Esla Events Planning + Design

We couldn’t be happier with our decision to hire Laurel at Esla Events to help us plan our wedding weekend in Sonoma. Our friends and family often use the word «magical» to describe the weekend, and we have Laurel and her team to thank for orchestrating such an unforgettable series of events. It would take pages upon pages to list all of the ways Laurel took our wedding vision and made it an even better reality, but it really boils down to this: she is incredibly talented, dedicated, and creative, and she is loved by all – including us!
We could always count on Laurel to give us sound planning and design advice and handle any sort of challenge, which is precisely what you need when you’re planning a wedding. In addition, she has an amazing eye for detail, and many of her suggestions are what made our wedding so memorable even months later. We also have Laurel and her team to thank for taking the bulk of the «wedding planning stress» off our shoulders in the months leading up to our wedding. We truly believe that you cannot go wrong hiring Esla Events, and we can’t praise Laurel and her team enough!

I got married last September and hired Laurel for wedding planning and design. It was by far, BY FAR, the best decision I have ever made. She made the wedding possible, provided excellent advice, coordinated everything perfectly and managed all the vendors beautifully. My ceremony and venue sites were far away from each other, I was getting married in the middle of a state park, and I had family and friends coming from all over the world. She managed to make the wedding the most seamless, perfect and coordinated event ever. Logistically the whole wedding day was perfect, she was everywhere, had an eye on every detail, kept my family happy, and had still the energy to be nice, friendly and extremely kind. There are really few people in the world I have met that have such a great combination of great professional and personal traits. She really knows what she is doing, she is extremely professional, organized, punctual, has a great sense of style, knows how to manage people, administer money, give advice on decoration and vendors… Everything.
Please don’t waste your time looking for any other wedding planner, she is simply perfect. As some other reviewers say I would trust her to do anything, any kind of event, her capacity to pull big projects together is simply astounding. My husband, my family, my friends and I were so impressed by her, she was able to pull off a Colombian-​American wedding, dealing with different cultural norms, expectations and traditions. She is so flexible, understanding, kind and nice. Being around her is great, I learned so much form her skills and admire how friendly she is, how direct and professional with vendors, how emphatic in difficult moments… She is creative, resourceful and patient. She absolutely exceeded our expectations, working harder, longer and more involved than I could ever expect… Her work is simply flawless, I still can’t believe how relaxed I was the day of my wedding, and it was all thanks to her. She really made me have a perfect wedding experience… can’t thank her enough!!!
Maria.

Laurel was the best decision we made in our wedding planning process– she started working with us starting ~6 weeks before the Big Day, and if I did it over again I would have her from the beginning. Incredibly smart + extreme passion for what she does makes her top notch, in my view. She is VERY detail oriented, VERY organized, direct when she has to be with vendors, easy-​going with me at all times (the bride), and just great to be around– one of those gals you just wish you were friends with. I had a traditional wedding and was open on a lot of the details, and Laurel knows everything and helped craft the perfect day, very efficiently. I trusted her with every detail from the first meeting we had, and the result was just flawless… I had 0 worries the whole day. I really can’t praise Laurel or her work enough.

Laurel is fantastic! We hired her for month-​of coordination services, and additionally for a «getting close» consultation about two months before our wedding at the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is extremely knowledgeable, organized, and just plain sweet. We really appreciated that she was professional, polite, and organized, but also easy-​going, fun, and really comfortable to be around. She handled everything on the vendor side, coordinating all the timing and deliveries, ran our rehearsal, picked things up for us, and put together the most beautiful and functional timeline for us. She was super prompt with email, checked in with us a lot about how we were doing, took things off our plate, and had great ideas for all the different aspects of our wedding, including vendor recs. On our wedding day, things went off without a hitch, and she handled every hiccup so well that we didn’t even know there were any until days/​weeks later. When we arrived at the venue before the ceremony, she had all our décor set up beautifully; though we didn’t hire her for design, it was obvious she had a great aesthetic. We threw her some last-​minute loops and she had to deal with some family stuff– a slideshow my mom wanted to surprise us with, for example — that she handled with kindness and grace. On the night of our wedding, she stayed an hour later than expected to pack everything up, even though she was leaving the country the next day. In short, Laurel was worth every penny, and was a joy to plan our wedding with. How I wish we had brought her in even earlier. Seriously, hire her!

Just an update, 6 months post-​wedding.
A few words of advice to any bride out there… HIRE LAUREL. If I could give her 10 stars I would.
On the day itself, even though I hadn’t hired Laurel for day-​of coordination since my site included it, she trekked herself UP to Sonoma, set up a gorgeous elaborate customer-​designed gelato bar (since I wanted gelato over wedding cake)… WAITED until the gelato was all set up and the folks there were in full gelato serving mode, then drove back to SF. All on a Saturday night. Did I mention I hadn’t hired her for day-​of? This is just one of many examples of ways Laurel really knocked herself out to make the day special.
I have to say that after the big weekend, I actually missed Laurel (and still do!). She’s just that kind of person.

I just got married in November and Laurel was my day-​of planner. There are two things that I’m absolutely sure of: 1) it was the most magical day of my life, and 2) it would not have been possible without Laurel. She was and is brilliant.
Laurel met with me several times before the big day, helped keep me on track by being super organized, clued me into things that I had no idea I had to even consider, and most importantly, brought her infectious enthusiasm and optimism with her every time. Laurel is also an amazing collaborator and designer. She had great ideas, was really fun to brainstorm with, and was super resourceful. Each time we got together, I left feeling like I could actually pull this whole thing off – she turned the daunting into the exciting, the stressful into the delightful. As we got closer to the wedding, Laurel would check-​in regularly with me. Sometimes it was to see if she could take something off my plate, or to get updates on to-​do items, and others it was to just reassure me that everything was going to be OK.
The wedding itself was seamless. Laurel handled everything and everyone thrown her way with such ease. She was a pro from beginning to end and I’ll always be grateful to her for the fact that on my wedding day, my husband and I were able to enjoy every minute of it because she had everything (EVERYTHING!) under control and running so smoothly.
Working with Laurel was one of the best decisions that I made. I can’t sing her praises enough because, honestly, she made the entire journey a joy. She’s creative, thoughtful, professional, and she really takes the time to get to know you and understand your vision for your big day.
If you have the opportunity to work with her, take it.

Ho-​kay, so my husband (of just over a week) and I are extremely unconventional. We wanted a ceremony-​free wedding centered around our art. There simply wasn’t a formula that could have been applied to make things happen the way we wanted. After talking to three other well-​reviewed planners while trying to do everything ourselves, we were starting to drown.
Enter Laurel.
I love Laurel. I will literally get into a fight with anyone who says anything bad about her – but that will never happen. :) Laurel was recommended by a mutual coworker, and she was hands down THE best decision we made for my event. I liked her the moment I met her. My first impressions went in this succession:
…Oooo, she’s pretty. Great style, great hair!
…She’s really approachable.
…Wow, she pays attention to detail and is already catching little things I would never have noticed that would’ve bitten me in the ass later.
…Where is this weird sense of relief coming from? Omg, I TRUST her. I think I’m actually starting to relax!
All of this held true. Despite glitches with the venue and one of our vendors, we never once had to worry. Laurel was at all times reassuring and classy. She proved time and again that she was the perfect planner for us – a brilliant balance of creativity and precision. She has a design background, meaning she can do all kinds of awesome tricks like build a blueprint in Adobe InDesign, or create style and color palettes (see Rachel’s review). She caught a grasp of our hyper-​modern tastes really early on and was genuinely invested in the uniqueness of our event. Not once did she pressure us to do anything we didn’t want to. She was also very accommodating where it came to our oh-​so-​tight budget – letting us do what we wanted to do ourselves and graciously taking over what we couldn’t handle.
I already miss her magical fix-​it capabilities. I’m tempted to pay her to stick around and fix everything in my life, lol. In fact, she’s the first person I plan to call for any future art shows or events. If you need help, especially for a custom event, have no doubts about Esla Events… Just don’t compete with me, ha! :)

Unbelievably professional! Laurel knows exactly what she’s doing. I’m a photographer who’s worked with many event planners and Laurel is the best, she is highly organized, motivated and on top of «it». Thanks for everything Laurel!

When hiring a wedding planner everyone wants someone who will treat the event as they would their own. What better choice than someone who has actually planned and executed their own wedding with perfection? I was fortunate to attend the first event that was put on by Esla Events, which was the founder’s wedding. It was incredibly beautiful in every single way. Not even a thunder/​lightning/​rainstorm could have made this day any less incredible. Laurel put together the entire event from start to finish and it was one of the most beautiful weddings that I have ever been in attendance for. After seeing the pictures and hearing from the guests at some of the other subsequent weddings that she has put together, it seems that this is Laurel’s M.O. She wants to treat every wedding like it is her own and put the care and effort into organizing it so that it is flawless.
I just hope I get an invite to the next event!

We were recently married in San Francisco at a venue in the SOMA district. The venue space was very cool but we had to coordinate all the vendors ourselves because the venue came «as-​is». Needless to say, we had a tremendous amount of work to do so we hired an AMAZING wedding planner, Laurel Anderson owner of Esla Events, and it was the best wedding decision we made. Laurel started with us from the beginning by helping us to develop and create the overall «mood & feel» of our wedding. She took all the words and expressions we had in mind for our wedding and turned them into a design booklet filled with beautiful imagery and language that perfectly described our vision. I was stunned at how perfectly she was able to capture the essence of our wedding and then create imagery and mood boards to describe it.
From there, Laurel helped to finalize all of our vendors through endless phone conversations, negotiations, and planning meetings. She had an amazing way of taking limited information from me and my fiancé (which we loved) and executing on it seamlessly. Laurel was calm, organized, and she had every single detail under control when it came to communicating and interacting with our vendors. Another wonderful part of working with Laurel was that she was always available. I cannot tell you the number of times a question or idea popped into my mind and Laurel was always just an email or phone call away.
Most importantly, Laurel has a stunning sense of design and is able to work within your vision but find creative and special ways of enhancing every detail. She was responsible for all the special details and finishing touches of our wedding day, including the design, fabrication, & installation of all our programs, place cards, table cards, seat cards, directional/​designed chalkboards, table settings, styling of the bar, styling of the bathroom area, and oversight of the venue lighting (which was extensive). Laurel is a designer AND wedding planner in one which was the reason we selected her. She was both professional and easy to work with and made our wedding planning process and wedding day experience FLAWLESS!

Laurel at Esla Events is a wedding mastermind. She’s the total package: know-​how and style.
We went to Esla Events for a two-​hour consultation session about six weeks before our wedding, and again sought Laurel’s help to design custom programs. Laurel’s advice and can-​do attitude saved us time and money in the pre-​wedding crunch – and she has an impeccable eye for design.
The programs Laurel designed for us truly spotlight her creativity and resourcefulness. At that point in the planning, my fiancé and I had already spent a good chunk of our budget, so I presented Laurel the challenge of helping me design programs that were chic, personal and affordable – all within a tight timeline!
Within a day, Laurel sent me a mock-​up program with three printing options (paper, binding, etc.) and prices to boot. She even went through the pros and cons of each option for me. Laurel cleverly contacted our invitation designers to figure out the fonts they used – a great touch that helped pull everything together. The end product was beautiful, unique and budget-​friendly. Laurel’s ability to envision and execute this project herself really saved us in a pinch. I couldn’t have been more impressed!
Laurel is a delight to work with – easygoing yet professional, whimsical yet focused, and absolutely passionate about what she does. I only wish we had found her sooner!