Helping Hand Parties & Weddings

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Erica Thimsen is the perfect wedding planner. She was outstanding from our first meeting to the final clean up! I am the mother of the bride and my daughter lives out of town with the wedding being held in Huntsville. Erica was extremely flexible in meeting with us when Katie was in town. Erica got to know Katie and her fiance and got a feel for their vision and she helped create a perfect day! Based on our vision, Erica put together a list of top notch vendors and then worked with each of them and us to create a wonderful wedding and reception. Having Erica made everything so much easier and actually fun! For the Rehersal and the Wedding, she had everything running like clock work. She helped make my daughter's dream wedding a reality! I recommend Erica and Helping Hand Parties & Weddings fully! She was much more than a helping hand!

Erica is the woman behind all the magic that was our wedding day! She listened to everything we wanted and made sure it happened. We did the "month of/coordinator" package, so we had to book the vendors ourselves and communicate with them until the month of the wedding when Erica took it from there. She was easy to talk to, very communicative, and asked lots of questions to make sure there was no detail that hadn't been covered. We seriously wouldn't have been able to do it without her. She gave us suggestions for vendors and everyone she suggested was top notch and professional. Erica was a God send and she make our day run so smoothly, on time, and without any hiccups that I was aware of (she probably didn't tell us so we did not stress haha). Do yourself a favor and have Erica be your right hand woman...you won't regret it!!!

Erica was a godsend! My husband and I are busy people. We knew from the beginning that we would need help. Our goal was that none of our family or friends would have to work at our wedding.

I was never the bride that knew exactly what I wanted. I knew I wanted my wedding day to be beautiful but didn’t have a specific vision for it. Erica helped take what little ideas I had and made it absolutely beautiful! She had a wide variety of vendor contacts to help achieve our goals and do it within the budget we wanted.

Erica was very organized. We had regular check ins with progressive check lists. I love a check list! I knew exactly what I needed to do throughout all the stages of the planning process. It was very comforting to know that all the details were taken care of. If it wasn’t on my list, I didn’t worry about it!

Our wedding day way perfect!! It was very well organized and went so smoothly. We had a very detailed schedule that let everyone know when and where they were supposed to be. While I got to spend the morning focusing on getting hair and makeup done and spending time with my best girls, Erica was ensuring that everything was taken care of. I might have been the most relaxed bride there ever was! The rest of the day went just as smoothly with many compliments from our guests.

Hiring Erica was by far the best decision we made in the entire process! Erica saved us a lot of stress and worry and helped ensure that my husband and I still liked each other at the end of the day!

I can’t recommend Erica and Helping Hand Parties enough!! If you are on the fence, I’m here to tell you that it is completely worth it! Thank you, Erica, for helping make our wedding day absolutely perfect!!

Erica was phenomenal throughout my husband's and I wedding process. Throughout the wedding planning process, she was very responsive to texts, emails, questions we had, etc. She is very detailed oriented, including providing timelines to our families, bridal parties, and vendors, which allowed our wedding to be absolutely perfect. My husband and our families thoroughly enjoyed the day without having to worry about anything thanks to Erica and her team! We seriously could have not gotten through this time without her. Would recommend Erica 1000%!!!

Our daughter and new son’s wedding was perfect! That was only possible with the amazing help and guidance of Erica Thimsen of Helping Hand Parties & Wedding. A rating of 5.0 is not high enough for the level of support she provided us! Erica is so professional, kind, thorough and easy to work with. She has a sweet laugh and gentle style, but there was no doubt that she was in control and invested in making sure that the wedding was exactly what we wanted. Planning a wedding is hard enough, but we live in Atlanta and were planning a wedding in Huntsville. Erica listened and really understood our vision, which at times was not very clear to us. She knows everyone in Huntsville, recommended top vendors, and made it possible for us to put together the A team of people who made the vision a reality. She used a planning process that ensured that we discussed and planned every aspect of the wedding, and so that nothing would fall through the cracks. Prior to the wedding she sent checklists every few months, breaking down what needed to be done into manageable chunks. She was always available to answer questions, make wonderful suggestions and help us think through details we didn’t even know we needed to think about. No detail was too small to escape her attention and she was on top of everything. My highest praise for Erica, is that on the weekend of the wedding we were all able to relax, have fun and really enjoy the celebration. We knew Erica was in charge and she would be sure everything was perfect. And it was!

I decided to go with the Helping Hand's Month Of Coordination package for my wedding. My husband and I had been engaged for over two years and I had done a good chunk of planning myself and just needed someone to make sure everything flowed and tie up all the loose ends for Wedding Day. From my first meeting with Lynn, I knew she was going to be amazing, especially when she started asking meticulous details I had not even thought of. She handled all the logistics of wedding day and gave recommendations and suggestions on parts I was unsure about. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, she emailed me wedding questionnaires that we would go over in our meetings to make sure each and every detail was discussed. She was prompt in responding back to my many questions over text and email and even sent me updated master timelines for wedding day. She contacted all my vendors leading up to wedding day and coordinated their tasks and arrival times.

On wedding day, Lynn made sure everyone involved in the wedding party and family was stress free and enjoyed themselves. She even coordinated setting up a private dinner for my husband and I to enjoy alone, since being able to eat our wedding food was a priority to me. If anything did go wrong on the day of the wedding, I was never aware of it. My bridesmaids and family came up to me during the reception and told me they couldn't believe how smooth the whole day had gone, thanks to Lynn.

Now that the wedding is over, if I could tell any bride out there what to make sure they include in their budget, I would stress to them YOU NEED A WEDDING COORDINATOR. No bride on wedding day wants to be running around trying to make decisions on what goes where or when will this vendor show up and point them where to go. Do yourself a favor and hire Lynn as your coordinator for your next event. The wedding was two weeks ago, and I am still having conversations with friends on how great the wedding was. DO IT!

My mom and I decided to hire Erica to help us with all the little details involved in the planning of my wedding day and the days leading up to the wedding. Erica started coordinating with us several months before the wedding and sent us several check lists to help keep us on task with our vendors, design team, wedding party attire, you name it! Erica even went as far as to find out the typical temperature range for our venue location and time of sunset for that day of the year to make sure her timeline for the day of accounted for those little variables.

What I loved about working with Erica was how personalized this whole process felt. Erica had several meetings with me to review our planning and make sure things were getting accomplished on time. These meetings helped me connect with Erica but also made sure we were on the same page with design elements. Often during these meetings, she would make suggestions or alterations to timeline. I really loved how she suggested that my grandmas be flower girls (this was so special for them, and they are still talking about it!) At her suggestion we also added the sand ceremony, the wedding shoe game, and we added the whiskey barrel ceremony after our cake cutting.

As far as I know, everything went off perfectly! Erica worked so well with our bridal party and kept our large crew of 20 people on task for photos and line ups. She also worked so well with our already incredible team of florist and decorators. Erica really is like a fairy godmother floating around the wedding venue making sure things happen seamlessly. We had so much fun at our wedding and everything I wanted at our wedding happened. I couldn’t thank Erica more for all she did, she really is incredible at what she does, and I could not think of a better person to recommend for future weddings!

Thank you Erica for making our wedding day absolutely perfect to the very last detail!

Lynn was absolutely amazing! I reached out to Helping Hands with hopes of planning a wedding in three months! From start to finish Lynn was available, full of knowledge and advice, and easy to work with. She helped me stay on track, reached out to vendors, and much more. There is no way we could have done this without her! We’ve had so many compliments and heard numerous times, “What y’all pulled off in three months typically takes a year to plan!” From the bottom of our hearts that you so much for making our day beautiful, flawless, and so much more!

Helping hands showed up ready to work! They were professional, on time, easy to work with and did everything before they were asked. I highly recommend for your event. They worked extremely hard and saved us a bundle of stress. Thank you Erica!! Your team is fantastic!!

Lynn and Erica make one heck of a team. From our first meeting I felt like my day was in great hands. Lynn planned my wedding and without her endless advice I would not have had such a special day! There was a bit of a hang up when it came to the ceremony (completely out of everyone’s control) and Lynn handled it before the news even got to me! We had a very unique wedding and reception and I was so afraid my planner would disagree with me at every turn but this was NOT the case. Lynn had so much fun planning with us and we enjoyed her company every time we got the chance to meet. She was so accommodating during my panic attacks over Covid and never missed a phone call. I want to have another wedding just so I can use Lynn again. She’s truly amazing at what she does.

I worked with Lynn from Helping Hands for my wedding and had a wonderful experience! Lynn is very calm under the chaos of wedding planning, which is a nice contrast to my somewhat all over the place personality. She went out of her way to help above and beyond whenever possible. She picked up and brought my wedding cake to the venue to avoid delivery fees and drove over an hour back to the venue to get my wedding dress preserved the next day. In addition to these minor details, Lynn took charge of every last detail I envisioned to make sure my dream day came to reality! Due to her planning and expertise, my wedding day went off without any complications and was perfect in every way. We used Lynn for month of planning and it was worth every dollar!

Hands down, Erica was THE BEST decision we made for our wedding. From day one, she was professional, very organized, and delightful to be around. We were clueless about how to tackle all of these little details and still be successful at our full time jobs! She provided us with a list of to-do’s every step of the way. From providing vendor recommendations to coordinating between them, she took a weight off of us through the entire process. Having her at our vendor meetings really helped keep everyone on the same page! She took the initiative to reach out when it was time for a meeting or my attention was needed on a certain item. We had several changes to our rentals (my fault!) along the way and, as a full coordination wedding, she shielded me from the headache of these revisions and coordinated them. (THANK YOU, ERICA!) Even when our makeup artist cancelled a month before the wedding, Erica made sure we had another exceptional vendor booked before the end of that day. As we neared the big day, Erica created a play by play timeline for the wedding weekend down to the 10 minute increment for our wedding party, families, and vendors. Her knowledge, communication skills, and professional connections in Huntsville were invaluable to making sure everything was coordinated correctly and appear effortless! Lynn joined Erica a month out before our wedding as our event’s second coordinator. Lynn is so sweet and helpful! She helped with several items to ensure that extra coordinating the day of went even smoother. Erica ensured that our expectations were communicated clearly and made sure to tell us when something wasn’t reasonable. She was amazing to work with and I loved the opportunity to get to know her! Erica is one of the kindest people and genuinely cared about making our day special. I am so glad we hired Helping Hand for full coordination! Our wedding day was everything I thought it would be and so much more. Helping Hand gave us our DREAM WEDDING!

Helping Hand Parties and Weddings was the first coordinator we approached for my wedding. After meeting with Erica there was no need for further inquiry! She was so easy to get along with and very organized and professional. Our only regret is that we did not choose to allow Erica to do everything and instead tried to do some of the work ourselves. It would have been entirely worth the cost to pay for her full package because she has so much experience with her vendors and all of the needs of each person involved. Thanks to Erica we did not forget any detail or miss out on any of the fun though! My wedding day was the greatest of successes thanks to her hard work and ingenuity! My parents and entire family were able to enjoy the actual day instead of taking care of details. Erica handled any and all problems with ease. We could not have been more pleased with her work and all who assisted her during the planning and the event itself. In the end you have not just found an incredible coordinator with Erica, but also a dear friend. Brides, pick your husbands wisely and your coordinators with care! Pick Helping Hand!

Personal, Professional, Awesome! The perfect wedding planner. Erica is keyed in to the desires of the bride, the details of the mother of the bride and most importantly to the Huntsville wedding scene. She has a great working relationship with the wedding vendors of the area, which made setting up meetings, tastings, etc. effortless on our part. Erica asked us at our initial meeting; What do you expect in a wedding planner? My answer: I want to enjoy my daughter's wedding day. I don't want to be bothered with any minor issues, vendors, etc. I want someone capable of doing that for me. I was assured that was her desire also. I can truthfully say, I could not have asked for more. It was perfect! Words do little to express my gratitude!
Martha L

As a mother I always wanted to give our daughter the wedding of her dreams and Helping Hand Parties & Weddings did just that. Erica was phenomenal, From our very first meeting to the last. She was so knowledgeable with event planning offering ideas and suggestions in all our planning stages. Her detailed planning was spot on. From contacting and organizing timelines for all vendors to timelines for our daughter's wedding day. She was always available to answer any questions or concerns I had. Erica succeeded in making our daughter's wedding a beautiful dream come true!
~~Rhonda

We are EXTREMELY grateful for Erica's detailed planning and for her ability to provide us with peace of mind before and on our wedding day. It is incredibly challenging to get 90 family members and 125 total guests at the right place, at the right time. It would not have been possible without Erica's expertise and professional attitude. She stayed late at work for us; she bridged communication gaps between families; she even sat down with my husband and me before the rehearsal dinner to go over every detail, start-to-finish. We continuously receive compliments about the ceremony and reception-- certainly we and everyone else were impressed by the smooth execution of such a momentous and sacred event. God bless Erica. She truly allowed me to focus on the day and soak it all in because I knew she'd take care of everything else-- good or bad-- that popped up last minute. They say you never remember your wedding day because it's "such a blur"-- but I remember and cherish every moment knowing I was worry-free, present, and happy. I can't thank her enough. We recommend her to all of our engaged friends and family members every chance we get.