We just hired Great Events to help put on our daughters wedding. I was skeptical of the need for a wedding planner, but they came highly recommended by friends of ours, so we started working with them. In retrospect, I dont think we would have been able to put on such a wonderful wedding without them.The owner, Marcy Glink, was warm and welcoming, with great taste and an encyclopedic knowledge of everything and everyone in wedding and related businesses in the Chicago area. She was smart, helpful, meticulously organized, and a pleasure to work with. Her staff, who attended to many of the smaller (and not-so-small) details, was outstanding too.They stayed calm and helped us overcome some hurdles that might have messed up everything. Our original hotel had double-booked their ballroom and despite a signed contract cancelled us four months before the wedding. Within weeks, Marcy ended up negotiating better arrangements at a better hotel with the first hotel paying the additional costs. A bridesmaid got sick and threw up just before the processional was to start, and Marcy got her cleaned up and calmed down in time to walk down the aisle as if nothing had happened (with a chair waiting for her out of sight behind the stage in case she felt sick again).Hiring them ultimately cost us very little. They negotiated us nearly as much in discounts and extra services from the hotel and vendors than we ended up paying in fees. As the father of the bride, I didnt know much about weddings or how to plan an event, but Great Events provided checklists, timelines, referrals, recommendations and all of the information and assistance that my wife and I needed. I couldnt have been happier with how the wedding and related events turned out, and Great Events was a big part of why.