Our married friends told us it's *very* important to choose a good wedding planner. Luckily, I…read morefound Orchard Ave Events by googling "how much does it cost to have a wedding in Sonoma wine country?" One of the top hits was a very helpful article written by Brooke, which gave dollar value ranges with useful context. I sent her an inquiry and she got back to us promptly. From the first phone call, Brooke was personable, down to earth, and with her many years of experience in hospitality it was obvious she was well-connected to local vendors in Sonoma. She was keenly interested in getting to know us as a couple and helped us determine the things that were most important to us for our wedding.
We chose a partial planning package: a highly collaborative arrangement with unlimited emails, phone calls, texts, in addition to strategically timed in-person visits. After we signed our contract, Brooke sent us a thorough budget worksheet that allowed us to play with each cost and see how it affected our bottom line. She also made us a detailed wedding planning timeline outlining all our tasks by month. This greatly helped us stay on track, get things done in a reasonable timeframe, and not forget any step. In choosing vendors, we'd ask Brooke for recommendations and she'd send us emails detailing 3-4 good options. She'd then explain which one she thought would be the best fit for us and why. At first, I'd do a lot of research on all the options, but I always ended up agreeing with her first choice. I learned to trust Brooke's judgment so thoroughly that I started going with whatever her top suggestion was without even looking into the others. I have no regrets and it saved us a ton of time.
Re: reception and ceremony layout, style, decor, etc. Brooke is just as detail-oriented as I am and literally nothing got by her--even passing comments I made about hating the overuse of Papyrus and that I love my food piping hot--she captured all these little preferences making sure the caterer didn't print our menus in Papyrus and instructed them to bring out our food extra hot! It was obvious that she listened carefully, taking meticulous notes and kept all our information organized in a large folder for in-person visits.
Often, I'd send long, late-night emails to Brooke asking a host of questions at once. She'd reliably respond the next morning with a thorough answer to every question written in a different color under my original text. Even when she was handling another event, her responses were still remarkably fast. Brooke is easily able to work with different communication styles. For instance, my husband is more of a get-to-the-point, bullet notes, 2 min call kind of guy. On the other hand, I am liable to tell the whole meandering backstory (for example, this review) and discuss every option in detail over 40 mins. Brooke was able to cater to each of our disparate styles with ease. My husband is still learning :)
So our vendors were all picked, save-the-dates sent, and everything was going great when a big wrench got thrown into our plans. BR Cohn wanted to schedule BottleRock on the day of our wedding and they offered to pay for a significant chunk of our wedding costs if we'd agree to move to a different venue. This was a big dilemma: it would be great to save a lot of money, but we had already spent months planning our vision for the space at BR Cohn. Thank god we had Brooke to guide us through this unforeseen situation. She graciously agreed to meet us at the other venue right away and spent hours helping us consider whether or not to make the move. I was really stressed--my heart was set on BR Cohn and although the new venue was also beautiful, it was just not what I had envisioned. My husband, however, was far less attached and wanted to save the cash. Brooke helped us draft a counter-offer to stay at BR Cohn but switch dates and they accepted. She even handled the immense amount of work that resulted from this: contacting all our vendors about the new date and literally re-doing every contract. This whole debacle is a great example of something we had no way of anticipating would happen and are SO grateful we had Brooke to lean on to guide us through it!
In the end, everything was amazing. Some vendors even threw in a few extras for free just because they love working with Brooke. She also let us borrow a huge collection of wedding decor items she owns, which saved us on rental costs. These are just some cherry-on-top items you'll enjoy with Brooke as your planner. In closing, this is a long overdue review... my husband asked me if the reason I was dragging my feet was because after this our time with Brooke is officially over. Perhaps there's some truth to that--Brooke grew to be a constant sense of calm in my life. To say that I'll miss working with her is an understatement and it's certainly the saddest part of our wedding being over. Choose Brooke at Orchard Ave Events and you'll see just what I mean.