB”

Every so often I get an email or a note that reminds me why I love my job.  It’s such a great feeling to know that we’re making a positive impact on people’s happy memories.  I received this wonderful email from Hallie and Matt and just had to share.  I thought you might like to see it too:

Laura,

Hello from Hoi An, Vietnam!  We’ve been meaning to write you over the past two weeks as we’ve been traveling throughout Asia for our honeymoon, but couldn’t seem to find the time or 21st century Internet connection until now. However, our lack of expediency is no reflection of our amazing experience with your planner, Rebecca Dick.

As my wife, Hallie, can attest I was very much against hiring a planner for the wedding as I thought we could do it on our own.  Yes, winning your contest for the free planning eased a major part of my concern, but I still didn’t foresee the value of hiring someone to do the planning for us.  I’m not wrong often , but this time I was very wrong.  Without Rebecca, I don’t know what we would have done.  She was truly Super Woman and the key to our perfect wedding.

Where should I begin to sing her praises.  Let’s start from the beginning and our initial meetings with her.  Despite my initial reluctance of meeting with her, upon our first meeting on a Saturday morning in Starbucks we were immediately impressed.  Her organizational skills, knowledge of the planning world, and passion for her job were evident from the beginning.  We drew an immediate comfort with her professional skills and personable nature.  From there, things only got better.

In the weeks prior to our wedding, she handled everything flawlessly.  Her unbelievable organizational skills were crucial to us having a literally perfect wedding day.  If it were left up to us, I have a feeling our guests may still be talking about the wedding that never happened. She was an excellent source of knowledge and a sounding board for questions we had about music, food, favors, etc.  In our opinion, she went over and above the call of duty by meeting with us and communicating via email several times.

Now to the wedding day and the couple of days beforehand. I think that it’s natural for most brides and grooms to be nervous about their wedding day. Not necessarily about the person they’re marrying (at least I hope not), but more about the stresses of the “day” actually working out as planned after the culmination of a full year’s worth of work.  For us, that nervousness never set in…in large part because of Rebecca.  Not only did she assure us when we questioned ourselves, she took proactive steps to make us feel even better.  For example, I hired an independent ice cream truck that I had little faith in as there was a clear language barrier and I was never sure if he clearly understood that he was the ONLY dessert at our wedding. Rebecca knew this was one of my biggest concerns and went out of her way to get in touch with this guy numerous times before the wedding to ensure that he arrived and arrived on time.  With her help, he did and the ice cream was a big hit.  (AJ the Ice Cream man wound up being a nice guy and someone you should consider using now that we know he is reliable and actually does have an ice cream truck not a Camry with Mr. Softee music).  Just a small example of her diligence and concern for making us feel more comfortable about our wedding day.  In addition to her handywork with securing the ice cream truck, she made my wife feel extremely comfortable that every base was covered and that there was no need for us to worry about a thing. I could list several examples, but suffice it to say that she didn’t miss a thing.

On the actual wedding day, in true Rebecca style she took control of the evening and coordinated seamlessly with all of our vendors..  She ensured they were all there on time and from conversations afterward with the other vendors; they’ve all said she was a pleasure to work with.

So to summarize our gratitude for Rebecca’s work, the highest praise I can give her is to simply say that we had an absolutely perfect wedding day!  There was zero stress, anxiety, or problems throughout the night. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve relived our wedding night and still cannot think of a single thing that didn’t go as planned. In large part thanks to Rebecca our married life together has started off on the right foot.

Clearly Rebecca is only one person in your company and we thank you as well for the job Wish did!! We’ve already referred one friend to Rebecca and will be sure to recommend others in the future.

All the best and thank you!

Matt & Hallie Offen

Remember Kara & Art’s wedding at Collingwood last month?  The mother of the bride, Helena, wrote us a very sweet note after the wedding.  Here’s what she said:

“Laura,

Once more my warmest thanks for all you did to make Kara’s wedding such a success. I know you do this all the time, but for us this was once in a lifetime event. You jumped in without hesitation and did a wonderful job. I’ll be happy to recommed you to anybody who is looking for a wedding planner. You were not only efficient but also warm and kind. We all, but especially Kara and Art, will treasure that day as a very beautiful day when everything worked just right. Would you please let Ryan know that the event was a total success.

Please send my your bill for the luch!

Warmest,

Helena”

It’s been WELL over a year since we worked with Claire and Bobby on their wedding.  However, I still look back fondly on their wedding and remember how fun it was to work with Claire on the details.  Here’s the note they sent us after their big day:

“Dear Laura,

Thanks for being such a great planner for our big day!  We are so grateful for everything and wish you great success with your business — while I don’t think you need any luck — you’re doing great!

Thanks again,

Claire & Bobby”

Now that Trish & Justin are celebrating their first anniversary, I wanted to share a sweet note they sent me after the wedding.  We love hearing feedback from our clients and are thrilled every time we get a letter like this one:

“Dear Laura,

Thank you for our beautiful wedding.  Thank you for listening when I was frustrated about finding a venue.  Thank you for creating such a beautiful escort table.  Thank you for the increditble candy bar (everyone’s favorite!).  Thank you for the personalized guest book idea (another favorite – and great gifts for the parents).  Thank you for finding DaVinci’s.  Thank you for finding the Regeti’s.  Thank you for making Edelweiss happen.  Thank you for keeping us honest.  Thank you for not calling us out when we had crazy ideas.  Thank you for being the calming voice of reason…and thank you for being a friend throughout a very long year of planning weddings, honeymoons, and business school dreams.  We could not have had such an amazingly successful event without you.  We will always remember you as one of our favorite wedding day memories.

Sincerely,
Justin & Trish K.”

Kirsten and Daniel wrote us a sweet note after their wedding this past fall.  Here’s what they said:

“Dear Laura,

Thank you so much for everything you have done for us over the past year to make our wedding such a wonderful success.  You made the entire wedding day completely stress free for us both, and you were a true pleasure to work with.  no wonder the Washingtonian selected you as one of DC’s top wedding planners.

Thanks again,
Kirsten & Daniel”

Guess what we got??

WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced that Wish Special Events has won the 2009 Bride’s Choice Awards™!

In its inaugural year, the Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and honors vendors from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellent quality of service, responsiveness, professionalism, value of cost and flexibility. This year’s recipients represent the top three percent of WeddingWire’s vendor community, which includes over 100,000 wedding vendors from across the US. That means Wish Special Events is one of the very best wedding planning companies in the DC/Baltimore region.

Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the company, the Bride’s Choice Awards are determined exclusively by recent newlyweds through surveys and reviews.

“We are excited to launch this annual award program to honor high-performing vendors based solely on the experiences of our WeddingWire community,” according to Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “This year’s recipients have set the bar high, exhibiting excellent service and expertise in the wedding industry.”

Wish Special Events would like to thank our past clients for speaking on our behalf and helping us win the 2009 Bride’s Choice Award!  If you had a positive experience with Wish and want to share, we’d love your opinion.  Just click here to see our WeddingWire page and review us!

Here’s the sweetest note I received from Esther and Michael after their wedding:

“Dear Rebecca,

Michael and I sincerely thank you for all the time, effort, smiles, your great informational emails, determination and more that you put into our special day.  You made the whole planning process more fun…boy, do we wish we had found you earlier!  Like I’ve said before, all our friends, family, and even the vendors themselves commented they felt they were in good hands having you guide us through the day and complimented on how smooth the day’s events occurred.  I also received a lot of comments on how relaxed I looked throughout our wedding day and I really attribute it to knowing you were managing all the details, the guests, the decor, etc.  I didn’t have to worry about a thing!  From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for coming into our lives.  We feel blessed to have had you as our wedding coordinator and to also have made a good friend along the way.

Warmest Regards,

Esther & Michael”

Washingtonian’s Best Wedding Vendors List 2009

Transcript for those of you at work without sound:
“Hi everybody, thanks for checking out the blog today.  I wanted to introduce you to a new wedding planning magazine.  This is for the DC-area only.  This is Washingtonian Bride and Groom.  This is a brand new publication.  It just hit the newsstands on December 15th.  Those of you who are here in the DC area are probably familiar with the Washingtonian already.  They area  monthly publication.  Every year they publish a 100 Best Restaurants list and as part of that magazine they do the top wedding vendors in the DC area.  This year they’ve decided instead of just throwing it into the monthly issue, they would make their own wedding-only magazine.  It’s a nice big, fat, chunky magazine…I love the feel of it…it’s nice and big.  This is DC-only which I really like because there’s not a lot of DC-area magazines.  They ask local vendors questions, they have information on real weddings, and venues, and all kinds of great stuff.  We are on page 202 as part of their “Best of Weddings” list…we are right under a beautiful image.  I’ll scan that for you so you can read below what they said about us.  They said some really nice things.  I’m really excited that this magazine is out.  It’s going to be a bi-annual publication so it’ll be in December and in June.  We’re just so thrilled and proud to be in the Washingtonian again this year.  This is our second year we are being featured.  I wanted to tell you about the magazine so you can check it out for yourself.  If you are interested in a copy of the magazine, I have about ten extra copies which you can see by my big ol’ stack.  If you would like a copy, I have ten to give away.  Just leave a comment here on the blog and I will send one to your address.  Make sure you leave your email address so I can get in contact with you and we’ll either set up a time that I can drop it off at your home office or I’ll just pop it in the mail to you.  Have a great day everybody and we’ll chat soon!  Thanks.”