Little Blue Box Weddings

I won’t lie, my (now) husband was NOT enthusiastic about my wanting a wedding planner. I have experience with event planning and the hubs didn’t think I should I have a planner. That being said– the day after our wedding, he too sang Nicol’s praises!!! Hiring LBB Weddings was THE best idea I had for the wedding planning process. Her eye is stylish, sophisticated, and fresh. Every idea I had, she improved. When I unfortunately had some hiccups with vendors– she came to the rescue and whipped them into shape! When I threw a COMPLETE curve ball and changed my venue three months before the wedding, she rolled with the punches and made sure that there was nothing that I freaked out about. Her timeline that she has perfected is priceless all on its own. LBB is amazing and Nicol is friendly and made my day run flawlessly. It was the most amazing day ever– what every bride wants to think after the fact, Right?!- I cannot sing her praises enough! My wedding was positively extraordinary and it would not have been so amazing had it not been for Nicol and Little Blue Box Weddings!

Working with Nicol and her staff made our job so much easier and allowed us to focus on the music she and her client requested. KJ All-​Stars Band highly endorse and support your decision to hire Little Blue Box as your preferred Planner/​Coordinator. I know, Nicol and her team will do everything to meet and exceed your vision…
Your Search Is Over!

My (now) husband and I are NYC natives and knew as soon as we got engaged that we wanted a Napa Wedding. That being the case, we also knew that we could not pull off such a feat all the way from the East Coast without a planner. Only a couple short days after our engagement, we found Nicol/​LBBW online. We were drawn by her positive reviews, style, and price point. The ultimate decision to hire Nicol came after our consultation with her, in which she exhibited a highly personable yet professional demeanor.
Our relationship with Nicol started 15 months prior to our wedding. Throughout the course of the year, we spoke with her on several occasions, typically on a monthly basis until we were just weeks out of course, and we did a handful of onsite/​vendor meetings together. While Nicol was busy coordinating more immediate weddings during this time, she was always attentive to our needs/​inquiries, and did a great job setting up vendor meetings, coordinating contracts, and orchestrating our timeline.
If you are looking for a wedding planner who is going to put together your entire design/​concept, then I cannot speak to those qualities. What I can say is that Nicol is a wonderful sounding board and will support you in any decision you make. She works with you to ensure that your ideas flow together seamlessly, and that every detail gets addressed. She takes your concerns, worries, and budget restrictions into consideration and does her best to make sure that nothing goes overlooked. Nicol was wonderful at handling contracts and ensuring that all of our vendors were in line on the day of the wedding. For the vendors we chose on our own, she even vetted them and made sure that they were credible. Chris and I did not worry about a single thing our entire wedding weekend and we owe a lot of that to Nicol. We can honestly say that our wedding was ABSOLUTELY perfect.
The only thing that we truly struggled with was some day of coordination… we feel as though Nicol could have made better use of her assistants the evening of our wedding, specifically when she herself needed a break or needed to be elsewhere (ie– moving guests between cocktail hr/​dinner/​reception; coordinating parent/​child dance, and coordinating cake cutting).
Throwing a wedding is a very personal and significant undertaking. It should not be assumed that it can be just thrown onto someone’s shoulders to do everything. Nicol is a great person to partner with when planning your wedding, and will help make the process fun and truly memorable. Chris and I are very particular and would highly recommend her to anyone in need of her services.

My now husband and I do not live in CA and when we decided we wanted to get married in Napa, I knew I needed someone to help me keep everything straight after I had tried my hand at calling a few vendors myself and just became overwhelmed. I had called one other planner and she had told me that it was a bad idea to get married in March in Napa for many reasons and that I should wait. Not what a bride wants to hear on a first conversation! Then Nicol called me back (within a day) from the inquiry I sent on their website and knew write away I would work well with her.
We were able to make it to Napa 3 times to meet with Nicol throughout our planning process and each trip was completely organized with everything I needed to do. She had a perfect timeline as to when certain decisions needed to be made and when I would show up I literally would get an itinerary of when/​where my appointments were. This was huge, because as any bride knows planning a wedding is super stressful EVEN with a planner, and I could actually relax in Napa at night after a day of running around and know that I wasn’t forgetting something crucial!
She is VERY well-​connected in the wedding planning business and for many vendors was able to get discounts as a result. Little victories like that were huge in a very expensive wedding atmosphere! While she could not always make every single vendor meeting I needed to attend, she made the most important appointments. For us that was fine and we were able to make it to a cake tasting on our own and pick flavors on our own since she was the one who even pointed us to such a wonderful cake vendor in the first place. However she was there for most appointments, especially where there were complex contracts and a lot of details (caterers, florists, venue selections, etc).
We had a «catering emergency» just months before the wedding where our selected caterer had gone out of business. Before I was even called about it, Nicol had already set up for our 2^nd choice (which was a very hard decision for us anyways, as both caterers she recommended were wonderful) to take over our wedding. Easy!
I arrived in Napa 3 days before the wedding to herd the crowds of family and friends, which was very busy. Nicol had everything taken care of. I handed her some items I had brought myself to use at the wedding and she took care of finishing from there. She stressed several times not to worry about another thing and just to show up to places at all the correct times. It was hinting of rain on our wedding day, and she had made the decision early to use our backup plan of doing the ceremony indoors. It was more beautiful than I think our original plan would have been!
While I understand it’s hard for a bride to just let the planner take over complete control of things, especially on the wedding day itself, I had 100% confidence in Nicol and was not let down. Thanks to her I was able to ENJOY my experience of getting married instead of stressing about the details. I cannot stress enough how important that is if you’re about to get married and looking for a planner. I could enjoy my friends and family who flew in from literally all over the world instead of making calls to every vendor the days prior.
She was attentive, understood my style, and when she didn’t, she logged into my pinterest site to get a better visual for what I was looking for. I highly recommend Nicol and her staff to pull off one of the most important days of your life!

Who: Nicol Turner, owner of Little Blue Box Weddings and AMAZING wedding planner, and we also occasionally worked with some of the other awesome people in her office
What: The planning of pretty much every part of our 100-​person wedding! Nicol helped us pick our venue, helped us find and pick our vendors, planned and managed our time line of things to do, and made sure everything ran perfectly and smoothly the day of the wedding.
When: Friday, September 13, 2013 was the day of the wedding, and there were many other meetings, phone calls, and emails leading up to the big day.
Where: Meadowood Napa Valley, St. Helena
Why: I don’t even know where to start with all of the amazing things I have to say about Nicol, so I guess I will just start at the beginning! My husband and I work full time and we wanted a wedding planner so that we would not have to deal with all the work involved in planning a wedding. I decided to call Nicol because I saw pictures of a wedding she planned that I LOVED (
). I am Indian and my husband is half Mexican/​half white, and we wanted a fusion wedding that would represent both of our cultures and interests. After talking to Nicol for the first time for just thirty minutes, it was very clear to me that she was everything I wanted in a wedding planner. She was sweet, efficient, and smart, and she perfectly understood what we were looking for in our wedding.
Wedding planning with Nicol went exactly as I had hoped it would. We started by spending a full day looking at venues she thought we might like. I told her we wanted wine country, hard alcohol, and an outdoorsy feel, and she delivered a number of great venues, including the one we picked, which I would have not considered without her help. She then helped us pick all of our vendors, who all ended up being INCREDIBLE. We told her we wanted a DJ who wasn’t cheesy and who could play some Bollywood music, and that is what she gave us. We told her we didn’t really care about flowers that much, but she ended up setting us up with a florist who blew both of us away. (We told this florist that we wanted Indian touches and surf/​ocean touches in the wedding, and she gave us beautiful red and orange flowers that looked like underwater plants – amazing.) I said I wanted an upbeat hair and makeup person who was a St. Helena local, and she found the sweetest, most talented hair and makeup person ever. I spent NO time doing research on any of these things because Nicol did the research for me, and it turned out better than I could have imagined.
As much as I valued Nicol for all of her work leading up to the wedding, probably the biggest advantage of hiring her was having her there for the actual day of the wedding. SHE. DID. EVERYTHING. She set up all of our vendors and deliveries as they came, while I hung out with my girlfriends getting ready and sipping champagne. I honestly felt no stress at all on my wedding day because I knew she was taking care of everything. During the wedding, she kept us on a gentle schedule (nothing pushy or crazy) so that everything kept moving without issue. She took care of all the clean up and shutdown after the party and saved everything that might be important to us. All of our guests who interacted with her loved her, and I also feel like our wedding would not have been so successful without her.
Nicol is simply amazing, and I would hire her again in a second. She helped our wedding ideas come to life, kept us on top of our tasks and time line, and calmed us down when things got hectic. If you want to hire a wedding planner (or even if you don’t!), Nicol is outstanding!!!

Nicol was with us one year of our 1.5 year engagement, from the very beginning of the planning stages through our wedding in October 5^th!
I have a ridiculous work schedule and despite being a perfectionist, I am also a total procrastinator… which all together makes a really bad wedding planner. So the first decision I made was to hire a professional. I did my research and sent emails to MANY planners in the Bay Area only to find out their fees were a large portion of my wedding budget or had mediocre reviews. However, Nicol sent me a prompt response and offered to call me at my convenience and I knew from our conversation that she was our woman!
Nicol is very organized, very well connected in wine country and is very knowledgeable about venues and vendors in the area. She has a lot of experience with many different vendors and can provide her clients with a long (or short) list of vendors she thinks will fit your needs, but is also very receptive to working with with vendors she hasn’t yet worked with. One thing I was worried about was hiring a wedding planner that «pushed» certain vendors or who were very opinionated — Nicol is NOT that kind of planner… She has a great way of eliciting you and your fiancé’s opinion to help you make a decision rather than making it for you. And if asked, she’s happy to give you her past experiences with other venues (I always asked her if she’d had horror stories with the vendors we were considering!).
Nicol is part event planner, part therapist, part family counselor and part friend. She is calm, always prepared and plain fun to hang out with. She also knows how to work with a very involved and opinionated mother of the bride ;)
Nicol helped us throughout the process from the first step of picking the venue all the way through setting up all our little personal details and orchestrating the events on the day of. It all went so smoothly and on our wedding day we didn’t have to worry about a thing and we weren’t bothered by vendors at all — we simply enjoyed every minute of our wedding and soaked up all the love and the time with each other and our friends and family.
We recommend hiring Little Blue Box Weddings for your wedding — we’re so thankful we did. If only Nicol could help us keep our married life organized… :)

Nicol and Little Blue Box Weddings was a GOD-​SEND to me and my fiancé on our wedding day, and throughout the entire experience, so THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Hiring a wedding planner was the second decision we made about our wedding, minus the venue. We actually learned about Nicol and LBBW through our venue, Cornerstone Gardens. It is a very unique venue and they only allow a small amount of wedding planners to plan there. When we first met Nicol, we got along with her great and I knew I would have no problem communicating with her and taking her advice for the next 15 months of this process.
I am a procrastinator. And I am not the most organized person in the world. And I travel A LOT for my job, so having Nicol help out with this wedding is truly what made everything come together on our amazing day. She kept me on pace, kept me on time, and got after me when I was lagging, which is EXACTLY what I needed. The vendors she recommends were everything she said they would be – from the caterer, to the cake, to the flowers — very professional and exactly what we asked for.
Then, came the day — what a day! It was so crazy, so chaotic and full of so many wonderful things, and she made sure it all happened so I did not have to worry about a thing. She even grabbed our bouquets and guest book at the end of the night and put them away for safe keeping after I thought they were lost forever because I forgot them.
Yes, wedding planners, for some brides, may be considered a «luxury cost». Even my now husband was hesitant on hiring a wedding planner, he thought we did not need it. But Little Blue Box Weddings (and Nicol) is worth EVERY PENNY! And the amount of money she saves you on negotiating with vendors to make sure we got what we wanted for the price we wanted, it more than pays for itself. Not to mention certain levels of stress decreasing so we could enjoy the experience.
We were so so so happy with the finished product, and would not have gone through this experience any other way. We received so many compliments about every aspect of our wedding and I would be lying if I tried to take credit all myself — the amount of help and guidance we had from them was absolutely worth it.
Thanks Nicol!
I bet you miss us ;)

If you are looking to have someone help you plan a beautiful wedding with top-​quality vendors, Nicol is a wonderful ally. Nicol helped us plan the wedding of our dreams; we are still stunned every time we look at the photos.
During the planning phase, Nicol helped us find vendors and choose among the endless options for services. The vendors she suggested were very professional and she helped us explain our preferences and desires to them all. And, when my hubby and I happened to find vendors with whom Nicol had never worked, she quickly established good working relationships with them.
Nicol’s true talents shone during the week and day of our wedding. She confirmed final details with each of our vendors, created and managed a complex wedding-​day schedule, and kept things running smoothly. Neither my husband nor I has any clue if anything went «wrong» on our wedding day – if it did, Nicol solved it without our knowledge. As far as we know, the day went according to plan. In fact, it went even better: we were able to dance, laugh, chat with guests, and enjoy our night without thinking about anything but how happy we were. It was our day, completely.
Thank you, Nicol, for your extraordinary efforts and those of the entire team at LBB.
E+J

We moved to the US in late February, and were planning a late November or early December wedding. (Ended up opting for December 1^st, at V. Sattui Winery, Napa). We were way behind on the planning, too.
We had a relatively precise idea of what we wanted: — sophisticated, romantic, fun, distinctively ‘us’, Napa or Sonoma (preferably winery or mansion). But nothing had been finally decided or secured.
I was nervous and somewhat bummed, because I didn’t feel like we had enough time to plan and execute just what we had in mind. Fiancé once said ‘it might not be way we had planned — but it’ll be better!’ And he was right.
Another factor worth mentioning is: as good as I am at researching, organizing, planning and executing, I’m also a mother to a wonderful, but also, very demanding 4 year old. We could not take on the task of planning the kind of wedding that we wanted without some help, and we weren’t about to.
I was trying to hit two birds with one stone — looking at wedding venues, as well as the coordinators that had owned the events. As I was under the impression that the two were very inter-​connected: venues have preferred lists.
This was when I first came across the wedding venue that we later ending up (hands down) choosing for our wedding. I had seen the venue in several galleries, as well on Nicol’s website in her portfolio, and a few other sources.
Definitely interested, and further looking into Nicol’s portfolio, I could admire many ‘personal’ touches that I could see she, as a professional, evidently brought to the weddings.
To list a few: the various weddings she had depicted in her portfolio clearly had a few things in common (albeit, all the couples were definitely very different): it was obvious that the events were very well carried out; the seemingly small, but at the same time, very profound details were professionally accented. Lastly, the carefree attitude of the couples in the photos was noticeable and so admirable — this further made me believe that Nicol was the planner for us. Later on, I found out just how many people wanted to work with Nicol, and how lucky we were, to have managed to book her.
I’d like to add that Nicol was not the first coordinator I contacted or had spoken with. Some coordinators had the audacity not to even reply, others were not willing to discuss concrete facts and imperative details (whether or not some things were even possible). It was too much small talk for my taste.
In contrast, from the very first conversation with Nicol, we were talking about real, relevant stuff. Different steps in the ‘first tier’ of wedding planning (after establishing that she’d be available for the dates we were interested in):
Securing a venue: what we wanted, and when.
Budget: ideal, doable, and possible.
Vision: what the dream is like, what we’re willing to compromise, and what we’re not.
We signed the contract with Nicol soon after. Throughout our whole planning process, she was responsive, helpful and reasonable. Most of our communication was done via phone and email, which made the whole thing very much convenient for me. Nicol was always happy to clarify if I had any questions and never passed me onto somebody else, she was the only person I always talked to.
She’d steer us in the right direction, work with us on every request and give us constructive criticism and advice when need be. Every time I’d have a ‘freak out’ moment, I felt comfortable enough to convey this to Nicol, and she’d always reply with comforting words, schedule a call for as soon as the next day, and we’d discuss all my fears and issues, and she’d restore my peace of mind.
Our venue is very strict about the vendors they work with, but having Nicol as our coordinator gave us the freedom not to go with a single vendor on their ‘preferred’ list that they had provided. This is how trusted and respected she is in the industry.
90% of the vendors that we had on our wedding day, were narrowed down from a list that Nicol had provided. She set up all the meetings, negotiated contracts and worked out details with every single one — even the vendors that we had searched out ourselves.
As for the day of the wedding itself. what can I say — Nicol wasn’t just a coordinator, she was like a trusted friend and our wedding day was stress-​free (except for the obvious jitters). It poured down buckets, and flooded the surrounding area — but yet, our ceremony got moved indoors with no issue and everything was absolutely beautiful.
From beginning to end, everything was flawless. In general, there is literally nothing negative that I could mention about our whole experience with Nicol.
We cannot thank Nicol enough for everything she’s done before, during and after the wedding, but more so, we cannot recommend Nicol enough. She really did make our wedding (as well as rehearsal dinner AND post reception after-​party) happen exactly the way we had pictured and hoped they would.

Our Dearest Nicol —
What can we say? You are not only one of the most amazing wedding planners, but you have now become our friend. Thank you so much!
Nicol is an amazing talent. She is SO organized and has so many resources! All you gave to do is give her a vision and she will undoubtedly execute it perfectly for you!
By the day of the wedding, everyone kept asking me why I was so calm and collected. I just told them that I was able to relax because Nicol was running around, getting more than her fair share of exercise to make things perfect for us… and perfect it was. While I was getting ready, I thought about nothing but marrying my wonderful husband. When I walked out the door, and saw how utterly beautiful everything had become, I was blown away!
She keeps you on a very tight schedule but boy did that turn out great! Everything was lined up perfectly and just the way it needed to be.
We love her and all I have to say is you NEED her if you are planning a wedding.
Period. :)

I selected Nicol Irwin to plan my silver wedding anniversary. She immediately understood the concept I had in mind and found the perfect mix of catering, flowers, music, rental services etc. to match a very specific contemporary brief. I was especially impressed when she resolved an unexpected issue with one of the suppliers — no fuss, immediately stepped in and took control to everyone’s satisfaction. On the day, she was here from 3pm to midnight, with an aura of calm and control, and my guests appreciated her gentle direction and warm smile when we were too busy to notice they had a question. Exceptional. I would use her services again without hesitation

We could have not planned such a beautiful wedding, kept my job, enjoyed our engagement (and relationship) and basically my sanity without Little Blue Box Weddings. Specifically Nicol. We got engaged in November, 2008 (at the beginning of the market downturn) and married in August, 2009 (before we started seeing signs of recovery). Our destination wedding was 70 people at Cline Cellars in Sonoma with the majority of guests coming from LA, NY and the UK.
First and foremost, when I told people I had a coordinator people would react like I was fancy. This kind of bothered me, because hiring Nicol was possibly the smartest cost and sanity saving move we could have made.
She was able to save me HOURS by finding and setting up appointments with locations, vendors, thinking through the details that was a full time job in and of itself. I was also impressed by her ability to understand my style/​taste from just a few conversations. We absolutely loved our vendors, every one of them, we do not have one complaint about any of them and I credit that to Nicol’s ability to identify the right vendors and the way she managed those relationship. She was a great resource for bouncing ideas off. What we quickly learned is people want to make you happy, so if you come up with a cockamamie idea like «I want to fly in to our ceremony on a faux unicorn» vendors will jump and start pricing it out and operating like it’s got to happen. Nicol would never-​ever say what we could and couldn’t do, but she knew our budget was a concern and kept us realistic.
As for the easier to measure cost savings, Nicol was a superstar. Before we would even meet with vendors she would pre-​negotiate so we wouldn’t get excited about stuff way outside our budget. There was many times where she would cut through some of the random location, delivery, whatever fees vendors would try to charge. She negotiated down our location fees ($ 1,200), our catering cost (at least $ 1,000), our cake ($ 100 — $ 200), our floral designer, our harpist, our dj (and got a photo booth thrown in that’s another $ 1000), our lighting (at least $ 1,000) … you get the idea. The important thing here is that without Nicol, we would not have known better and probably would not have been able to negotiate as much down. Additionally she reviewed all of our contracts and confirmed our vendors before the event.
The planning process was just half of the picture. Nicol also handled my day-​of coordination. I’ve done my time as a bridesmaid and you can ALWAYS tell the difference between a wedding with a coordinator and one done by the bride. I knew that for my wedding I wanted my guests to be guests and that I just wanted to party (not get pulled in every direction with vendor questions/​demands). I was in a wedding where one of the vendors yelled at the bride right after the ceremony because their parking was not pre-​paid for!!! Talk about hectic.
Nicol was perfect. It is 3 months later and I have no clue if there was any drama at my wedding. She was that good. There were a lot of moving parts, between the location, our floral designer, the caterer (and there were some funky dietary restrictions), the dj, the harpist, the lighting, the shuttle drivers, our families and crazy drunken friends and our amazing photographer and her second shooter. Nicol and her assistant managed it all, kept us calm and fed. The night was so much fun and we really felt like this was a party for us, not a party thrown by us. For that I am forever grateful to Nicol and Little Blue Box Weddings.
When we first got engaged, I was not looking forward to planning a ceremony and reception, Nicol really took the anxiety away. As cheesy and cliché as it sound, it really was the best day of our lives and as my husband likes to say «it’s the best wedding he’s been to.»

INCREDIBLE!!! Nicol was above and beyond our hopes for a wedding coordinator. From the very beginning, she was super organized, knowledgeable, helpful, and just plain fun. I was one of these brides who tried to do all the planning on my own and with friends. Then a few months before the wedding, I realized that there is a lot more to it than just hiring all the vendors, and I didn’t have the time or experience to do it all.
After talking to a few planners, I could tell Nicol had the perspective and the experience (she’s done lots of weddings and big-​time corporate events) to handle anything, and her pricing was way more reasonable than other companies who seemed less impressive. As we got closer to the wedding day, I began to realize that hiring Nicol was probably the best decision we made in planning the wedding. From the day she started, I was able to relax with the knowledge that whatever there was to do, she would get it done. My friends and wedding party commented over and over again how calm I seemed in the week preceding the wedding, all because I knew Nicol the million things that needed to be done under control. Yet Nicol always kept a fun attitude and was able to get things done while still joking with people and being a delight to interact with.
On the day of the wedding, Nicol ran everything smoothly so that I was able to fully enjoy the day and not worry about what needed to be done and when. I knew it was a long day for her, and that she must have been exhausted at the end of the night, but she remained calm, helpful, and maintained a totally positive attitude throughout the night, running the show behind the scenes. The true test was that my parents and my husband’s parents all loved her and were amazed with her professionalism and fun personality. Nicol has achieved the perfect balance that a couple could want in a coordinator. She always knew what to do, but also always gave us options and kept us informed. I can’t recommend her enough!

«A wedding should not be stressful. It is a time to enjoy your family, friends and share in a magical occassion with your life long partner. My wedding was truly a magical day and I was able to have a wonderful time because I knew Nicol had every detail under control. Nicol was professional, reliable and fun.»

WorWorking with Nicol was great at our non-​traditional wedding in Oahu, HI.
On the day of our wedding, she strived to ensure that we were able to focus on the festivities and spending time with our friends and families. We had no worries about the schedule (or who was getting food for the grandparents, entertaining the kids, setting up the slideshow, tipping the caterer, returning rented equipment, etc.) Nicol handled it all with ease so we never had to pause and think about the details. She made sure mosquito repellent was handy at dusk and discretely passed around tissues and cocktails to those in need.
She is a bountiful source of examples of what works and what should be avoided when looking for a unique experience. During our planning phase, she came up with creative suggestions to personalize our wedding AND cut costs (all without pushing an agenda or trying to coerce us into using specific retailers!) So refreshing that she isn’t afraid of new twists or funky approaches to a wedding!
Nicol worked hard to ensure we got the customized and slightly wacky outdoor ceremony and reception we wanted, even when it threatened rain on the day of. From the ukulele wedding march to the mochi-​ice cream dessert trays, it was the best wedding we have ever attended!
(Alas, we do not hold her responsible for the spontaneous Styx lip-​sync session or the break dancing worm-​a-​thon.)
Everything else flowed seamlessly.
Thanks again, Nicol!
(We expect to have Little Blue Box there at our 10-​year anniversary reunion party!)
reunion party!)