LK Events

I am terribly late in posting this review (it has been a whirlwind since our vows, but things are FINALLY starting to slow down!), but better late than never! As an über busy student, I knew I needed a full planner for my wedding, and after a family friend recommended LK Events, I happily signed on to work with Nicole. SHE IS THE BEST! My husband and I had a particularly drawn out road to the wedding day (for real– it ended up being a two year process) and Nicole was there every step of the way. Not only did she have terrific recommendations for vendors (I have to say, I ended up with the BEST team for my wedding, better than I could have ever imagined and people I hope to continue having contact with), but she was an incredible person as well, and I enjoyed her personality as well as her fabulous professional abilities. I owe her a giant thank you for such a wonderful and love filled journey, and a wedding day that people still talk about (and one that I feel just as joyous about four months out as I did the day of… probably even more so, actually!). I cannot recommend LK Events and Nicole enough, and I would give them 5 gazillion stars if Unilocal would let me. :)

We could not have been more pleased with Nicole Zenner from LK Events! At the encouragement of our venue, Shedd Aquarium, we decided a little late in the planning process to hire a wedding coordinator. This was seriously the best decision we made for our wedding, because Nicole took care of all meetings, emails, etc. to finalize items with our vendors. We had a few hiccups on our wedding day, and Nicole still made sure our wedding went seamlessly. In addition to working with Nicole in the months leading up to our wedding, we also had Jennifer Crouch during the wedding weekend. Both ladies were fantastic, and if you’re looking for highly competent and organized planners/​coordinators, you can’t go wrong with LK Events!

My husband was right. It was absolutely the one item he insisted about our wedding — hire an event planner. I began to thank him profusely every day after I found Lauren, owner of LK Events.
We planned an amazing wedding together long distance — Lauren was in Chicago and we were in NY. She was absolutely on point and on top of every detail. She has an amazing network of people in the industry, who respect her as well. At almost every turn, we heard, «Oh, you’re working with Lauren, she’s the best!» And she is — both an absolute sweetheart and incredibly talented.
Lauren oversaw every detail and made sure the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding and reception went without major incident. She smoothed over many of those wedding day «glitches» — I never knew or realized. She is well worth her heart and services in gold. She also introduced us to Renee Price at Kehoe, who handled our flowers and event design. The team of Lauren and Renee are a dynamic duo! The impact and outcome are nothing short of «WOW»!
She was on top of every vendor — we didn’t have to worry about contracts, payment coordination or communicated any venue requirements — from start to finish, Lauren was there. She handled our crazy families gracefully, and kept me on time during the morning of my wedding — I actually arrived on time and my family lost all bets.
Hiring Lauren will be one of the smartest decisions you make with regards to your wedding planning. If you want to ensure that all goes well no matter what twists and turns occur (and they will), Lauren will keep you headed in the right direction, stay on budget, and ensure your wedding is as special as you imagined. Her creativity, style, perseverance and network ensure any event with Lauren is an amazing success.

Hiring Nicole from LK Events as my day-​of wedding coordinator was the best wedding investment I made.
Being the control freak I am, I knew I wouldn’t need much help with the actual planning, but wanted someone to handle all the day-​of stress and details. Especially with a lot of family coming in from out of town (and not necessarily used to getting around in a big city) Nicole was a godsend.
She created and provided customized schedules to vendors, bridesmaids and groomsmen. She confirmed everything with vendors the week of the wedding (and put out several fires that could have been HUGE issues had she not been on top of them beforehand.)
She and her assistant helped friends and family members get taxis from the church to the reception, made sure everything stayed as close to the schedule as possible (while staying calm and collected dealing with a major catering issue that threatened to throw the entire evening off and managing my impending freakout in the process.)
She even tracked down my husband’s ipod that he left on the trolley that we needed for our entrance to the reception.
Bottom line, if you want someone who is meticulously organized to make sure your wedding day goes smoothly and will act as your advocate for friends, family and vendors — leaving you free to actually ENJOY your wedding day, you MUST hire Nicole from LK Events.
If you need to skimp on your budget elsewhere, it is totally worth it and necessary to have Nicole there on your wedding day.

I just attended a wedding where Lauren was the wedding planner. I was so amazed and impressed with how she handled the enitre day. All I can say is that I wish I had been married after my girlfriend so I would have met Lauren and had the opportunity to hire her for my wedding.

This is going to be long, I apologize ahead of time.
I knew the day I got engaged that we were going to hire a wedding planner. I had no idea what I was doing and didn’t have the time or energy to figure it out. A friend recommended Lauren. We had an initial phone conversation followed by a preliminary meet and greet and I was sold. It was like I was talking to an old friend from college.
We hired Lauren on spot as a full time planner. She helped us with EVERYTHING. She planned my engagement party, helped us pick vendors, scheduled meetings, attended meetings, helped with etiquette, listened to me rant and rave etc. Now, I am organized but she put me to shame. She managed all of our contracts, payments, meetings. She even reminded me of comments I had made about different vendors.
My wedding wasn’t your typical wedding. I decided to be a pain in the butt and get married the weekend that NATO was in Chicago. Everyone was freaking out. Should we postpone the wedding? change the location? Not Lauren. She had a back up plan for her back up plan. She provided everyone involved in the wedding a 10 page schedule. The schedule was literally down to the minute, starting on Thursday and ending on Sunday. She also made 3 different versions of the schedule for me: one for vendors, one for the bridesmaids and one for the groomsmen. She was so accomodating.
I am happy to report that my day went flawlessly. She was there every step of the day and anticipated my every need.
I cant thank her enough. Because of her, my husband, my family and I all got to enjoy every moment of the wedding. If something did go wrong on my wedding day, I still don’t know about because Lauren took care of everything.
She is worth her weight in gold.

Initially we had no plans of hiring a wedding planner, mainly because we felt that we could save more time and money doing it on our own. However, that’s when this thing called LIFE took over and kept us from spending the amount of time we really wanted on our wedding.
Lauren saved us so much time and worry in regards to time-​line planning, orchestrating everything on the day of the wedding, and making sure all our vendors got paid. We had signed up for the day-​of-​the-​wedding plan (forgot the exact name of it), but she really offered more than that — she offered us reassurance and was so helpful in recommendations for additional vendors we hadn’t considered. She was a great help and made our day so memorable and carefree, which made it WORTH the money :)

We hired LK Events as our week/​day of wedding planner. It was honestly the best decision we made during the wedding planning process! Lauren Knuepfer (the owner of LK Events) was seriously a rock star, we LOVED her! Lauren always made herself available for consults (we had a lot of etiquette and logistical questions throughout the process) and was incredibly responsive to e-​mails, phone calls and text messages. She also assisted with any vendor recommendations we needed and helped with any contract questions that came up. Lauren is always professional but has the best disposition and attitude.
Our wedding timeline, created by Lauren, was detailed, thorough, and had line items we would never in a million years would have thought of. On our wedding day she was organized and kept every single person involved on track. We don’t know how we would have gotten through the day without her. Seriously!
We’ve heard a lot of feedback from guests that our wedding was amazing and seemed to go off without a hitch, and to that I credit LK Events. My bridal party and family could not stop talking about what a great job Lauren and her staff did.
I cannot say enough positive things about LK Events. I would recommend this company to anyone looking for an amazing wedding planner!

The main reasons that I wanted to work with a wedding planner were because I had no idea where to start planning a wedding, and even more, I wanted our families and friends to be able to relax and enjoy the wedding weekend. My fiancé was not thrilled about the idea of hiring a planner, but he agreed to consider it, so we met with Lauren of LK Events.
After meeting Lauren, I knew right away that we should to hire her, and any doubts that my fiancé had were gone as well. Before I met Lauren, I was nervous and not excited about planning the wedding, but Lauren put me at ease and made me really excited about planning our wedding. Planning our wedding was a ton of work, and we could not have done it without Lauren. Lauren was amazing throughout the entire planning process. She helped us to pick vendors that we loved without blowing our budget. She is extremely professional and detail oriented, but also a ton of fun to work with! Lauren worked extremely hard to make our wedding day perfect. I highly recommend using LK Events!

The Summary:
Stressed about planning the wedding you’ve dreamt of your entire life? Stress no more. Your solution is the founder of LK Events, Lauren. Lauren was the reason my husband and I (as well as our 300 guests) had a perfect, magical, modern, elegant, and amazingly fun wedding! Lauren has a passion for life and specifically event planning. Besides the fact that she is young, fun, gorgeous, and not to mention super TALENTED, she will take the jumbled ideas in your head and turn them into a wedding day that exceeds every expectation of perfection you ever had. I think the most important thing to note about Lauren is that she doesn’t have preconceived notions about how a wedding should be. She makes them as unique as the two of you are as a couple. She is organized, diligent, enthusiastic, and will truly feel like your best friend through the entire process!
The Details:
I hired Lauren as soon as Jon and I got engaged, 18 months before our wedding in downtown Chicago. She took me through the entire process with such fantastic insight, ideas, and enthusiasm. She helped me think outside the box on everything. We knew we didn’t want to have it at a hotel, but with 300 guests it was a challenge. The minute she gave me the tour of the Adler Planetarium, we knew it was perfect. Not only did she give me the tour, then Jon and I, then my mother and I, then Jon’s parents and I. She never complained that she had now given us the tour 5 times and lit up the entire time just as she did the first time. She was this involved with every vendor and every meeting. She met with me umpteen times, even if it was just to ensure me that everything was going to be perfect. She introduced me to all the perfect vendors for my personality. She made our modern elegant light yellow and hot pink theme as gorgeous as I could have dreamed with black linens, yellow napkins and accents, and all hot pink orchids.
The week of our wedding she sent the most detailed timeline down to every 10 minutes for the entire weekend. She gave copies to every single person involved in the rehearsal and bridal party. Everyone knew exactly when to be where, what time to be ready, and how the day would work. From the girls spa appointments and catering, to the mens golf outing, to the rehearsal flow, to the dinner and speeches and av equipment, to the morning of the wedding having every millionth vendor prepped and on time. She is just incredible. She was worth every dollar we spent on her because with her expertise, contacts, and negotiation skills saved us at least that much money. More than that, she gave us piece of mind. My father said it best when he said «Lauren was hands down the best investment we made for this wedding». She got all of our belongings from the wedding (cards, gifts, extra shoes, top of cake, leftover wine, veil, etc) back to our hotel room all set up, and left us the sweetest note. She thinks everything through in a manner than few can.
Thank you Lauren for giving us our dream wedding full of love, beauty, fireworks, champagne, and a packed dance floor!
Here’s a link to our wedding on Style Me Pretty where you can see all Lauren’s hard work pay off!

I can’t tell you, after 2 months, how many people have told us that we had the best wedding they’ve ever been to. I don’t want to sound to high on myself, but it really was a fantastic party. But I can’t take much credit for that, honestly. It was in great part to our wonderful planner, Lauren. Her insight into making the wedding flow was instrumental in the success of our day. Not only did she plan for an exceptional experience for our guests, Lauren made sure that our day, as Bride and Groom, was one that we could enjoy rather than worry about all of the details. Those details, by the way, are what make a good wedding great.
I know what all of you are thinking: «why do I need a wedding planner?» My in-​laws (who were paying for much of the wedding) said the EXACT same thing. My (now) wife was on their side as well. But after convincing them to book Lauren, they can’t stop raving about how key it was to have her there that day. I know not everyone needs «full service» planning, but that’s why Lauren will customize a package that fits your needs.
I promise that you will not regret your decision to hire Lauren. It was the best decision we made when planning our wedding.

We worked with the owner of LK Events, Lauren, for our wedding (though she was with another company at the time), and we could not have been more impressed with her professionalism, organization, creativity and general willingness to go above and beyond. She did so much to make our day stress-​free, beautiful and special, and we are forever grateful to her.
We were thrilled for her when we heard that she had started her own business. We recently attended another wedding coordinated by Lauren at the Peninsula and were again very impressed with the event design and flow. Though I won’t be planning another wedding, I would very, very highly recommend Lauren and LK Events to anyone planning a wedding or larger event!