We just started working with Amber this past month, and we are very impressed so far by her professionalism and great organizational skills. Her rates are competitive, especially since she is bringing 2 assistants with her. Most importantly, she seemed genuinely excited about our wedding (as opposed to some other vendors).

Our wedding is in August, so I will update my review when it gets closer to the date!

****UPDATE****

Our wedding was in August, and I have to say it went fabulously - in many ways thanks to Amber. I will say that your coordinator is one of the most important vendors for you to "click" with - I mean, its not essential that you *like* your cake baker/florist/caterer as long as you trust them professionally. Your coordinator, on the other hand, will be spending a lot of time with you, so if you can't get along, its a problem!

We probably met with 5-6 potential coordinators. Some tried to prove how "upscale" they were and others gave the impression of an OC-Housewife who woke up one day and decided "hey, I'll be a wedding planner." We were starting to get discouraged...

Amber was refreshingly different. You can tell she is fully committed to her job, and is a true professional. At the same time, she is extremely down-to-earth (I credit this to the fact that she grew up somewhere OTHER than LA ;) which made us very comfortable.

We were particularly impressed with her organizational skills, and really trusted that she would have everything taken care of. Our site was extremely challenging (think: Top of a hill in Malibu,long narrow windy road, no parking, have to RENT everything, location coordinators that won't call you back, etc.) If we had to deal with it all on our own I think we would have had a nervous breakdown and eloped to vegas.

I can't tell you how many times Amber brought up and took care of things we never even thought of. She KNOWS her stuff - and in particular gave us great recommendations for the few vendors we still had to book. She also let us choose the level of involvement we needed. In our case, we wanted to choose a lot of the design elements ourselves, but we really relied on her professional eye to put it all together and execute our "vision." On the day of, she was there until the very end...painstakingly packing and repacking the best man's SUV with our gifts, decorations, and leftover alcohol. I am still amazed that it all fit!

To sum up - if you are considering hiring a coordinator I would recommend:

1) Do it. (This is not the place to scrimp on your budget, get cheaper chairs or something)
and
2) Book Amber if you can! It will be one of the best decisions you make in the planning process.

I had considered using J for my wedding photos, but in the end decided not to. My review is influenced by two things:

1. Technical/ artistic quality of photographer - 3-4 stars

2. Responsiveness and client service - 0 stars

Which is an average of 2 stars. I will not be using J for my wedding - he did the wedding of a friend, and I saw the photos online, and they were gorgeous, so I recommended him to another friend, who also used him.

One thing I didn't know when making the recommendation was how poor J's after-the-fact service is. He literally did not respond to emails or phone calls for months. Although photos were posted on Pictage, both of my friends (one married in summer '06, the other in summer '07) do not have final layouts for their albums, which were part of the package. During this time, J moved his business to Maine, which shouldn't have mattered in the age of email and cell phones, but I guess to him it was "out of sight out of mind"

He also has a blog, where he posts about photography, the wedding photo business, and his personal life. It was frustrating for me and my friends to read about his skiing vacations and photography workshops he was attending when he would not respond to their emails for months about getting the albums. It is also probably a poor marketing decision on his part to have his blog containing posts about how to best raise prices and get more $ out of brides up on the web where any prospective client can see it!

I'd recommend that any bride going off of reviews of photogs find out the level of service folks got AFTER the fact, and not just base their decision on the beauty of the photos.