Valerie Slaven is an absolute superstar wedding planner. After doing extensive research into Columbus wedding planners and interviews with a handful potential candidates, we hired Valerie for full wedding planning shortly after we got engaged and booked our venues -- a little over a year before our wedding. That was the best decision we made during the entire process. While the Columbus wedding industry has plenty of talent, we feel that Valerie is truly superlative among her peers. Our family is already quite organized and detailed, and we had a specific vision for our wedding; even so, Valerie taught us so much that we didn't know beforehand, and was the most important person on our team by far. Among countless other things, Valerie helped us: hire most of our vendors; extensively negotiate contracts when we wanted to adjust the contract terms; design venue layouts; create a detailed wedding website; stay on track with vendor payments; arrange logistics; create a wedding weekend schedule; come up with creative ideas for personalized touches; arrange calls with vendors; visit vendors in person even when my spouse and I were out of town and unable to join; and execute all our plans on the wedding weekend, including coordinating with our families and picking up and dropping off innumerable items at our home, the hotel, the venues, etc. Valerie was very responsive by phone, text, or email the whole year; she fielded so many questions from me especially; and she was willing to accompany us to vendor meetings as needed (some planners that we initially considered were unwilling to attend more than a couple vendor meetings). Beyond all that, and perhaps most important, Valerie's social skills and emotional intelligence are sky-high. She went above and beyond to get to know us, to put us and our families at ease, to offer advice with both candor and warmth, and to accommodate and encourage our multicultural traditions. She even stopped by our wedding shower to meet our friends and extended family ahead of the wedding. Honestly, one of the things I will miss most about wedding planning is the time we got to spend with Valerie. We consider her a friend of the family now, and we cannot recommend her highly enough.

Valerie Slaven of Limelight Event Planning is a magician! Valerie gave us incredible, timely advice in selecting all our wedding vendors. We live in Kentucky and my daughter & her husband wanted to marry in Columbus. Valerie listened very carefully to my daughter's heartfelt desires (&the groom's) and guided us to people who far exceeded our expectations, while staying on budget. We were able to schedule initial meetings via Zoom and then as the "month of" drew near, we met in person. Valerie was on point at the rehearsal in Church and ran the show seamlessly for us at both the Hilton Easton pre-wedding and Golf Club at Little Turtle for the reception. She helped with everything, including assisting the Father-of-the-Bride get his cuff links buckled, buttoning a ridiculous number of buttons on bride's gown and retrieving a sewing kit for a last minute veil tear! Valerie outdid herself at the reception, creating a fabulous cookie table display with 20 varieties. We were just thrilled! Valerie teed up the entire evening ensuring bartenders, appetizers, band, shuttles, etc...all were where they were supposed to be on time. She workedvery well with our photographers, too! Valerie sent us (parents) home to relax after the wedding and packed up a myriad of table numbers, photos, candles, cookie trays, leftovers and other items leaving everything totally organized. She was truely amazing! I very highly recommend Valerie & Limelight Event Planning!!!!

My husband and I feel so incredibly lucky to have found Val. She took the time to get to know us really well, which resulted in finding the best vendors that fit us for our big day. She is great at helping execute your vision or helping to shape your vision. Val was such a savior for me when it came to the details. Sometimes I didn't always have the time to go over those details, but I gave her full creative freedom when it came to those things because she knew generally what I liked and would get my blessing and move forward. With Val, I was always felt organized and never overwhelmed. Please consider her for your next event, she's fantastic!