Moniker Events — Local services in San Diego

We worked with Moniker events for our wedding in Summer 2022. They were responsible for the venue (Building 177 in Liberty Station) and Aly Schengel helped us with coordination and design. Building 177 is beautiful and well-run, and Aly was a life-saver during the planning process. Here are some more specific things that stuck out to us.

About Building 177: One of our main criteria for choosing a venue was that it have some space both indoors (for dinner and dancing) and outdoors (where guests could talk, get some air, and play lawn games). Building 177 has lovely spaces of both kinds and the wedding reception itself flowed seamlessly between them. There were some aspects of the ceremony that we needed to tested out the day before the wedding, like whether our chuppah could fit through the entrance, whether our officiant and friends doing readings would need to be mic'd, and so on. Moniker worked with us to make sure we'd have time for those things, despite several other events they had going on during our wedding weekend. For many of the other vendors one can hire for a wedding (bar, caterer, DJ, etc) Building 177 offers a list of preferred vendors, but also gives you the option of bringing in others. We appreciated the freedom when comparison-shopping, and in the cases where we ended up hiring vendors from Moniker's list, it often proved to be helpful that they knew the space and had pre-existing working relationships with Moniker's team. Building 177 has a private area near the entrance to the main event space. We used this space in three ways: getting ready before the ceremony, getting a private moment after the ceremony and before cocktail hour, and for childcare during the reception. The space worked great for all three purposes and it was such a relief to have it located across from the main entrance so that when the ceremony was about to start we were all already where we needed to be.

About Aly: My partner and I had some things that we knew we wanted to have a hands on role in planning (like food and music) and other things that we wanted to be able to be less involved in (like place settings). When we started working with Aly, she did a great job of talking us through the kinds of coordination packages Moniker offers and understanding what was important to us in our wedding planning. Aly is an incredible communicator, both in terms of knowing when to ask us for clarification about what we wanted and in terms of answering our questions for her quickly and clearly. This gave us so much peace of mind during the wedding planning process and helped us translate our big picture sense of what we wanted the event to feel like into concrete details about decor and logistics. Aly was a great advocate for us when working with vendors. For example, as our wedding got close, one vendor stopped responding to correspondence about adjustments to our order that needed to wait until we had a final guest count. We told Aly which issues were left unsettled and she got them resolved quickly and professionally. At the time, I was getting pretty frustrated with this vendor, and Aly was deft about determining which conversations needed to include us, and which could be just her and the vendor, so that my partner and I didn't have to worry about it. Some of the aspects of our wedding decor were homemade. For example, my mom quilted a chuppah for use in the ceremony. Aly helped us make sure that those personal pieces fit into the parts of the decor that were done professionally. For example, she worked with the florist to decorate the chuppah frame and found a way to incorporate the chuppah quilt into the decor for the reception.

In short, we're complete satisfied with Moniker Events and deeply grateful to Aly. We recommend...

We recently had our wedding ceremony and reception at The Lane and the venue was picture perfect for our San Diego destination wedding! We booked The Lane 1.5 years in advance - it was the only venue we looked at in person and the moment we saw the space we knew this is where we wanted to get married. There was no denying the minimalist, modern and open space overlooking the bay. We also received so many compliments from our guests on the venue, they loved it. Along the the beautiful venue space, a major reason why we chose The Lane was the location of Marriott hotels and Intercontinental less than a minute walk away. With a destination wedding, making the weekend as convenient as possible for our guests was important to us, and having hotels close by (and the airport less than a 15 minute drive away) was a big selling factor.

We also hired a 60-day coordinator through Moniker Events. This worked perfectly for us as I wanted to be hands-on when hiring vendors and through the thick of planning for our wedding day, but being able to hand everything over 2 months out and day-of ensured we could take a step back and not feel so much stress and pressure heading into our wedding day. Dayna was our coordinator and did an amazing job! Her easy going and calm demeanor made her easy to work with. She took over any loose ends that remained and all communications with the vendors we had booked, and also met with us (online) multiple times to ensure everything was coming together and no detail was overlooked. As far as the day-of, our wedding day went FLAWLESSLY. And even if there were hiccups going on behind the scenes - Dayna did an amazing job not drawing attention to any of them.

We are so happy with choosing The Lane and Moniker Events for our wedding day - absolutely no regrets and a day we and our families and friends will...

We had our wedding in South Promenade and Reception in Building 177. Dayna was our wedding coordinator and we got the 3 month coordination package with her. It was definitely worth the extra cash and we would do it again in a heartbeat. She was responsive, on time, and thorough as well as just genuinely supportive and so kind. On the day-of, she was on top of everything and made sure the day ran smoothly while communicating with me (bride) the things I needed to know throughout the event and helping make real-time decisions when certain things took longer than expected, etc. Definitely would recommend Moniker Events if its within your budget.

Booking South Promenade for the ceremony was a risk because it was outdoors in mid-July, a Saturday so it was very busy and lots of flights were taking off overhead from the San Diego airport, and its open to the public. If you don't mind casually pausing your ceremony every few minutes for a passing plane and a number of random strangers standing on the sides watching you get married, then I'd totally recommend this spot because it is so beautiful and intimate.

Building 177 is the perfect reception space. We had over 200 guests in there and had plenty of room for a dance floor. The room is bright, white, and strung with lights so I did basically zero decorating outside of the tables and florals on the sweetheart table and dessert table. We got SO many compliments on the look of the space and the execution of the day. We truly had the best wedding...