Bella Weddings & Events

I wanted to wait until I recieved my professional photos to write a post about Gabby, but I can't wait because she is too amazing and I have to share her unbelievable abilities for other brides and grooms out there looking for a wedding planner. The amount of beauty and effort Gabby put into our wedding is unreal. I met Gabby in 2019 and had to change my wedding date 3 times since then. I started to forget what we had planned for the wedding but Gabby was so good on giving us reassurance and asking us about our concerns and how she can fix them. Every suggestion she gave we went with and it did not disappoint. We upgraded the white tent to a clear tent, added signature cocktails and more. The weekend of the wedding my husband and I thought we would have enough time to get all the alcohol and mixers at Costco before our wedding. Boy were we wrong! We packed up our car and had to Uber in another because there was simply not enough room for all the packages. The day before the wedding we told Gabby last minute if she can help get the rest of the mixers plus some last minute things we needed from the rehearsal. I knew it was a lot to ask in very little time so I told her if it's not possible then no hard feelings and we will use what we have. She was able to deliver and provide everything! On our wedding day it was something straight out of a dream! Every detail was perfectly placed and Gabby would make sure to deliver us our signature cocktails every few hours because we were so busy with photos and talking to people. She truly goes above and beyond and deserves an award for being such a boss while being an amazing mother at the same time. I forgot to mention she just has a baby when I first met her and idk how she did it but she was able to handle work and mom life as if it were easy. I'm so sad the wedding is over but I am truly happy my husband and I have chosen Gabby. I feel like I'm losing a friend even though I am sure this won't be the last I see her. I'll need to have a Hawaiian celebration again soon and will 100% use her because this experience was an addicting adventure that needs to happen again!

Gabby was EXCELLENT!! We originally planned our wedding for 2020 then Covid hit. From the get go she was so flexible, understanding, and accommodating!! We had to reschedule and once we had a new date (2 years later in 2022) we were ecstatic when she confirmed she'd be available on our special day!We were so happy to get to still be able to have her as our day of coordinator. She made sure we were prepared, all of our vendors were prepared, and that everything ran smoothly on our special day :) She went above and beyond! I completely forgot my adapter to connect my laptop to our projector for our slideshow and she went all the way back home to pick hers up so we could use it!! She saved us!! She and her associate Cass were both so so pleasant, kind, and easy to work with! From our setup to tear down, dress rehearsal, and more I can not stress enough how incredible Bella Weddings was!We flew in from Austin to have our wedding back in Hawaii where I'm from so as expected there were some items that we needed to have shipped to Kailua in advance and she offered her service to accept the items and then transport them to our venue on the day of! Such a huge help in every way!! She even made sure that all of our key guests arrived before we started our ceremony which was very important to us as well :) Highly highly recommend Gabby and her team!! They were great!

My fiancé and I were engaged in Dec 2019 and I first spoke to Gabby in Feb 2020 as she was highly recommended by our Oahu venue. We just started planning and hadn't pinned down our venue but then COVID hit. We had decided a year into the pandemic it was time to pick up on wedding planning again. We opted for an intimate destination wedding and I immediately reached out to Gabby once we booked the Four Seasons Ko Olina. I chose her month of coordination package best suited our needs for a small wedding. Gabby is kind, experienced, and gracious with her time. She is adaptable and understands the wedding process inside and out. Later in the planning, I called her my wedding lawyer because she truly represented us as a couple and stood for our best interest when we had issues with restrictions and vendors. She understands the concerns in budgeting and is a great resource to reference pricing and throughly review vendor contracts. Due to COVID restrictions, we were forced to make adjustments even just a week before the wedding. Gabby was truly empathetic to our situation when I felt like having our event was hopeless. She provided options/ contingencies and in the end, we had a very fun and smooth wedding day. Our friends even contacted her to help coordinate surprise entertainment at the wedding as a gift. The whole thing was a complete surprise and went off without a hitch. I provided guidance on general decor/ preferences as well as took time to discuss her detailed timeline and checklists but Gabby really did the work to make a beautiful event happen. One thing I wanted to mention which is a more personal note to Gabby's work and personality is her compassion and warmth. Just before I walked down the aisle, she was prepping me for my entrance and she said "I can't believe we're finally here". Due to so many changes, I thought we might never have this wedding and this simple statement triggered my tears of happiness. Needless to say, Gabby is a pleasure work with and someone you want in your corner when navigating the wedding industry. I highly recommend her and her amazing team to anyone planning a wedding or event on the islands!

Let me first start off by saying I went through maybe eight wedding planners before I found gabby... EIGHT! My husband and I put down the deposit for lanikuhonua a month after being engaged. We found out we needed to hire a wedding planner and spent countless hours researching planners. Each planner I spoke to took days to get back to me for pricing or required an interview before giving me their pricing list. I straight up did not have time to fish around for planners and waste my time if they weren't going to be upfront about their pricing. Gabby responded with a detailed list of her services and pricing within two hours of me sending out an email AND wanted to schedule a phone call that same day. She was so responsive and patient when we talked to her - I knew right off the bat I wanted someone like her to plan my wedding - no excuses and straight to the point so we hired her for full planning since my husband and I live in LA but are both originally from HI From the very beginning she helped me book all my vendors with such ease. Budget was very important to me and she broke down every last detail of each vendors cost. She literally did all the math and broke down how much each head would cost and problem solved where we could save money (which I totally appreciate because I'm horrible at math). She was also amazing planning phone calls around LA time which we appreciated since we knew the time difference would be hard. I flew home in September to attend vendor meetings and she accompanied me taking notes on everything because of course - I would forget hah! She even supported my crazy edc themed cake idea! Day of the wedding gabby and her teamed handled everything so smoothly. Everything was so well organized and she was so reassuring with my crazy anxiety leading up to the wedding - talk about patience! She even handled my crazy mom-Zilla with such professionalism/patience and that says a lot hah! During the wedding gabby was prepared for ANYTHING. From covering my blisters with bandaids to making sure everyone stayed in task during the procession (because of course people get distracted). Mind you - she was pregnant and stayed the whole time start to finish at lani to make sure everything went as planned. During the Reception we ran out of alcohol (totally our fault since we didn't get enough as a couple). Gabby handled the situation so well! her team made a quick trip to target to make sure we had enough alcohol for the rest of the night. At the end of the night our guests couldn't stop talking about how beautiful the wedding was! From the design/attention to detail - her team also packed everything from the wedding in boxes. They Made sure everything was a boxed and wrapped since we were about to leave back to LA. If you're looking for a organized, patient and reliable planner go with gabby! You won't regret it ! I still can't believe she planned this whole wedding while pregnant! Thank you so much for every gabby! Jonathan and I are so happy and had a blast at our wedding. We are Forever grateful!!

Gabby is the absolute best! We seriously appreciate her so much. She has the best connections in the wedding industry and she knows who to go to for what. She also goes above and beyond and we are so happy that we worked together with her on our wedding. She helped us tremendously leading up to the wedding and during the wedding. I thought we were hopeless for our wedding rental provider bc things got booked so fast, and I was so worried. Gabby was amazing, she got us the connect with Aloha Artisans and we were set. Not only this, she just has great connections with people and vendors and she's a wonderful person all around. On the day of our wedding, Gabby also brought these super adorable white umbrellas in the case of rain (which sometimes happens in north shore), and we did use them and they were so cute --great photo opp. Every step of the way, Gabby has been excellent and I would recommend her to anyone who is looking for an excellent wedding coordinator. Love you Gabby!!

Where do I begin about Gabby. Honestly, we were so beyond impressed about Gabby that I wish she'd be by my side, planning my entire life for me. Everyone needs a Gabby.From the very beginning, Gabby stood out against other wedding planners by sharing with me her wedding portfolio, which had inspiration boards and organized information/details of her past clients with photos and descriptions. This gave me a good idea of her decor style and how organized she was. I was looking for someone who had similar style as mine and also an "eye" for design. Gabby is everything and above! I also enjoyed that she was tech savvy and knew how to navigate google drive and other softwares which adds lots of points in my book. The thing that stood out the most to me was her attention to detail, (she's pretty much perfect all the time), her ridiculous memory (she remembers side comments I made from months before), and her patience under extreme pressure and time constraints. Planning for a destination wedding is not easy. I'm a very hands on and visual person so not being able to see a lot of the items could have been challenging but Gabby made me feel reassured that it would turn out nicely. We came to visit the island once before the wedding and because we were only there for 3 days, Gabby managed to organize visits with 9 vendors within those days. Can you believe that? 9 vendors in 3 days?! Not only that, but because I ordered a lot of things on Etsy, Gabby let me ship them all to her house and kept track of everything as they arrived. She was so sweet and even helped me stick labels on my bubble gifts for my guests. There was a snag with the guest cards a few days before the wedding and Gabby calmly searched for another solution and quickly got everything printed and handled for us.I was very particular with my vision and things that I wanted. Im not always like that, but I mean, you only get married once right? Gabby managed to make my vision come to life and it was beyond anything that I could've imagined. I went with every vendor she referred and I was so impressed by all of them. I've been to many weddings and the food is usually not memorable or sub-par. The food from Memoirs was, I kid you not, one of the best meals of my life. And this was after we had a cake tasting! I got tons of feedback from my guests that they loved the food. Flower Girls executed my vision of hanging flower prisms perfectly and A Cake Life made some of the most beautiful desserts I've ever seen.I can honestly say that my wedding at Loulu Palm was the most perfect day of our lives and all of it is thanks to Gabby. The whole day went smoothly and the weather was perfect even though thunderstorms were on the forecast. I seriously felt like dad was watching us from up above and made sure it didn't rain that day. Gabby's team ensured the schedule ran well with no snags and she even came to bring us drinks a few times. When it was all over, Gabby and team cleaned up and packed all my decorations back into their original boxes. They did such a good job packing that it didn't even look like they were opened! As you can see, I can't rave enough about Gabby. I wish I could get married all over again just so that we could work together. Gabby is honestly the best out there and wouldn't hesitate to refer her to anyone we know!

Gabby and her team were amazing. I was in the transition of moving before the wedding, she didn't not let me stress one bit. I was in the mainland planning my wedding in Hawaii. She was always punctual and always got back to me on time, sent me samples and different choices to choose from in a timely manner, she always did monthly follow ups with me over the phone and or in person, she always made sure and reminded me of my deadlines and what i was missing. When my wedding day came everything came out to what i wanted and more. It was the most beautiful wedding i had in my life. I didn't stress one but at all. All the vendors and everything fell through beautifully. I would recommend her to any bride!

I cannot offer a high enough praise or recommendation for Gabriella Kawamoto and Bella Weddings and Events. Gabby is one of the most diligent, detail oriented, hard working and organized people I have ever had the pleasure to work with. Her work made my wedding planning effortless, providing me with all of the information and recommendations I needed and effectuating all of the necessary coordination and communications. Gabby was such a pleasure to work with through the entire planning process and I would now consider her not only my wedding planner but my friend. Our wedding was logistically complicated and Gabby planned every detail to a point where it was executed flawlessly on our special day. On top of her coordination abilities, Gabby truly understood my stylistic vision and everything turned out more beautiful than I ever could have imagined! By our wedding day I felt so confident in Gabby's work and abilities that I was truly able to let go and do nothing but enjoy! I had mentally prepared myself that several things would probably not go as planned at our wedding, but lo and behold, everything went perfectly! If you are looking for a wedding planner I enthusiastically recommend that you pick Bella Weddings and Events! You will be a very happy bride!

No amount of thank you's can describe how grateful we are to have found Gabby and her amazing team!!From the moment she responded so quickly to our inquiry up until the day-of, Gabby has been a god-send!! She is very meticulous and suggested details we had never thought to include. Gabby was very professional, patient and attentive with our many questions and changes. We really appreciated the fact that she reviewed all of our vendor contracts with a fine-toothed comb and noticed things we missed.Our wedding day went very smoothly and everyone raved about perfect everything was!! Thank you so very much to Gabby and her team at Bella Weddings & Events for making our event one we will never forget!!! :)Joanne & Brisan

There are almost no words -- and no review glowing enough -- to describe how incredible Gabby is. In fact, my advice to you: stop reading this review right now and contact [email protected] to lock her in for your date, then come back for the full review. Gabby came recommended to us by our wedding planner in 2019, when we were looking for a planner for our rehearsal dinner. Our wedding weekend was slated for May 2020, but, of course, once the pandemic hit we were forced to re-schedule (and then re-schedule again). After the second or third postponement, we decided on a date in Oct 2021 and we were sticking to it. Enter: Delta variant. The State all but shut down social gatherings, and we nearly threw in the towel, but ultimately decided to have a small, pared down event.In the end, Gabby stuck with us for more than two years, and she was a friend and ally every. step. of. the. way. Planning this sort of event is stressful as it is, and add on top of that cutting the guest list, collecting vaccination records, flakey vendors, and dealing with ever-changing state/local guidelines. Gabby is the only reason I got through it and actually enjoyed the event (imagine that!). She is on top of *every* last detail, responds immediately, and anticipated every slight hiccup before it occurred. Her correspondence is clear and succinct. She deals with vendors and venues like a total pro. Her event Timeline and To-Do lists are clear and keep everything in order. She took so much off my plate leading up to the event, and in my opinion could charge much more for all the excellent work she does. As many other reviewers noted, she has a calm and friendly demeanor. On the day of our event, the venue decided to place a "covid enforcement officer" at the party, and we both just had to cry-laugh it was all getting so absurd. She made me feel like a friend rather than just a client. As stressful -- and, at times, painful -- as it was to plan this event during covid, I nearly cried when I hugged Gabby and said goodbye to her after the event. She is amazing, amazing, amazing. Book her and thank me later. Gabby, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts!!!