My husband and I recently got married in Riviera Maya and we used Jen to help us plan our wedding. We had no idea where to start or how to pick the best resort for what we wanted the wedding to look like. I was nervous to use a travel agent or website as I didn't want to be talked into booking a resort based on the commission an agent would get or the impersonal feel of using an Internet based company. Jen was a perfect solution! Jen met with us in person and listened to all our wants and concerns. She then did all the work of narrowing down the resorts she felt would be best for us and gave us options that were much more manageable to start! She did a great job of picking resorts that fit what we were looking for and allowed us to see the full spectrum of what we would get for our price range vs. what we were looking for. She then helped us set up site visits at the resorts we liked best and meetings and tastings with the coordinators at each resort.
This was amazing! I would have not known how to even begin this process. She managed the schedule for us and did all the communication with each resort to get a schedule that allowed us to stay and visit 5 resorts in only 3 nights. All the meetings were preset so we had nothing to worry about there and she was in constant communication with us the whole time to get our feedback and make us aware of any scheduling changes. She provided us with a list of questions to ask each planner at the resort which were questions I wouldn't have even thought of. Jen took the time to really listen to what we wanted. When it came time to book the resort, Jen handled all negotiations with the resort and communication which was great as she knew better what to ask for. It also helped with stress!
There were so many perks Jen was able to get us because she knew the landscape and help us weed out things that wouldn't have been beneficial to us. It also is great that she speaks Spanish so she was able to communication with the resorts much more effectively. Jen presented all information to us in very organized spreadsheets and files which helped us compare all our options and the time spent gathering all that information is well worth Jen alone! Jen made us feel so special and you can tell she really cared to make our wedding as special as possible. Our wedding day was perfect, the resort we had our wedding at was perfect and we owe a huge part of that to Jen! My husband and I have said many times that using Jen was one of the best decisions we made when planning the wedding! I HIGHLY recommend using Jen! We loved her and we loved the experience because of her!
—Brittany and Scott, married 2016
This was amazing! I would have not known how to even begin this process. She managed the schedule for us and did all the communication with each resort to get a schedule that allowed us to stay and visit 5 resorts in only 3 nights. All the meetings were preset so we had nothing to worry about there and she was in constant communication with us the whole time to get our feedback and make us aware of any scheduling changes. She provided us with a list of questions to ask each planner at the resort which were questions I wouldn't have even thought of. Jen took the time to really listen to what we wanted. When it came time to book the resort, Jen handled all negotiations with the resort and communication which was great as she knew better what to ask for. It also helped with stress!
There were so many perks Jen was able to get us because she knew the landscape and help us weed out things that wouldn't have been beneficial to us. It also is great that she speaks Spanish so she was able to communication with the resorts much more effectively. Jen presented all information to us in very organized spreadsheets and files which helped us compare all our options and the time spent gathering all that information is well worth Jen alone! Jen made us feel so special and you can tell she really cared to make our wedding as special as possible. Our wedding day was perfect, the resort we had our wedding at was perfect and we owe a huge part of that to Jen! My husband and I have said many times that using Jen was one of the best decisions we made when planning the wedding! I HIGHLY recommend using Jen! We loved her and we loved the experience because of her!
—Brittany and Scott, married 2016
Thanks to My Event , we had the wedding of our dreams!!
When my husband and I decided to get married in Puerto Vallarta, we were a little worried about how we would be able to plan the wedding from a distance, especially for a group of over 100 guests! We live in Chicago and it was hard to research/contact hotels and vendors in Puerto Vallarta. We knew that we didn’t want the typical hotel package for our wedding (and we definitely didn’t want to pay the typical tourist rates!!), so we needed some help from someone on the ground in Mexico.
Lucky for us, we came across the opportunity to work with Jeniffer and My Event - they were absolutely wonderful! Most importantly, they helped us create our perfect wedding while staying well within our budget. They negotiated incredible rates for us with the hotel and all the vendors - we would not have been able to afford our wedding without their local knowledge, contacts, and negotiation skills.
A lot of hotels have an onsite wedding coordinator for destination weddings, however those coordinators are often unable or unwilling to customize the wedding details. They usually offer a couple of packages depending on what you can afford, but they don’t work with you to pick out your perfect centerpieces, flowers, dance floor, rehearsal dinner set-up, etc. Jen took care of ALL of this and more. We got everything we wanted on a very limited budget.
Another reason I loved working with Jen was the rehearsal dinner. At our rehearsal dinner, many of our guests asked me “how is the wedding going to be better than this?” We had a BBQ on the beach with miami style lounge sofas, lantern lighting, and latin lounge music playing in the background. It was such a great party and precursor to our wedding, which of course exceeded everyone’s expectations.
I can’t say enough about how amazing our wedding was. So many of our friends and family are still talking about it (6 months later...). Everyone said it was one of the best weddings they had ever been to.
For all of this and much more, we are forever grateful to Jen ... Thank you for making our dreams come true!
— Michael and Alissa Bencks, married 2011
When my husband and I decided to get married in Puerto Vallarta, we were a little worried about how we would be able to plan the wedding from a distance, especially for a group of over 100 guests! We live in Chicago and it was hard to research/contact hotels and vendors in Puerto Vallarta. We knew that we didn’t want the typical hotel package for our wedding (and we definitely didn’t want to pay the typical tourist rates!!), so we needed some help from someone on the ground in Mexico.
Lucky for us, we came across the opportunity to work with Jeniffer and My Event - they were absolutely wonderful! Most importantly, they helped us create our perfect wedding while staying well within our budget. They negotiated incredible rates for us with the hotel and all the vendors - we would not have been able to afford our wedding without their local knowledge, contacts, and negotiation skills.
A lot of hotels have an onsite wedding coordinator for destination weddings, however those coordinators are often unable or unwilling to customize the wedding details. They usually offer a couple of packages depending on what you can afford, but they don’t work with you to pick out your perfect centerpieces, flowers, dance floor, rehearsal dinner set-up, etc. Jen took care of ALL of this and more. We got everything we wanted on a very limited budget.
Another reason I loved working with Jen was the rehearsal dinner. At our rehearsal dinner, many of our guests asked me “how is the wedding going to be better than this?” We had a BBQ on the beach with miami style lounge sofas, lantern lighting, and latin lounge music playing in the background. It was such a great party and precursor to our wedding, which of course exceeded everyone’s expectations.
I can’t say enough about how amazing our wedding was. So many of our friends and family are still talking about it (6 months later...). Everyone said it was one of the best weddings they had ever been to.
For all of this and much more, we are forever grateful to Jen ... Thank you for making our dreams come true!
— Michael and Alissa Bencks, married 2011
Hi Jen Kasten. Shane and I recently celebrated our 1 year anniversary. I was looking through our wedding pictures and wanted to send you a thank you! It was a fantastic weekend thanks to you and your planning. My sister also just got married in a small ceremony in Oklahoma, and we did all the set up for the event. It made me realize all the hard work you did to prepare our beautiful ceremony and reception.
You are very talented at what you do. Thank you for helping plan such a great weekend in Puerto Vallarta.
— Heather Peterson Thompson, married
You are very talented at what you do. Thank you for helping plan such a great weekend in Puerto Vallarta.
— Heather Peterson Thompson, married
Jen planned our wedding for us in November 2013. She was really great to work with. My husband, Rocky, found her online. His google search was Mexico + Wedding + Chicago and he found Jen’s blog. We wanted someone to help us combine our two cultures—my American culture and his Mexican culture—into a great event but we had no idea where to start, we didn’t even know exactly where in Mexico we wanted to have the wedding. Jen took us through the whole process from setting up site visits to determining to cost of each of our options to negotiating rates with the hotels. She assisted our guests in making their room reservations and arranging their transportation to and from the hotel—even the little things like making sure those with young children had car seats in the vans. She assisted us in putting together a plan for decorations, entertainment and even came up with some creative ideas for place settings. She has a lot of contacts in Mexico in terms of vendors for music, perform the service, etc. For us, our best event was our Rehearsal Dinner Event (although it wasn’t so much of a dinner as it was a whole day lunch, DJ, day at the beach, dinner) that was really amazing. Our guests really loved that event and talked about what a great time they had—that day was all Jen’s planning. She found the venue, set everything up, gave suggestions for menu, cocktails. It was a very hidden spot—we would have never found it on our own!
We had probably a different wedding than most and our focus was maybe a little unconventional and Jen really worked with that. She worked within our budget, understood what our focus was and we were very happy—we wouldn’t have changed a thing. She spent so much time with us and her fee was worth every penny. Really a ton of time! We met with her every month for a first few months then closer to the wedding, it was every week. I think I am missing the “Bride Gene” so she helped me get excited about things like a dress and finding bridesmaid dresses and even helping to pull in ideas when it got messy. But, she wasn’t pushy and didn’t try to push her own ideas into the wedding. Jen is very classy and elegant but has a very eclectic personal style but she was great at finding fun way to pull in the style that WE never knew we always wanted for our wedding.
Then, about six weeks before the wedding, I got very sick with terrible migraines that left me hospitalized for several days and sick for several weeks. At that time, Jen really stepped up to the plate. It was around then that our numbers went from 80 guest to around 100 guests and we sized ourselves out of the spaces we had reserved at the resort. We didn’t have a place for the ceremony or the reception that the resort said could accommodate our group. Jen quickly took care of the details and got what we needed fixed. She made the big problem a non-issue. She was able to work with the resort and send some of her contacts to find a space that could accommodate our group and it ended up costing us just a couple hundred dollars in chair rentals.
We realized at our reception that Jen really did so many things behind the scenes when I got another severe migraine right as dinner was getting finished up. Rocky immediately realized what was happening and my maid-of-honor took me to a quite place. Rocky told Jen what had happened and without even thinking she took off to the nearest pharmacy and found a high dose of Imitrex for me and was back before I could even realize it. She didn’t ask for money to be reimbursed or a Thank You for the expensive medication—she just took care of the problem because it was that important to her that we have a great party. Within 10 minutes, my headache was gone. Without her, we could have spent our wedding night in a Mexican ER or at least back in our room while our friends and family enjoyed the party without us.
You have to realize that when you are having a destination wedding and working with Mexican vendors. Jen was very organized and had a binder that she carried everywhere every vendor’s telephone number and contact information. Also, she absolutely can work within a budget. Anyone that knows my husband and me knows that we are very tight with our money and spending it on a big elaborate wedding was not something we were going to do. It was about getting our families together for a time that they would not ordinarily have been able to do. We could have planned something on our own at a Dreams or Secrets Resort without Jen. But, it I know it would have been much more and our guests would not have had such a unique experience. Everyone remembered the great Mariachi band that we had and the great Beach Club that Jen found us. I can honestly say that the details that people remembered the most were Jen’s.”
— Tristan and Rocky Lopez, married 2013
We had probably a different wedding than most and our focus was maybe a little unconventional and Jen really worked with that. She worked within our budget, understood what our focus was and we were very happy—we wouldn’t have changed a thing. She spent so much time with us and her fee was worth every penny. Really a ton of time! We met with her every month for a first few months then closer to the wedding, it was every week. I think I am missing the “Bride Gene” so she helped me get excited about things like a dress and finding bridesmaid dresses and even helping to pull in ideas when it got messy. But, she wasn’t pushy and didn’t try to push her own ideas into the wedding. Jen is very classy and elegant but has a very eclectic personal style but she was great at finding fun way to pull in the style that WE never knew we always wanted for our wedding.
Then, about six weeks before the wedding, I got very sick with terrible migraines that left me hospitalized for several days and sick for several weeks. At that time, Jen really stepped up to the plate. It was around then that our numbers went from 80 guest to around 100 guests and we sized ourselves out of the spaces we had reserved at the resort. We didn’t have a place for the ceremony or the reception that the resort said could accommodate our group. Jen quickly took care of the details and got what we needed fixed. She made the big problem a non-issue. She was able to work with the resort and send some of her contacts to find a space that could accommodate our group and it ended up costing us just a couple hundred dollars in chair rentals.
We realized at our reception that Jen really did so many things behind the scenes when I got another severe migraine right as dinner was getting finished up. Rocky immediately realized what was happening and my maid-of-honor took me to a quite place. Rocky told Jen what had happened and without even thinking she took off to the nearest pharmacy and found a high dose of Imitrex for me and was back before I could even realize it. She didn’t ask for money to be reimbursed or a Thank You for the expensive medication—she just took care of the problem because it was that important to her that we have a great party. Within 10 minutes, my headache was gone. Without her, we could have spent our wedding night in a Mexican ER or at least back in our room while our friends and family enjoyed the party without us.
You have to realize that when you are having a destination wedding and working with Mexican vendors. Jen was very organized and had a binder that she carried everywhere every vendor’s telephone number and contact information. Also, she absolutely can work within a budget. Anyone that knows my husband and me knows that we are very tight with our money and spending it on a big elaborate wedding was not something we were going to do. It was about getting our families together for a time that they would not ordinarily have been able to do. We could have planned something on our own at a Dreams or Secrets Resort without Jen. But, it I know it would have been much more and our guests would not have had such a unique experience. Everyone remembered the great Mariachi band that we had and the great Beach Club that Jen found us. I can honestly say that the details that people remembered the most were Jen’s.”
— Tristan and Rocky Lopez, married 2013
From our very first meeting with Jeniffer, we knew we had the right person to plan our wedding in Puerto Vallarta. Her knowledge, her relationships with vendors, and the details she brought up early on made us feel 100% comfortable that she would make our wedding perfect and we were not disappointed. She traveled great distances to be with us, not only at the wedding itself, but also for many hours inspecting different locations for our wedding as well as meeting with caterers for the event and hotels for our guests. She was always prompt in dealing with questions and patient while gently pushing us along into solving all the little details that come up in wedding planning. In the end our wedding was perfect and it is almost entirely due to Jen’s efforts and the importance she placed on our day. We really couldn’t have done it without her and we will be eternally grateful for making a memory that will last a lifetime. Thanks Jen!!
— Sarah and Matt Flak, married 2012
— Sarah and Matt Flak, married 2012
We worked with Jen to plan our wedding in Puerto Vallarta in the spring of 2012. From start to finish it was a fabulous experience. The first step was a visit to PV where Jen Kasten spent two days showing us beautiful venues picked to fit our tastes and budget as well as sampling the food of several great caterers. Once we were back in the US, we were in regular contact with her to work out the details of the wedding. She was very flexible in accommodating taking our ideas and running with them - for our ceremony we selected a small local church with which Jen had never worked, but she decorated it beautifully for us. We were very happy with all of the vendors she recommended, especially the caterer, Elias Sapién. And when unexpected situations arose - the threat of bad weather, changing availability from vendors - Jen was great about coming to us with solutions and keeping the stress level low.
In the end we had a beautiful wedding that exceeded our expectations and that our guests couldn’t stop raving about. We would unhesitatingly recommend working with Jen to anyone planning a destination wedding in Mexico.
— Christina and Brian McNeil, married 2012
In the end we had a beautiful wedding that exceeded our expectations and that our guests couldn’t stop raving about. We would unhesitatingly recommend working with Jen to anyone planning a destination wedding in Mexico.
— Christina and Brian McNeil, married 2012