My husband and I had plan to marry at Basilica in Hudson, NY on August 22, 2020. We put our deposit down for the venue in December 2019. By February, we had confirmed our wedding planner, Jeanne, and caterer, Josephine from Local 111. When COVID struck NYC in March, we had no idea what to do. Working with Jeanne and family, we eventually decided to move forward with a smaller wedding in parents' backyard in Westchester with 40 guests. It wasn't what we had originally thought, but it was wonderful! Jeanne was a SUPERSTAR helping us through every decision and staying on top of health regulations. She introduced us to every vendor and the day was absolutely perfect, given the constraints from COVID. We feel so fortunate that Jeanne was working with us and guiding us through these major decisions as a complete professional. My family loved working with her and everyone loved all of the staff and vendors at the wedding. It was a very special day!

We had a great elopement officiated by Debra! Booking through the website and planning things with her were super easy. She gave us great advice on the specific location, since we hadn't been to the reason before. Great for elopements - very professional and hassle-free!

Dear Reverend Stuart, Wedding Day: 6/17/2021 at The Briarcliff Manor A special thank you from the new Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank you for helping to make our ceremony special. From the first day we met virtually, to the wedding day, you were very friendly, easy to connect with, and delivered a great service. You were a hit at the wedding with our guests and us. We were incredibly happy that we chose you as our wedding officiant. That day was the most memorable day of our lives, thank you for making it possible.

Loved working with Rev Stu. 10/10 recommend

Amanda and the HVC staff were so amazing, they made our vision come to life and took care of all the details so we could really enjoy our day. Cannot recommend them enough!

Sandra did a fantastic job as our day-of wedding coordinator! Sandra was knowledgable, friendly, easy to work with, and very supportive with the process of planning our wedding during COVID. She was very knowledgable about the constantly evolving COVID restrictions in NY state and gave us excellent advice related to that. She stayed on top of paperwork and communications with our outside vendors and the venue, making sure that a lot of the important administrative and planning duties were taken care of, which really helped lighten our load. She was always very friendly, warm, and supportive as we struggled with planning a wedding during a global pandemic. She offered so much of her time in the form of video calls, emails, and other communications leading up to the day, even though she was technically just a “day-of” coordinator. She is a total professional and we are so grateful that she was a part of our wedding!

We used HVC / Jeanne for our wedding in May at Basilica Hudson. Seriously cannot recommend her enough! She was so knowledgeable about vendors and super helpful throughout the process. She was always very responsive and made herself available when we wanted to see the venue multiple times (with both sets of parents). We purchased the lowest package (day of coordinator), but she did SO much more - she truly went above and beyond. We also ended up using her staff for the bartenders and servers, and they were great. Jeanne is the best!

We loved working with Amanda for our November 2019 wedding. She was always there for every little question we had and was so accommodating with our visits & unique requests. She helped us manage vendors & plan every little detail of our wedding. She was also great when we had a few last minute fire drills & changes the day before/day of. Thank you Amanda & team!

Hudson Valley Ceremonies was a pleasure to work with! Being a covid bride had it's challenges, but working with HVC was not one of them. Amanda was really helpful and accommodating when we needed to change our date from early June to end of September. Reverend Lawrence officiated our wedding. He took the time to chat with us and get a sense of our personalities. He then sent us a prototype of the ceremony before we officially booked HVC. It was exactly the type of ceremony we were looking for. Thank you HVC for helping us have the perfect day!

We worked with Sandra O’Connell and she was a dream. She was organized, very quick to respond and a delight to work with. Sandra knew a ton of vendors in diverse price ranges and helped us with every issue we had. She knew how to advocate for us and ensure that we were able to get what we needed. On the day of the wedding, Sandra ran the show and put out fires that neither of us even knew happened. She was very attentive and had a quiet no bullshit attitude that was exactly what we needed on our big day. Especially during and after COVID, Sandra went above and beyond to help us find new vendors when we had to push our date. We worked with Sandra 8 more months than we were initially supposed to due to COVID. During a time when HVC was probably very busy, she made us feel like we were the only couple getting married in 2021. As an aside, Sandra is very warm and loving. Both of our families and parents fell in love with Sandra just as we did. We were so happy to work with he... Read morer, and we were so happy to have her at our wedding! Highly HIGHLY recommend Hudson Valley Ceremonies and Sandra O’Connell.

eminder: Your Start a Busienss check-in is happening soon! Inbox

My wife, Julie, and I hired HVC and specifically Jeanne Stark to coordinate our wedding at the Basilica in Hudson, NY. Now that our wedding has come and gone, I can say confidently that Jeanne was the most instrumental and valuable vendor that we hired. She took our vision, which started off with a deposit at a blank-canvas venue, and helped to make it a reality. Jeanne's experience at the Basilica and specific knowledge of Hudson Valley vendors made it possible for a couple from NYC to plan a wedding 2.5 hrs north and never feel overwhelmed or out of touch. You want something done? Working together for over a year, Jeanne was always available to schedule a call to address concerns, even when she was in the midst of busy parts of the wedding season and she had other clients to attend to. Jeanne listened to every one of our concerns and when our weekend came, our 220 person wedding went off without a hitch; every last detail was accounted for. Jeanne and her staff went above and beyond ... Read moreto ensure that our wedding was as special as it could be. I cannot recommend Jeanne and HVC enough.

We contacted Sandra less than 1 week from our wedding. She was instrumental in helping us bring final pieces together and flexible with our short term needs. Sandra got to work right away contacting our vendors, putting together a professional schedule of the day and collecting vendor information in one place. She also facilitated our non-standard seating chart requests, a detail we might have put off too long not for her help. She was extremely accessible and easy to communicate with. She was patient and responsive with our multiple emails everyday leading up to the wedding. Day Of we really appreciated Sandra and her assistant Louise’s help with tasks like decorating tables and ceremony site, setting things out for guests, and running items to vendors. She helped keep events, shuttles, and our vendors moving. She managed delays and changes in the schedule, checking in with us frequently, without any event feeling rushed or forced. We greatly appreciated this quality as other coordi... Read morenators we interviewed gave us anxiety rather than a feeling of ease. We were especially appreciative given the amount of detail she caught up on and helped us nail down so close to wedding! We were able to enjoy the evening without having to worry about important details being executed. A bonus - hvc had the ability to do onsite covid tests and could have coordinated a nanny service had we needed it.

So we hired our wedding planner through them. She will be apart of the review but the star value is really towards the company. I don't really know what I "paid" For by going through them. Every payment I made I would get a receipt and then I would have to email them to up date my account bc they would say I owed money. So there was a huge disconnect bc their payment portal and their records. We hired Lauren Pasternak for partial planning and she's lovely. However I guess/ I have been told that I am an atypical bride and much more organized and planning than most. I am VERY proactive and I felt that Lauren although a nice person was more reactive. I dealt with many of my problems myself. I had the majority of my wedding planned 6 months prior so issues that arose I tried to squash right away. She clearly was a very busy planner and the weddings that I saw of her were beautiful. However I quickly learned that if I emailed her on a Thursday that it wouldn't be until Monday or Tuesday... Read more when I would hear back. I called her on four different occasions for different reasons and she never called me back. In my head I figured that she gives her weddings 100% so when it's my turn it will be the same. She did our ceremony and reception flowers and they came out very nice. She had an assistant Amber who was lovely the day off. I just felt that she could have handed the programs and scarves that we had made vs putting them on the ground where no one got them. We had extended our cocktail hour to take pictures and she was no where to be seen in regards to help organize that to go smoother so that was disorganized. I felt that she could have sent the bridal party upstairs so I wasn't alone for 30-45 minutes before the ceremony. She did help get our grandparents home a little earlier which was appreciated. When my dress broke she did have safety pins. She didn't even say goodbye to us which I thought was a little weird. I felt that she could have advocated for us a little more in regards to things like the caterer. None of my vendors really interacted with her and preferred to go through me which was annoying bc the purpose of the WP is so I didn't have to deal with things so I wish she was more assertive in that regard. The transportation debacle she should have been on top of it. I will say that more than likely I was too "on top" of things and I often asked myself maybe I'm not letting her do her job. However when I would try to relinquish things they weren't attended to timely I felt. She also opened a new business two-three weeks prior to my wedding and I felt that took some of her attention away. I don't know if I would recommend hiring a wedding planner, I guess it depends on how you are organized and if you are a control freak maybe do it yourself .