Lauren Heim did an amazing job handling the implementation and coordination for my wedding on…read moreSaturday, September 28, 2013 on my father's farm in Emporia, Kansas! As a former event planner, I interviewed several potential wedding coordinators to provide day of wedding coordination. I was incredibly impressed not only by Lauren Heim's answers to my questions and professionalism, but also the questions that she asked me. She clearly knew what issues were important and had a problem-solving approach, true signs of a great event manager. Due to our conversation, I realized that rather than merely a "day of" coordinator, I really needed a "two day" coordinator for day before and day of given the size, scope and unique challenges of my wedding. Lauren clearly has a natural talent for event coordination and a passion for weddings. My initial intuition about her abilities was spot on; Lauren is a natural event planner and hard working entrepreneur!
Once I hired Lauren, I was impressed by her attention to detail and so enjoyed her overwhelming positivity. Your wedding is obviously supposed to be a happy event, but can often have a high level of stress as you plan your "best day ever." Lauren does a great job of providing feedback, fresh ideas, and an optimistic attitude as you battle through a huge list of to-dos and decisions.
Lauren and her husband Andrew came down to my father's farm to walk through the property several months before the wedding. She arrived with a potential schedule for set-up and the wedding, a ceremony plan, a list with contact information for our vendors, and a list of pictures to be taken. She also took tons of notes and pictures of everything. Leading up to the wedding Lauren followed up with all of our vendors and acted as our point of contact for all of our guests and vendors in the days surrounding the wedding so that I could focus on enjoying the experience and relaxing rather than the details and implementation.
My wedding presented several unique challenges for Lauren: 1) It was huge, we had a 300 person guest list and 170 attendees. 2) The wedding was at my father's farm, meaning there was no infrastructure for weddings, we had to bring in every vendor, chair, table cloth, centerpiece, etc, etc. 3) The wedding was in rural Kansas, so Lauren had to travel over an hour from her home base in Manhattan and couldn't easily run to pick up extra items, meaning she needed serious preparation and emergency plans. 4) The wedding took place in Kansas, but I live across the country in Washington, DC. Lauren did a great job working with me across a distance. 5) Finally, the wedding was outdoors and the day before the wedding we still had an 80% chance of rain, meaning Lauren had to be flexible enough to implement either the rain plan or the sunshine plan up to the very last minute. We lucked out and the rain ended by late morning the day of the wedding, allowing her to implement the sunshine plan right before our guests arrived.
Lauren had a "can do" attitude. I came up with a bunch of crazy to dos and a long list of things that needed to be implemented and she did every single one plus dozens of others I never even anticipated. Lauren and her husband Andrew worked incredibly hard for two days straight at my father's farm, rarely stopping for food or to catch their breaths. My father was highly skeptical of the need for a wedding coordinator, but the day after the wedding he firmly agreed that Lauren and her husband Andrew were worth every dime we paid and then some, given their hard work and positive attitude.
Lauren also has a great eye for detail and design. While we had purchased lots of lighting, pumpkins, burlap, haybales, centerpieces, flowers, and other items for decoration, we left the implementation of these details to Lauren and her husband. Lauren did an amazing job implementing and laying out our wedding, so that it looked beautiful and rustic, just like we wanted. Just before I walked down the aisle on my wedding day, I looked out over the gorgeous details that had been placed throughout my father's farm and stood in awe. Before my wedding day, I had in my mind an image of how things would look, Lauren implemented everything to make the wedding more gorgeous than I had even imagined.
