Where to begin - I truly resisted having a wedding planner, believing I could do it all myself. I am very Type A and am one of those people who would rather do things themselves, so that I only have myself to blame if things go wrong. We were having a relatively short engagement and needed to plan an ~180-person wedding in 6 months and on a limited budget (for this market). After about 6 weeks of planning on my own, the stress started to consume me. Between work and the wedding, I was totally spent. My now husband decided that the best wedding present he could give me was to hire a wedding planner. As I said, I truly thought I could do it myself. We went to a bridal show and met a bunch of planners, but I didn’t connect with anyone. I started searching online and I found Planners on Retainer (PoR). I reached out to Sarah-Jane (S-J) and she set a meeting. From the first call, she got me. I knew that she would be patient with me and help me to craft the vision that she would execute. And execute she did! S-J was amazing. She has a very busy calendar between her local and destination weddings, yet always had time for my calls and late night emails. She joined me for meetings with vendors and helped to negotiate when necessary. On very short notice, she drove out to Chantilly to meet us at the florist and truly honed and elevated our designs. She has an amazing eye for detail and great taste. If you want an elegant wedding, you can trust S-J and PoR to get you there.

On a more granular level, planning my wedding with PoR was very easy. She knows everyone in the business and proposed a wonderful selection of vendors for us to choose from - with discounts! The PoR planning portal was a Godsend - from the design portal to the guest tracker and seating chart maker. All were far more user-friendly and detailed than anything I saw on Minted, the Knot, etc. We created our website on Minted with a custom web address, but ended up using the PoR site for all of our guest tracking as it was much easier to download/print for dissemination to the vendors.

Finally, on our actual wedding day, I met the rest of the PoR team and they were just as amazing as S-J. Super helpful and not intrusive.

Needless to say, we were very happy that we chose PoR for our wedding. S-J has become such a good friend to us - we both miss talking to her post-wedding.

Note: I was hoping to post professional pictures of the venue design with this review, so that you can really see her work, but they haven’t arrived yet. We’ve added a few candids and will update the post once received.

Sarah Jane is amazing!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Sarah for being the brains and organization behind our wedding. I am not a organized person by nature, but I knew when we started planning a wedding that this was beyond my strengths. I was scrolling through the internet and instagram looking for a planner. I originally wanted a destination wedding but circumstances changed for us. When I met Sarah Jane we hit it off immediately. Her positive, supportive and bubbly personality made every step of planning that much more fun and relaxing. Her team handled everything for us till the day of the wedding, and it was the best decision we made! She also had amazing recommendations for things to include that we hadn’t even considered. I couldn’t have asked for a better planner. I definitely recommend Sarah and her team on your special day!

Sarah-Jane, Cierra, and the entire team at Planners on Retainer are just phenomenal. They go above and beyond to make sure every single detail is attended to. From the beginning of your planning process until you’re walking into your honeymoon suite and beyond, they make sure that you don’t need to worry about anything and you enjoy being a bride and groom to the fullest. If you do not book the POR team for your wedding, you’re truly missing out!! We are forever grateful for everything they did to make our fairytale come true.