Welcome to our first wedding blog!

It has taken a bit of time but we finally got there!  We are now in December and I think like many we will be pleased to see the back of 2020!  We cannot wait to start creating beautiful settings and getting on with doing what we do best and that’s planning and styling events and weddings.

Our 1st wedding blog features some brilliant giveaways, discounts and prize draws along with some helpful tips and advice.

Please do let us know if you would like to read something in particular for our next edition.

Happy reading! 

Steph and the Monet Team x

 Benefits of a Wedding Planner

During this pandemic is probably when you truly see the value of a wedding planner.  It is our job to ensure that every aspect of your wedding is taken care of, manage the logistics of your wedding and help you create a truly unique design that reflects how you both visualise your day.

Throughout this year, we’ve had to move the majority of all our weddings and events and on a few occasions had to move a few weddings more than twice.  This has been truly devastating for all involved especially to our couples.

We’ve liaised with venues and suppliers to find a suitable alternative dates and to rearrange everything and where this has not been possible, we have sourced alternative suppliers. We have been on call night and day listening and offering any guidance that’s been available but ultimately been there to listen and to reassure.  As many of our wedding couples would agree by managing the postponements took away a lot of the stress and upset of the need to move their wedding.

When it comes to finding your wedding planner, it vital you connect with that person and that you feel confident they see both of your visions but you can also be yourself around and ask questions as over the time you work together you will start to create a bond and a understanding of each other.

At Monet Events we understand that everyone has different requirements and styles, this is why we offer the following services:

•  Full wedding and design

This is designed for couples who do not have time or unsure of where to start and finding the whole process a bit daunting.  Planning a wedding is extremely time consuming with many couples spending hours upon hours researching venues and suppliers.  This is where we help, we listen to your likes and dislikes and send you a shortlist of recommended venues and suppliers that fit your brief saving you so much time and in some circumstances money.  There is a myth that planners take over but let me reassure you that we are here to support, guide and inject the fun back into planning your wedding by taking away any stress.  You always know what is happening and still make the decisions but we cut out the hours of research, speaking with suppliers to find the best quote and acting as 1st point of contact so you do not get inundated with phone calls and emails.  This service covers every aspect of planning your big day!

• Our bespoke service

Designed to suit people’s budget but also their exact requirements.  Each wedding is unique, and everyone’s needs are different.  We tailor our services to suit your exact needs.  Just cherry pick the services you need and we will pull together a customised quote for you.

• Venue styling and design

This is ideal for couples that have planned everything but need help getting the theme and design right.  We will be there the morning of your wedding making sure everything is set up perfectly for you and your guests arrival.  We will come back at the end or the following morning to collect all the items.

• Décor hire only

Perfect for those who have designed everything and looking for those finishing touches such as lanterns, candlelight, flower walls, linen, sweet containers, gramophones, vintage/rustic accessories and neon signs to name a few

Click here for a copy of our hire brochure

If you are interested in learning more about our services and how we can help you, just drop me an email (stephanie@monetevents.co.uk) for a copy of our services brochure or book your free discovery call today!

Why? Because Wedding Planners Work Wonders

Your wedding day. Just one day in your life, but it’s everything to you both – so naturally, you’ll want to love and enjoy every single second of it. There’s sure to be lots of people to share it with, loads to remember during the ceremony and celebrations. And, of course, you’ll want to be able to steal those special moments just for each other too…

Put your wedding day in the right pair of safe hands and the peace of mind delivered by your calm and creative Monet wedding planner will be the best wedding present ever. You can truly let go and relax into your perfect day, confident in the knowledge that everything will be taken care of and just the way you want it to be.

At Monet Weddings, we offer a full range of services including full wedding planning, bespoke wedding planning, a venue finding service, venue styling featuring decor hire and additional wedding services for those little extra shared experiences on the run up to the big day. 

More than a luxurious treat

Your wedding will be unique and when it comes to translating the ‘wow’ factor of your wedding dreams into reality, Monet wedding planners certainly have that magic creativity and more than a few tricks up their sleeve to make it happen. But the benefits of hiring a knowledgeable, professional and wonderfully well-organised wedding planner don’t stop there. It’s not a luxurious treat or the reserve of the rich and famous, but a shrewd investment rather than an extra expense. And that’s because hiring the right wedding planner can simply save you time and money.

Making the planning process enjoyable

Leave the stress behind with your Monet wedding planner and let yourself get on with enjoying the fun bits about organising your wedding. There’s no need to feel guilty about it – it’s what we’re here for and we thrive on it! Make the most of being a bride-to-be and sharing ideas with your family, but if you find yourself in need of a family negotiator – especially if there’s someone loudly voicing their opinion about how your day should look – we can assist there too.

Watching your budget

Keeping on top of who should pay for what by when; creating the ideal look without blowing the budget; allowing yourself the indulgence of those little extras – sticking to an agreed budget has to be the hardest part of organising a wedding.
Your Monet Wedding planner will not just negotiate the best deals and offer the most cost-effective solutions, but will keep track of the finances too.

Our regular budget updates will provide clarity regarding outgoings, so you can see the bigger picture and spend your money exactly where you want to.

Keeping stress out of the equation

Enjoy the crafting of your perfect wedding, the run up to the event and every single second of your wedding day – with a Monet wedding planner in the mix, you can be sure that your stress levels will be at a minimum. Rest assured that we’ll be there with you as an undeniably discrete touchstone, all the way.

On the day itself, leave it to us to ensure that all the vendors arrive to set up and that everything runs smoothly. And, should there be any last minute changes, we’re there on-site, always with a Plan B in the back pocket. If there are issues to resolve, consider them sorted without any panic or drawing attention to the situation.

Background

Keeping an anniversary date special and a stunning view of the Thames – for Sharon and Paul from Richmond, these were just two key things on the wish-list for their wedding after 11 years together. A year before the event, they were thrilled to secure their perfect Thames-side venue for 4th July, both Independence Day and their personal anniversary – then the venue started to move the goal posts – and the all- important date.

By September, protracted and time-consuming negotiations left the couple facing compromise or finding another venue altogether. But the disappointment made a complete rethink seem impossible. “We felt like we had already explored all the options and certainly didn’t feel like we had the time and energy to start again.” …

Here’s what our bride Sharon had to say about hiring Monet Events for her wedding day…

Why didn’t I think of a wedding planner before?

Like lots of people, I had the preconception that wedding planners are only for celebrities and had never really given them a second thought. I honestly thought a wedding budget needed to be 6-figures before a wedding planner would consider helping and it was difficult to make a speculative enquiry. But the big hurdle is the emotional one: that it’s your wedding – a special day, your way, very personal, very precious and it’s hard to think of trusting anyone else with that.

If you’ve never experienced a specific wedding planner’s services, it’s very difficult to get a real sense of who the person you will deal with is or what exactly they do – or get reassurance that they will not simply take over. It was a chat with a colleague, where I discovered that Monet would be able to help me just in my venue search with no obligation, so I felt confident enough to get in touch.

Steph and I had met twice and established a really good rapport before my partner, Paul, joined us to share ideas on themes, likes and dislikes. He liked Steph’s style of working instantly – I think that’s a mark of a really good wedding planner, when they can relate to both partners and not just focus on the bride to be.

It wasn’t long until we were making the most of the Monet Weddings venue finding service; Steph not only came up with 20 venues between Hampton Court and Greenwich, but it was immediately clear that she knew exactly what questions to ask the venues too. During that process I was able to bounce ideas around and discuss other areas of the planning process that I didn’t know how to tackle and very quickly I signed up for a bespoke wedding planning service.We very quickly trusted that Steph had genuinely invested in us having our day, our way.

Steph was so amazingly patient on that venue search. She was always smiling and her professionalism really kicked in when we were meeting with suppliers. She very quickly understood what was in our imagination at the venues and I could see her reacting instantly to get important points completely clarified.

One of the main things is that Steph could see past the emotion and look objectively at the practicalities of everything. We looked at many venues together, but she also helped us to re-evaluate some of our early choices: practically speaking, moving the date wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; we tied a 1950s American theme to the Independence Day date and she helped us make some of our more informal aspects for the day work in a practical way for our guests and the venue.

By talking things through with Steph, even the way we were able to handle the guest list evolved. We wanted the day to be relaxed and joyful for everyone and for each person to feel important. She could really visualise how venue space could accommodate the number of guests and our ideas.

In this way, she gave me the confidence to look again at our original venue choice and see it in a different light. We’d become too emotionally affected by it all, but Steph was able to take the heat out of that conversation, so it no longer felt like a personal thing and that we were the only ones  compromising.

In fact, she got us back to the venue which we had wanted all along, driving a hard but fair package, yet dealing with things sensitively and in a balanced way.

Having Steph on board was empowering

“What Steph gave us was the latitude to explore ideas. With so much insight into all the different aspects of planning the day – from florists to how to make the day flow for our guests – we soon agreed a budget for Steph to manage to deliver the parts of the day she was responsible to deliver while I managed the overall budget, we regularly compared costs and quotes enabling me to comparing notes with Steph for a really helpful reality check.

Steph managed to sensitively keep things on track and focussed on what we wanted. She would help us to be a bit more objective when we got carried away by a great find or idea. She’d gently take away the ‘urgency’ and give us the time to weigh things up alongside other things on our wish-list. “Do you really want to commit your money to that now? “ she would say. Her confidence and experience in the sequencing and timescales meant that we could enjoy the process of discovering and deciding upon things.

Having Steph on board was empowering – we could just browse ideas, seek her opinion and trust that we’d get an honest answer, she just made sure that we’d make the decision when we needed to. In some cases we ended up with ideas that you wouldn’t call ‘on theme’ in the end every decision we made was a personal one and Steph’s process of using mood boards and pictures really helped ideas to gel.

Take a look at some of Steph’s decor ideas ►

Going that extra mile

From sourcing a fantastic deal from the florist to paying attention to every aspect of the welcome and styling on the day, the Monet Weddings team were so attentive. Jen Austin worked with me to bring all my ideas into the themed stationery and print work, she seamlessly worked with Steph on the details for the day taking a really active role on the decor.

Both of them were on hand and taking care of everything at the venue on the day – throughout the day – which was so reassuring for us. They were amazing, arrived dressed for the part, blending in to the background, quietly ensuring that the venue was stepping up to deliver the wow factor we had worked so hard on and which Paul and I had dreamt of. They kept the venue styling on track and the on-site team honest and to time. They worked so hard to keep everything smooth and make it all perfect – and I can’t help asking myself what else did Steph sort out beyond what we actually saw?

Without Monet Weddings, I wonder if I would have had the time or capacity to deliver the level of personalisation and detail which made our day not just so very special for us, but so much fun and so enjoyable for our guests.

Weddings are stressful things – even with all the help we had in place, it’s hard to suppress that element of doubt… is it going to be as good as we hope?  How will you ever know what will go wrong, or have the appropriate recovery process at your fingertips? Steph and Jen seem to know all the secrets.

The rapport and friendship, calm advice and direction throughout the process makes me look back and think that it’s not about could I afford a wedding planner, but more how could I afford not to? When you’re investing in your wedding day, I’d now say that you should consider a wedding planner as an investment in your day. How often do you commit to spending so much money one a single day, and try to organise it all single-handedly?

Our experience is that the supplier sourcing completed by Monet Events more than covered their management fees. There’s nothing indulgent in wanting to enjoy everything on the run up to and during your Big Day and knowing that everyone is having a really wonderful time and feeling special. The level of service that we received from the Monet Team on the day alone was worth the money – our experience of Monet Weddings was that they definitely represented great value for money.

Fancy hearing what Sharon’s partner, Paul, has to say? ►

Background

As a long established couple, Paul and Sharon from Richmond found they had no desire for a big entourage and no wish to burden mums with responsibilities in the planning of their special day. All the decisions could be theirs; all the choices their own. Sounds exciting? Enjoyable? Yes. But with both partners leading busy lives in demanding careers, the constant road trip of decisions soon proved to be a less than appealing challenge. Three months in, Paul noticed how the heavy load created by needing to meet expectations was outweighing the fun which bride-to-be Sharon was supposed to be having. He could see his very able partner feeling immense pressure from making decisions and frustration was taking hold. But when Sharon followed a friend’s recommendation to meet with Steph from Monet Weddings, they soon discovered the sounding board and support they both needed to make their wedding dreams a reality.

Operations Director, Paul, was delighted how Steph and the Monet Events team not only put the fun back into the event organisation and helped to make the day full of fun too, but how they sensitively acted as facilitators to ensure that everyone was cared for and included along the way:

A very welcome smile

“I really impressed by Steph the first time I met her. Sharon had already had a couple of chats with her over coffee and I could tell that they had quickly developed a great rapport. She could clearly visualise things and understood where we were at with our ideas and plans. She always had a genuine smile on her face and had plenty of ideas to share, but never came over as precious. I liked the way that she worked with her own suppliers, but she was equally open to suggesting alternatives. We certainly never had any disagreements and she was hard-working and flexible in her approach.

Doing things differently

“Most of the decision-making was focussed on getting things right for our guests. We wanted things to be a bit different – Sharon was the first to admit that she was not a traditional bride! We had some particular ideas to remove the formality from the day: there was to be no best man, no ‘giving away’, and we wanted to keep a gentle, not clichéd, 1950s theme throughout. Steph took all our requirements in her stride and came up with creative solutions to accommodate them. At the venue she helped us to see how we could best use the space to achieve the inclusive atmosphere we wanted and she helped to bring together designing and styling ideas, using email and Pinterest so we had pictures and mood boards to share. That was really effective, giving us both a way we could feed-back on everything. She delivered on ideas we had to help our guests to interact and feel connected, such as creating the picture wall which proved a real success on the day – I just don’t know if we would have managed to bring it to life, with everything else there was to do. “Sharon met Steph at least once a month with regular emails or calls in between, meeting up to move things on and visit potential suppliers such as florists. We felt every confidence in her to just let her get on with instructing suppliers once initial decisions had been made.

“It was a very positive experience and Steph seemed to be just the support and sounding board we both needed. It was a relief to see Sharon getting back to actually enjoying our wedding planning again and when my mother became extremely ill just before the wedding, it allowed me the extra time to concentrate on her – particularly with the peace of mind that Sharon was still really well supported.

One bridge for all the gaps

“On the day, my 90 year old mother was able to join us at our wedding – via her very first face-time call. Without any hesitation, Steph was on board and on hand on the day with a spare phone, charger and wifi code, simply everything to ensure that it happened according to plan. She kept an eye on the rings – placed in the care of my two sons who flew in from The Netherlands. She ensured that our band, who were also our friends, were there to perform when they were supposed to be, she kept things with them on a professional footing so everything went to plan without us feeling uncomfortable about asking them to do things.

“Do you know, I was quite nervous at the wedding and it was so reassuring with Steph and Jen at the venue to keep everything going to plan. They seemed to bridge any gaps before they were even there – perhaps we’ll never know what they sorted out beyond what we noticed.

They worked so hard for us that day – the service we received on the wedding day was worth the fee on its own. In fact, you could say it was as spot on as were the on-theme polka dot dresses they arrived in!

We are delighted to be featured in Wedding Venue & Services magazine – Jan/Feb 2017 edition. Our 1920’s inspired wedding which took place at the beautiful Bruisyard Hall in Suffolk taking on a vintage theme with its ostrich feathers, gramophone and white draping.  

Check out our gallary for more pictures

Background

Friends, family, photographers. Invitations, decorations, procrastinations. Decisions, diplomacy and more decisions. Sometimes a wedding can become all rather daunting and distinctly stressful for all the wrong reasons. Planning her marriage to Yemi, Elizabeth soon found that there was little point in losing sleep through worrying over wedding things – or at least not when Steph from Monet Weddings was only a phone call away.

Here’s what our Bride, Elizabeth, had to say about hiring Monet Events for her wedding day…

Positively amazing professional support

“I was completely overwhelmed at the process of planning a wedding for 450 people, but it was made so much easier having Steph on our side.

“She handled the process with complete professionalism – not once was she ever phased by the overwhelming culture or the number of people. One of the amazing things about Steph was that she was always there to deal with my crazy questions, no matter what time of day it was too. Safe to say, she always had a solution to problems… and there were a few of those along the way! “

Creativity you can count on

“I was especially impressed when Steph took on the decorating of the venue. Everything was coming in too expensive, so I needed help on making the best choices and keeping spending under control.

“Even now, I keep being told by friends and family, that when the doors were opened that day, everyone was in awe of how beautiful the place looked. One of our guests even wrote to say what an ‘amazing job’ Monet Events did and how it was ‘so beautifully decorated’. This is just one example of Steph from Monet Weddings going beyond the call of duty. “

We just clicked

“One of the really positive things was that Steph took time to talk us through all the different elements, explain the process and above all to understand what we were really looking for.

As a result, we (and our guests) loved the photographers she helped us select.  The wedding invites which we worked on together were soooo beautiful too! I wouldn’t have made it through the process without Steph and I would recommend her to the world.” 

The Monet Team x

“Most amazing – the best wedding I had ever been to…”

Background

INQUIRE serves a dedicated membership which expects high standards. As a not-for-profit organisation, it is run by volunteers who already have extensive demands on their time. The development and delivery of a portfolio of two day conferences for 120 delegates and smaller events attracting 80+ delegates sits with the Chairman. With no helping hands internally, support from a professional and cost-effective event organiser is invaluable.

David Buckle, INQUIRE Chairman, explains:

My reputation immediately felt in safe hands…

“We invited Monet Events to pitch against four other candidates for our annual conference after a word of mouth recommendation from my wife who had recently attended an event organised by their team. The references were very good; the proposal very strong and clear and the formal pitch convincing and competitive.

“Engaging a smaller enterprise was all part of the Monet appeal. My reputation immediately felt in safe hands when our contact, Steph, was clearly so dedicated and professional, and very much mindful of her personal reputation.

“I work very much with Steph on arranging the major conferences, but I can also have total faith in passing her on as our direct contact with business schools, when it comes to arranging our smaller events.  Working with her is a very positive experience. She’s hard-working and there’s no chasing required, but she’s flexible too – not an ‘i-dotter’ or ‘t-crosser’ and just sees it as all part of the job to get it over the line.

The sequence planning is an invaluable part of the service

“Right from the outset, everything fell into place. We sat down and went through what was needed and were able to give quite a strong brief based on what previous organisers had been doing. The Monet Events team really put the time in to understand the needs of our membership and our priorities.

“ For all events, the sequence planning is an invaluable part of the service. It’s great to have a timeline and Steph’s firm, yet friendly hand taking control – in an organisation like ours, when it’s no-one’s day job, being told is good.

Making things slick, smooth and sorted

“For our 2016 conference, Monet Events made the suggestion of Liverpool for the location. Steph worked out the hotels and respective deals and organised for us to visit 4-5 of them as well as half a dozen possibilities for our evening event. Once we had identified the best options, she negotiated contracts and terms; on this occasion some costing issues arose and the sand shifted a bit with the hotel. She was upfront and confident, suggested a re-evaluation and swiftly arranged for me to visit  and stay over at another hotel.

“Our events are demanding with attendees coming in from all over Europe. The logistics can be challenging, but Steph is there fronting up our events, making things slick, smooth and sorted. She’s very visible, calm and ensures things are right – at the start, on the day and always behind the scenes. No one will know of any issues, because they are sorted before there’s time for them to be noticed by anyone other than Steph.

All part of the same successful equation

“Formal feedback from all our work with Monet Events has always been very good and our relationship with them is such that Steph hears everything in the debrief. Before INQUIRE took on a new committee and settled into the trusted relationship with Monet Events, our conferences were perhaps losing their way slightly. Confidence waned and membership dropped. Since the change however, there has been a significant growth in membership.

Although I can’t attribute company growth to Steph’s work, it is certainly all part of the same successful equation. The high level of personal service represents exceptional value for money.

Our life is easy because Monet Events make our conferences happen – and that means, both before, during and after the events, we can really get on and make things happen for INQUIRE too.”

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