We got engaged in August 2010 and wanted to plan a summer wedding. We started looking for a…read morewedding planner late August/early September. I e-mailed a few people, and Melissa was the first one to get back to me. We were married in July 2011 and worked extensively with Melissa and her assistant Katie. At our first meeting I was unsure if a wedding planner was really necessary. We live in Maryland and were having our wedding near my family in Lancaster County. After we spoke with Melissa and Katie it was clear we needed a wedding planner. We didn't quite realize everything that went into planning a wedding, and were confident that they were the people to help us. Melissa helped us find a venue and all of our vendors. She also negotiated between us and the vendors and negotiated our contracts. Trust me- you need Melissa. The last thing you want to do is negotiate contracts before your big day. Since we live out of state Melissa also gave us a few suggestions for vendors and coordinated meetings. We wanted vendors who loved their job and were good at it, and Melissa found us those people. We never would have found those quality vendors if we hadn't been working with Melissa. She also helped us find vendors that were better and cheaper than the most expensive vendors. She knew exactly where to go from flowers to cake to buying a dress to getting the dress altered! Melissa and Katie made the lead up to the wedding and the wedding day run smoothly. Her and Katie answered e-mails quickly and they received many e-mails from me regarding anxieties about the big day and our plans. They made sure our wedding day was stress free. We had such a great time that we are ready to do it all over again next year. I would recommend working with Melissa for a small wedding to a big wedding to an upcoming event. She knows the right people, and is good at what she does.

Melissa is absolutely amazing - we cannot recommend her enough. We worked with her through her Vera…read morepackage. Our wedding day was beautiful and ran seamlessly. By the day of the wedding, we had so much trust in her that we could rest assured knowing everything would be okay - it freed us up to just enjoy our day without anxiety about logistics - we knew we could count on Melissa. She truly cares about the weddings she plans and the couples she works with. She knows and has good relationships with top-notch local vendors, which is super helpful throughout the planning process. She also is a strong advocate for her couples and is really skilled at resolving any issues that come up with vendors. She is very detail oriented, punctual, practical, and on top of her emails and deadlines. She is also a really gentle, sweet person who is an absolute joy to work with. Melissa is a really calming presence too and was very supportive throughout our wedding planning process. She really got to know us and was able to give ideas/suggestions that we loved for our wedding that matched our personalities and preferences. During the week leading up to our wedding, we had an unforeseen change of plans and Melissa communicated with all of our vendors, reorganized our wedding timeline and worked this out with all of vendors, all basically behind the scenes to us and with no added stress on our part. Everything she coordinated and planned was taken care of - nothing fell through the cracks. If you're an anxious couple or tend to worry about worst-case scenarios, Melissa and Stylish Occasions is perfect for you - working with her and knowing the type of person she is will remove all this anxiety. We planned our wedding from out of state and she was super flexible with doing teleconferences with us and vendors when needed instead of meetings. She also helped us figure out which meetings were truly important to do in person. She helped us navigate innumerable wedding decisions and weighed in with her extensive experience when we weren't sure what to do. The best decision we made without a doubt was to hire Melissa as our planner. There is no way we could've had the wedding we did without her expertise and help. We are so incredibly grateful to her and are so thankful we got to know her. She's an excellent planner and a beautiful person to know.