About Jessica · Founder, Monarch Celebrations
I've been the one running the celebration.
For twenty years I've been the mother, the sister, the aunt, the cousin somehow ending up in charge of every gathering in our family — and watching the women I love run themselves into the ground hosting their own. I built Monarch Celebrations so the woman who planned the celebration finally gets to be in it.
The truth about being new
I'd rather tell you exactly where I am
Most planners build their about pages around credentials, awards, and impressive-sounding portfolios. I'm going to do something different. I'm going to tell you exactly where I am in my career and let you decide if I'm the right fit.
Monarch Celebrations launched in 2026. We're a brand-new business. I don't have a portfolio of a hundred completed weddings yet. I don't have a decade of testimonials with the business name on them. I'm actively pursuing my Association of Bridal Consultants certification through 2026 because credentialing matters and I take that seriously.
What I do have is almost twenty years of doing the work — informally, for the families and communities I love, for free, because I couldn't help myself. I also have ten years as a medical technologist, three formal degrees that all relate directly to this work, and a level of operational discipline I developed in a profession where there's no room for missed details.
We do not have ten years of galleries to show you, and we are not going to borrow someone else's. What we have is a coordinator who runs your event herself, a portal that most planners do not offer at any price, and pricing published in full before you call.
Founding rates are real and temporary — they end at twenty-five bookings or December 31, 2026, whichever comes first. They are an acquisition price, not a discount we will quietly extend.
A baby shower at eighteen
The first event I ever planned was my own
I was eighteen years old and six and a half months pregnant. Nobody hired me. Nobody told me to do it that way. I just couldn't help myself — the decorations, the menu, the music, the guest list, the RSVPs, even the favors for guests to take home. Every detail had to be thought through.
What stuck with me from that day wasn't the decorations. It was watching the people I loved put a pause on everything else in their lives — work, errands, the running list of things they were worried about — and just be present with each other. Eating together. Laughing. Telling old stories. Some of the women in the room had never been to a baby shower before, and they played games they'd never played in their lives. I remember thinking: this is what a celebration is supposed to do. It pulls people out of their ordinary hours and brings them home to each other for an afternoon.
That was almost twenty years ago. My oldest daughter Gabi is eighteen now. My younger daughter Gracie is ten.
Since that day I've been the friend, the cousin, the auntie, the mom who somehow ended up running logistics on every gathering in our orbit. My sister's beach wedding. Gabi's quinceañera. Birthday parties for nieces and nephews. Baby showers for friends. Gender reveals. Holiday gatherings of fifty-plus people. Sunday afternoons at home that turned into something. Lab Week every year for a decade for the healthcare team I've been part of.
None of it for pay. All of it because I couldn't help myself.
What I realized, slowly over the years, is that this isn't something I do. It's something that flows out of me. What's new is finally putting the business card on the table — and Monarch Celebrations is my honest answer to a question my fiancé Alex, my daughters, and my church community have been asking me for years: why aren't you doing this for real?
Why I do this
Time is a non-renewable resource
Here's what I know from being the one in charge of celebrations my whole life.
When you're the host of your own celebration, you don't get to enjoy it.
You pay for everything. You plan everything. You coordinate everything. You're the one fielding the question from the caterer, the one wondering when the photographer is going to arrive, the one who realizes at 8pm that nobody started the music. By the time the celebration is over, you're standing in your kitchen surrounded by dirty dishes asking yourself, did that just happen? I missed it.
I can say this with conviction because I've been there. So have most of the mothers, aunts, sisters, and grandmothers I know. We pour ourselves into making the day beautiful for everyone else, and then the day passes and we're not even sure we were fully in it. That's the part of celebration planning nobody talks about, and it's the part I most want to take off your shoulders.
A celebration is not a Pinterest board. It's not a sequence of pretty photos for social media. It's an opportunity — and time is a non-renewable resource. The hours your family will spend together at your daughter's quinceañera, your son's wedding, your mother's milestone birthday don't come back. What gets created in those hours is something the people in the room carry with them forever. Years later, they gather, and they say, do you remember that day? That's the test.
A lot of planners think about events in terms of dollar signs and aesthetics. I think about them in terms of the imprint they leave on the heart of a family. Both can be true, but only one of them is actually the point.
My job is to handle every detail so faithfully that you don't have to think about a single one of them. So you can be present. So you can hug your mother. So you can dance with your daughter. So that when it's over you can take a breath and feel that quiet satisfaction — we did it. It happened. It was beautiful — and let it stay with you.
What I've actually pulled off
The work behind the claim
The event I keep returning to as the one that proved this to me was my older daughter Gabi's quinceañera. Sixty guests. The theme was gold and light pink. I booked the photographer and discovered the venue had a list of animals available for outdoor portraits, so we rented a horse. The pictures took place at two locations. A paella chef came and cooked on-site — the way it's done in our culture, where the meal isn't catered in pre-made trays but prepared in front of you, and the smell of it is part of the celebration. I set up the tables myself. I designed the décor. I coordinated every vendor.
Two surprises were hidden inside the day. I'd booked a professional choreographer who arrived with a dancer and led the guests through an hour of dancing — even the family members who had told me they didn't dance ended up on the floor. And I'd booked a mariachi without telling Gabi. Every part of her quinceañera was her decision except that one thing. I wanted her to hear the music start without warning.
A cousin's wedding came together with similar care — a fifteen-thousand-dollar budget across nine months, beach permit, decoration vendor, officiant, live violinist, photographer, drone videography, full reception coordination. My sister's beach wedding came together in about a month. Lab Week for our healthcare team's activity committee has run a full week each year for years: corporate event logistics for hundreds of healthcare professionals, scheduled around the actual demands of patient care.
These have one thing in common. I noticed the details other people miss, and I took the operational weight off the people I love so they could actually be present.
What being new gets you
Fewer clients, more attention
A planner with a hundred weddings a year has a hundred weddings a year. I don't. That is the honest trade: less proof, more of me. Your event is not one of forty on a spreadsheet, and the person you meet on the consultation call is the person standing in the room on the day.
We do not walk out of a live event. If the night runs long and the cake has not been cut, we stay through it and bill it afterward — that is written into the contract, not offered as a favor.
Held today, not in progress
My certifications, and why they matter
Wedding MBA Certification
Wedding MBA (Wedding Merchants Business Academy) runs the largest yearly business conference for wedding professionals in the United States, in Las Vegas. Its certification is a separate online course: nine seminars chosen for wedding planners on business practice, contracts and law, sales, technology and trends, closed with a quiz. Jessica holds the Basic level, completed May 2026.
Why it matters: the part of a wedding that goes wrong most often is not the flowers, it is the paperwork — a vendor contract with no rain clause, a deposit schedule nobody tracked, a timeline that assumed the venue's rules instead of reading them. This is the training for that side of the job.
Certified Wedding Planner (CWP)
Through the Certified Wedding Planner Society, a planner training body founded in 2007: a 32.5-hour course taught by working Master Certified Wedding Planners — consultations and contracts, budgets, vendor and venue relationships, etiquette, day-of itineraries, rehearsals, and running the ceremony and the reception. The credential has no expiry date. Jessica holds it through the Certified Wedding Planner Society — Executive Wedding Planner Certified, completed June 2026.
Why it matters: it is the full sequence of a wedding day, taught as a system rather than learned one mistake at a time. It means the person standing in the room on the day has run the rehearsal, built the itinerary, and knows what the next twenty minutes hold before they arrive.
A career built on details
What I hold, and what I'm still pursuing
Listed honestly — held credentials and in-progress ones are marked differently, because the difference matters.
M.A. Family Ministry
The degree behind the family-aware planning — divorced parents, blended families, three generations with three visions.
B.S. Health Administration
Operations, logistics, and running a schedule that cannot slip.
A.S. Clinical Laboratory Science
Ten years as a medical technologist — a profession with no room for missed details.
Licensed & insured
Monarch Celebrations, LLC — a Florida limited liability company.
Wedding MBA Certification
The business side of weddings — contracts, law, sales, technology — from the industry's largest conference.
Certified Wedding Planner (CWP)
Trained on the full sequence of a wedding day, from consultation to reception, by the Certified Wedding Planner Society.
ABC Certified Wedding Planner
Actively pursuing through 2026. Not yet held, and we will not imply otherwise.
Cape Coral Chamber of Commerce
Local business association. Membership application in progress for 2026.