Josefina Weddings & Events

I would have been a mess without Dana. She was super knowledgeable, helpful, professional, funny, and sweet. She took the bull by the horns and made sure that my wedding went smoothly. It was a perfect day and she helped to make it that way! I highly recommend putting your event in her hands! I was able to relax and enjoy my day knowing that she had it all under control.

If I hadn’t gotten married to my wonderful husband, I would have asked Dana to marry me out of pure gratitude for the amazing support, guidance and coordination she brought to the wedding process! Seriously, I cannot say enough about how wonderful Josefina Events is. I, too, interviewed 5+ wedding coordinators and within 10 seconds of speaking with Laura and Dana I knew I had to go with Josefina. I planned my wedding from across the country with Dana, and cannot overemphasize how crucial it was to have her on my team. She took care of all of the vendor coordination the month of and worked with everyone to create a perfect timeline. Having Dana and Gabi on site the wedding day made it all seamless. She was there for me whenever I needed her, and the rest of the time was seamlessly and discreetly ensuring everything was perfect. And it really was. Josefina events is the best for their services, but more than that, the team is really kind, generous and friendly on a personal level making it a 10 star experience (if I could give more!).

We hired Laura and her amazing team (Dana and Gabi) for our wedding this past October 17, 2015. We hired her to help us with last month coordination and we were in contact with her even before the last month. She was always so open and willing to answer any questions we had. We knew we wanted to hire her as soon as we met her, you can tell right away from her personality that she will make sure things run smoothly the day of your wedding! I gave her a list of how we wanted things set up for our wedding reception and when we walked in we were blown away! She and her team made our vision come to life!
I had Dana with us at our rehearsal and during our church wedding ceremony and she was so great! Of course, we were running a little late getting to the church but she was so calm (which calmed me!), made sure I wasn’t seen beforehand, lined everyone up and made sure I looked my best walking down that aisle. It was such an emotional and important moment for me, I was so glad to have her there. I literally felt like I had one of my best friends helping me that day :)
Long story short, our wedding day was flawless because of Laura and her team! If something went wrong that day, I didn’t know about it. Everything seemed absolutely PERFECT. My husband and I continue to talk about all our favorite parts and we are forever grateful to all of them. Not only are they amazing at what they do, they are the sweetest people! We have no regrets hiring them and definitely highly recommended them to anyone looking for wedding coordinators :)

Laura and her assistant provided us with an absolutely flawless and seamless day for our wedding. It was everything we envisioned and more. We couldn’t have asked for a better planner or expected that she would go above and beyond to pull together our vision and make the day so memorable.
We hired her as a month of planner, and she really provided so much more assistance that what we hired her for. She replied to every question, email, and call in such an attentive and timely manner, she made sure to provide us with all of the information and knowledge we needed to make informed decisions about all aspects of our wedding and above all made us feel comfortable and secure in the decision we made.
On the wedding day, Laura brought together our wedding in the most beautiful and easy way possible and handled things that were really not in her job description, just to make sure our day was everything we wanted and stress free. To put it simply, Laura and her assistant performed magic and were truly amazing. I would highly recommend hiring Laura for your wedding or event, especially if you want it done right.

I was referred to Josefina Events by a photographer who had recently done an event with them. I am so glad she told me about them! I started out having a conversation with Laura, who was very sweet and knowledgeable. We discussed which type of wedding planning package would be appropriate for my event. We decided on the «day of» (which is really more like 2 weeks before) package. Laura was willing to be flexible on pricing with packages, if we decided we wanted to upgrade later in the game. The coordinator we were assigned was Dana. She was amazing! While we found and booked our vendors, Dana was able to pick up where we left off and truly orchestrated it so that they all worked seamlessly together. She was incredibly responsive to my many (many, many…) emails and phone calls with questions and concerns. She also has a sweet, calm, flexible and professional demeanor which is extremely helpful when dealing with wedding planning stress :). She helped handle some issues we were having with our officiant, which was a big relief. Also, it ended up raining on our wedding day and she took the initiative to rearrange the layout so that everything fit under the tent, and still make sure the flow worked out. Gabi was Dana’s assistant the day of the wedding and they truly did an incredible job making sure everything went smoothly and my husband and I enjoyed our day. I would highly recommend them! Thank you for everything!

The team at Josefina Events are the absolute best! I would like to start out by saying I was very adamant about not hiring a wedding coordinator as our wedding was very DIY and we were hoping to keep costs low. However we realized quickly that this was a mistake and words cannot express how thankful we are that we came to our senses and found the wonderful ladies at Josefina. They worked so hard to make our wedding go off without a hitch and they went above and beyond expectations. Dana and Gabbi, I can’t thank you enough for all you did to make our wedding day stress free so we could enjoy it.

I shudder to think of what my wedding would have been without the help of Laura and Gabi. I started with a bootcamp session with Laura — I came in a frazzled mess not sure of what I was doing and left feeling calm and confident with some fantastic ideas of how I could make our wedding day great. I also knew immediately that I would need some day-​of help, and signed up with Gabi as my day-​of coordinator.
Gabi and Laura stayed connected with me throughout the planning process, reaching out even when they didn’t have to to check in and offer advice. The week of the wedding we had some last minute snags with the venue, and Gabi was such a calming presence to help us through the workarounds that we would need for the big day. The day of the wedding came and I was actually able to enjoy it all, thanks to Gabi expertly handling all the vendor coordination, questions (in both English and Spanish!), schedules and anything else that came up.
Thank you Gabi and Laura for making our wedding day so much fun and so memorable for us and our guests!

Josefina Events performed an excellent job at my son’s wedding last week. The bride was wise and selected Laura as the wedding planner for the month of the wedding. Since the bride lived out of state, Laura had to deal with me, the mother of the groom. Laura communicated well with all of us and gave excellent recommendations for venders. We are not sure how we could have mastered it without her. Laura and Dana worked magic and placed all of the decorations where they belonged but also cleaned it up and placed everything back into the van so we could leave the wedding in one piece. All of this was done with a cheery sincere smile and positive calm attitudes.
I highly recommend Josefina Events as your wedding or party planner. All the venders were as promised, reliable and pleasant to work with. They made a stressful event to be a pleasant day,

Aside from having a groom, having a wedding planner is the most important ingredient in having your dream wedding. Whether you are having a 6 month, 1 year or 2 year engagement, my advice to anyone who is reading this is to hire a full-​time planner. Seriously.
I am A-​type, creative and a bit of a control-​freak. Finding the perfect planner, someone I trust enough to plan my wedding, was a bit stressful. I interviewed 3 event planners before my meeting with Laura/​Josefina Events. They were all impressive; there was this cute blonde with a Marcia Brady disposition, she sported a killer Kate Spade bag and a serious agenda that booked events up to 2017! I almost hired her. But then I met Laura… It took me only 15 minutes to realize she’s ‘the one’, so I hired her on the spot. Full time. I’m sure Marcia Brady probably would have done the job right, but I’m also sure I would have just been another pencil marking in her calendar. Laura, on the other hand, made me feel as though I was the only Bride in the world, not just in that first meeting, the entire engagement.
I had my wedding almost 3 weeks ago and it was flawless. At every opportunity Laura went above and beyond. The venue (which she found) was GORGEOUS, I could not have dreamt of a better place. The challenge, it was outside of San Diego (Simi Valley, over 3 hours north) so finding reliable vendors near the venue was a crapshoot… and to make things a bit more challenging for her, staying in budget was also an absolute MUST.
Mission accomplished!
Not only did we stay in budget, the food… the cake… the florist… the deejay… all perfect. Seriously. I had several people tell me how perfect everything was and how great my planner is. I had 5 people sent me an email (while on my honeymoon) to tell me how great Laura was… and a handful more told me in person when I came back.
Day of wedding — Laura (and Dana) = BOSS! While getting ready, I took a moment to observe how on-​top-​of-​it they were… total ass-​kickers. Laura thought of everything, lunch for me and the girls while getting ready… arranging a dog sitter for my little one… last minute heaters for the guest… a total problem solver. I was relaxed and blissful knowing I had the right girl to crack the whip… now that last sentence might not mean anything to you now but when that day comes, that is the single most important thing to you!
Personal note to Laura — I will forever cherish these past 6 months… and remember how great it was to have had someone special like you to have planned it with. We often joked about how this wedding is really our wedding… and it really was. Thank you for being there for me, for being my friend when needed and my regulator when needed. The wedding lasted for just a few hours… but the memories will last forever.
Love you Josefina Events!!!

Laura was great. A true life saver. But more on that in paragraph 2. We used Laura as our day-​off coordinator. She was a referral from a friend who works with her. Laura met with us well in advance to get the details of the wedding and described her process. We felt comfortable that she would have our best interests at heart and she truly did. She was organized, as promised kept to the timelines she described. She was available and responsive when we needed her leading up to the big day.
Then came the true value of Laura. On the day many things went wrong, as we now learned about weddings. We were using a venue that have a few buildings and we knew that we may have other events going on. We did however have the outside ceremony area booked for ourselves. Some of my family went to check it out a few hours before the event, and found that people were setting up Taco carts to serve food directly behind our ceremony location. Not ideal. We called Laura and she handled it! It wasn’t easy though. The vendor was very difficult, and Laura had to get the venue involved to move them so they could be in compliance with their contract. Thank you Laura! Then we had the food vendor from hell. The person failed to deliver on several of the contracted arrangements, including table set up, showing up with certain menu items, and breaking down the tables. Lauren was great, she and her assistant set up the tables, monitored the food, and she ended up ordering pizza to make sure we feed our guests (yes, we ran out, with 20 people not fed). She was awesome and dealt with all the problems. Was always there for us, and always professional.
So overall Lauren made the day a success. Took a lot of stress of us. She went over and above what was required of her, was awesome to work with, really cared about us and our day, and followed up on what happened with the food vendor. She was worth every penny, and we would highly recommend her to anyone.

We hired Josefina events for the partial planning service– as we don’t know much at all about planning a wedding, let alone in our own backyard! The first time we met, she had a pretty good vision and a very enthusiastic attitude. During the planning stage, she recommended some really amazing vendors that matched our personalities and style; and when there’re some hiccups with one vendor (which wasn’t her fault), she made sure things are fixed FAST and we got the service we deserved from the vendor– she would jump on the matter whenever she feels her client is mistreated– so we don’t have to stress over it :)
The day of the wedding, her team was punctual, PROFESSIONAL and friendly to all our guests. They helped set things up and break down efficiently throughout the evening. We had 2 dogs that Dana (one girl on the team) took really good care of during the wedding– which was a huge help as well!
I would recommend Josefina events to anyone I know.

Laura is fantastic! When my husband and I were planning our wedding we decided that we weren’t going to hire a wedding planner. I figured that the two of us were capable of finding vendors, negotiating contracts, etc. and that we may as well save the money of a coordinator. As we got closer to our event, though, it became evident that we were going to need someone to execute everything on the day of the wedding.
So we hired Laura as our day-​of coordinator. Laura was great! Our reception was at the new Central Library in downtown SD. It was a beautiful but complicated venue because of all of the rules that they had. Laura was able to navigate all of that. Weeks before the wedding she gave us great recommendations on how to set everything up in the reception space. And she contacted every single one of our vendors prior to wedding to get everything coordinated.
On the day of our wedding my husband and I showed up at the reception and loved everything we saw. The space looked great, and Laura didn’t miss a single detail. The day before the wedding I sent her an email explaining how we wanted the wedding favors set out on the table. It was perfect! She didn’t miss a beat. And here’s one thing I found out during the wedding: It goes FAST. It’s like being an A-​list celebrity for a night — you spend the entire night hugging people that you haven’t seen in forever, taking selfies with your friends, dancing with your family, etc. It was such a relief to have Laura working behind the scenes making sure that everything went seamlessly. She created a timeline for us before the wedding and made sure that we got all of the big events in — the cake cutting, the bouquet toss, all of that. It was like having a personal conductor for the reception. And Laura was there until midnight making sure that everything got cleaned up and that we weren’t subjected to the Library’s (rather drastic) policy of charging for anything left in the space. She even took her own pictures throughout the night and emailed them to us the next day! — above and beyond!
The cherry on top was that Laura delivered all of our personal stuff — the table numbers, the bride and groom champagne flutes, and a ton of extra alcohol — to our house the next day. Including my favorite pair of sunglasses that I brought into the reception and then immediately lost track of ;).
This is my advice: Even though we saved some money on not having a full wedding planner, my husband and I aren’t the type of people that enjoy planning all the details of a big event like a wedding. If that sounds like you, I would recommend hiring Laura as your coordinator from day one. That’s literally the only thing I would change if I had this to do over again :) (well, that and the limo — but that’s a different story ;)). It definitely pays to have a good team behind you!

All I have to say is we did not have a good experience with this vendor during the after process when everything was done. After everything has happened, this vendor was not right for us. I’m sure she’s right for other people and she’ll make other weddings and events great and other brides very happy.
I’m giving this vendor such a low rating due to the after process and this vendor did not accept our first review (4 stars, which I thought was very good) and getting upset over our reviews.
Good Luck to this vendor, because I honestly don’t mean any harm and I don’t have any bad intentions for this company.

Our son and daughter in law hired Laura for «day of» wedding coordination. We were able to attend the initial meeting with Laura and I was very impressed with her warm, professional style. She was very straight forward and organized, and gave us a lot of helpful information. She walked us through the process and asked good questions, that helped us all. She gave recommendations for reasonably priced vendors to help us keep within the budget.
Since we live out of town, I contracted with Laura separately to assist me with planning the rehearsal dinner. We worked together through email and a few phone calls. She gave me good ideas, and a number of places to check out before we finally found the right place. She gave me realistic advice about my budget and was there for me to answer questions. Most important of all, she gave me the right names to ask for when I was calling various venues, rather than just the contact information on websites. She didn’t plan the rehearsal dinner, I did, but she was my trusted advisor throughout the process. It was money well spent to work with her. Plus she is a fun and genuinely nice person.
Laura’s day of services included running the rehearsal as well as coordinating the wedding itself. The rehearsal went very smoothly and efficiently and everyone knew what to do, and when to do it. On the day of the wedding she, and her lovely assistant Dana, were on top of everything. They were organized, flexible, understanding about and responsive to last minute requests and changes, and once the wedding and reception got going, kept everything flowing smoothly. It was totally worth it to have them there, and they made the wedding day carefree for the mothers of the bride and groom. Without them, I am sure that we would have been a lot more stressed. But because of them we were able to really experience the joy of our children’s wedding and to have fun at the party afterward.
I highly recommend Laura. She was a huge support to me, the mother of the groom.

Working with Josefina Events was the perfect decision for our wedding. Gabbi and Laura made it possible for my wife and I to create our dream wedding. Our wedding consisted of a lot of do-​it-​yourself ideas. They were able to take our ideas and create them into a beautiful wedding on the day of. They helped us to be practical and reasonable about what we could do, while allowing us to implement creative ideas. Most importantly, they were just great people to work with! They not only guided us through our wedding process but we were able to know them on a deeper and more personal level. We felt that they were truly invested in our wedding and our happiness! I can say that we started out as business acquaintances and ended the wedding process as friends. I absolutely recommend Josefina events to anyone who plans on having an AMAZING wedding!

I teamed up with Laura for my non-​profit organization’s inaugural golf tournament. Between the two of us, we created an amazing event that has set the precedent for this annual event. Laura created and guided me through the formula for a successful fundraiser. It was truly an honor and a privilege to work with an event company that understood my needs as a non-​profit from the beginning. Can’t wait to begin working on my next event with Joesfina Events!

Wow! I cannot say enough good things about Laura and Gabi. They were both so amazing and worked so hard to make our wedding day a dream for us… and it could not have been more perfect! When my husband and I first met Laura and Gabi we both looked at each other and were like YES this is the one. They are so nice and genuine and really make you feel better about the whole process, by making sure every little detail is being planned out and keeping a tight timeline. I highly recommend Josefina Events to anyone planning their wedding. They have extremely good pricing and even if it was double the price knowing what I know now, I would happily pay them that because the work they do is truly priceless. Your wedding day is filled with moments you cannot get back and should be a fun day that runs smoothly and perfectly, which is why Laura and Gabi are a must!

We just had a backyard wedding in June, and hiring Laura for our event was the best first step we could have possibly made in our wedding planning process. Both me and my (new!) husband are artistic, creative people, and we were willing to do a lot of things ourselves, like make our own invitations and menus, invent new cocktails, or come up with a list of the best dance songs. But when it came to the actual coordination, I knew that we would need help getting from point A to point B.
Enter Laura Magid! I researched several wedding coordinators in the San Diego area, and out of all of the people I called, Laura was the most warm and genuine. While one coordinator that I called laughed at my wedding budget (!), Laura was immediately receptive to our financial concerns; she would continue to give me money-​saving tips for the entire time leading up to the wedding.
We hired her for partial planning, but this is a woman who goes above and beyond, whether you hire her for a year or a day of planning. She is so thorough and on top of things, that the entire planning process (and wedding itself!) went off without a hitch. If there ever were any problems, I have no idea about them — she took care of everything like Wonder Woman.
One of the most helpful things that Laura did for us was go over my vendors and their contracts for me. I love doing planning and research myself, but let’s face it – I’ve never been married before, and I have no idea how this stuff is supposed to work! Laura gave me plenty of space to figure things out for myself, but she was also available at any moment for any questions or things that I might have been forgetting.
(Oh, and one of my favorite details that she took care of for us was our marriage license. She reminded us to get it at just the right time in the planning process. Then, on the day of the wedding, right after the ceremony, she had it right there in her hand for the pastor & our witnesses to sign. She then tucked it away in her bag so she could mail it herself (!!) in the morning! Since I know that this is something that can (and often does) get messed up during the whole rigmarole of a wedding, this simple but CRUCIAL act spoke volumes to me about Laura’s skills as a coordinator.)
Both my husband and I are very lowkey & go-​with-​the-​flow people. Laura allowed us to be ourselves on our wedding day — which is the best thing we could have hoped for. If you would like to relax throughout your whole wedding process and leave the little things to a warm, positive, and self-​proclaimed «type-​A» lady with a lot of event experience, contact her ASAP!

Seriously, this was the best money spent on the wedding. I contacted Josefina Events for help «the day-​of» for our small backyard wedding in La Jolla. Laura called me to discuss the details when I first inquired about her services 4 months prior to our wedding. She understood my vision of a small, intimate, non-​traditional wedding. It took place in the backyard of a vacation home we rented so it was very DIY including the set up, clean up, timeline and flow. The cost for her services where beyond reasonable.
She checked in leading up to the wedding and helped out with vendor recommendations and time lines. Two weeks prior when things were getting crazy she coordinated the timing and confirmed the vendors I booked. Having booked everyone online and not actually meeting anyone beyond an email conversation– it was such a relief she was confirming all the details! Laura and her assistant, Gabi, were just fantastic and professional. When it came time for the rehearsal and the wedding day they took all the stress of the planning off our shoulders and ran the show.
This review could go on forever detailing all the amazing things that we didn’t have to even think about because Laura & Gabi were there making magic happen. They really made a perfect day come together seamlessly and allowed us and our guests to really have a wonderful wedding weekend!

«Dollar for dollar the best money we spent on our wedding!» That was the exact quote from my husband the day after our wedding regarding hiring Laura Magid. It took me a while to convince my husband we even needed to hire a coordinator, so I knew he was beyond impressed. I interviewed several other companies and there was no comparison to Josefina Events. Laura is responsive, knowledgeable, experienced, and charming.
Laura is so much more than a coordinator. At times she was a counselor, at times an artist, at one point a seamstress, often a guardian angel, and several times a magician. Laura’s ability to remain sweet while being firm, incredibly fun while taking care of business, and remarkably calm during the most hectic of times is amazing. I was able to relax and enjoy the events leading up to the wedding and the wedding day itself because of Laura. I knew she had everything under control and she proved me right! I can’t thank her enough for the time, effort and thoughtfulness she gave to me. I hit the jackpot finding Laura (and my husband agrees!).