Love At First Meeting

So, know how I ended up scheduling three meetings with different Day of Coordinators?  Turns out I only needed one!

On Saturday, fi and I met with Lea of Wedding Planning by Lea Dawn, and she was exactly what I was looking for.  I decided it probably would be a good idea to put all of my wedding stuff into a binder to bring along with me, so I got an adorable purple croc-skin binder and filled it with everything from my 13 month timeline, to my crazy planner bride centerpiece mock up, my budget, my color inspirations, and everything in between.  It was full of organizational stuff, inspiration, and vendor information.  That binder is impressive; it makes me look like a wedding planner, haha.

So basically I told her I was looking for someone who would be there to execute the plans that I've been coming up with since last June so that I don't have to worry about it on the day of.  And she was totally down with that.  She also has an assistant who will come and help her set up the day of, and she will be there at the rehearsal to get to know everyone and get an understanding of how the ceremony will happen.  She doesn't limit the number of meetings that we have leading up to the day, and although I don't think we'll need many because of my OCD about planning (let's face it, I'll probably create a binder with specific instructions for each aspect of the wedding for her with a timeline of how I would like the day to progress) it's nice to know that if we do need to meet a few times in order to be on the same page she isn't going to say no.

You could tell that she totally had her stuff together, and she was not intimidated by my plans, but I needed to make sure that she definitely could handle our wedding.  So I informed her of the fact that I have a crazy sister who may need to be escorted out of the reception, and on top of that my rehearsal dinner will be the first time in over 15 years that my parents have been in the same room outside of court, hahaha.  And Lea is so amazing, she didn't even shutter.  She was like "Okay, then we're going to have to come up with a way to make it as smooth as possible leading up to the ceremony and here are a bunch of ideas on how we can do that..." 

And if all that wasn't enough, she then handed me her business card which was purple and adorable and I was sold.  Of course I wasn't just going to write a check on the spot since I wanted to make sure fi was down with hiring her, but when she walked out of the coffee shop and I expressed my adoration for her fi's response was "I knew you would want to hire her as soon as she walked in because of her scarf" (she had a really cute purple scarf on). 

So, Sunday I emailed Carrie to tell her that I didn't want to waste her time meeting her since we already found someone, and I still need to email Theresa.  This morning I emailed Lea to let her know we would love to hire her, and if she would send me her address I'll mail the contract and the deposit to her right away.  And I couldn't be happier.  If she follows through with being half as amazing as I already think she is, then I know everything will be great.

Did you ever meet with a vendor and just know you wanted to work with them?