The planner
Olha Barabash
The planner who starts with how the day should feel.
Olha Barabash is the founder and creative director of Sense of Moment, a wedding planning and design studio in New York. For 14 years she has planned every celebration around one question, how the day should feel, and she leaves nothing about it to chance.
Who she plans for
For couples who want to be guests at their own wedding
You know how you want the day to feel, even before you know how it should look. There may be a family to honor, guests flying in from far away, two traditions to hold in one day, or simply two hundred people you want to see properly, every one of them.
You don’t want a planner who agrees with everything, and you don’t want to manage one. You want someone who listens closely, tells you honestly what she thinks, and quietly carries the weight, so that on the day you are simply there.
That is the work Olha built Sense of Moment around, in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New Jersey and Upstate New York, and wherever your story belongs.
- Years in events
- 14
Recognition
One of the Top 50 Power Players in Events
In October 2025, The Event Planner Expo in New York named Olha one of its Top 50 Power Players in Events, a list that also honored Colin Cowie, Mindy Weiss, Preston Bailey and David Tutera. At the same Expo she spoke on a panel about marketing for event professionals: how to stand out in a crowded market, why storytelling works, and simple ways to stay visible.
It is a recognition from the industry itself: the people who produce events for a living, naming the ones they look to.
A letter from Olha
Where I began
When people ask what I did before weddings, I smile and say: events. I started in college, in the event department of an advertising agency, and soon I was producing projects of my own. Corporate work taught me logistics, patience with strong personalities and calm when a plan changes. Weddings taught me something more. At a wedding, you are holding a moment a family will remember for the rest of their lives, and that’s a different level of trust, one I will always cherish.
Some couples come to me with a shiny new ring and that overwhelming, where-do-we-even-start excitement. Others come with a scrapbook they’ve kept since they were teenagers. Either way, I start by listening. We talk, I get to know you, and from there my work is to protect the feeling you want the day to have, through every decision that follows. I take on a select number of weddings each year, so each one has my full attention. If you’re planning a celebration, I’d be glad to hear from you.
Olha
Where every wedding begins
“How do you want you and your guests to feel on the drive home that night?”
Olha asks every couple this before anyone mentions flowers, a palette or a band. The answer becomes the brief, and every decision after it is measured against it.
She checks the work the same way. Ask a guest afterwards to describe the night. If they say it was beautiful, it was good work. If they begin with “there was this moment when I liked…”, it was something more. That moment is the one she plans for, and the one Sense of Moment is named after.
What couples notice
Calm, curious, and intentional about everything
Calm
Vendors cancel, forecasts change, and some evenings need a plan B, C and D.
Curious
Olha never wanted only to plan weddings. She studies psychology, hospitality and the guest experience as closely as logistics and design, and it shapes how every wedding begins: with your story, before any creative decision is made.
Intentional
Every choice needs a reason. Before a single flower is chosen, she learns what matters to you, a family tradition, guests who feel welcome, a quiet moment for private vows, and those things decide everything that follows. The wedding is not only beautiful. It is unmistakably yours.
In couples' words
What it is like to plan with her
“Our wedding was better than anything that we could have ever imagined. The amount of detail and thought that Olha put into it was just mind-blowing.”
Sally Song “From start to finish, she made our special day more than we could’ve ever imagined. She works so diligently to make sure that everything is perfect for the day of and the weeks leading up to it.”
Erica S. “She is an absolute joy to work with and makes wedding planning fun and stress-free.”
Rebecca Dyckman
Olha, in the press
In her words, in print
“Usually, the event itself isn’t where things get managed. It’s everything before it: the seating, the flow, the structure of the evening.”
How to Invite Guests Who Don’t Get Along to the Same PartyJune 2026“Like with weddings, the bachelorette parties are gravitating toward personal experiences over hectic, generic get-togethers.”
Bachelorette Trends for 2026: Immersive Experiences and the Rise of Adult Summer CampApril 2026“If the answer begins with ‘there was this moment when…,’ then we achieved something more.”
Authority MagazineThe One Decision That Changed Everything: Olha Barabash of Sense of Moment on How a Single Choice Can Redefine a Leadership JourneyAugust 2026
In the industry
Olha serves on the education committee of WIPA New York, and The Event Planner Expo 2025 named her one of the Top 50 Power Players in Events. Editors ask for her advice on weddings and hosting, among them Martha Stewart, the Los Angeles Times, Bridal Guide and Wedding Chicks, and the trade press asks her about the business of events, in Cater + Event and Wedding IQ. She tells her own story in an interview with Authority Magazine.
Three principles
The Train Strategy
A way of looking at the guest list, and at friendships, over time. Some people have been aboard for years, some joined at the last station, and some will still be riding in ten years. Seeing the list this way makes the hardest conversations of planning calmer, and it shapes the seating, the toasts and the order of the evening.
Dimensional cohesiveness
Every element of the design aligned, with room to adapt. The invitation, the arrival, the table, the music and the light all answer to one idea, from room to room and from day into night, so the celebration reads as one thing rather than a collection of choices.
Energy is the currency
How the energy of an evening is planned, and above all how it closes. A room should rise and rest at the right moments, and guests remember the last hour of a night longer than the first. The close is planned as carefully as the entrance.
In brief
- The house
- Sense of Moment, a wedding planning and design studio in New York.
- Where
- New York, NY 10016. Weddings in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New Jersey and Upstate New York, and wherever a couple’s story belongs.
- Founder
- Olha Barabash, founder and creative director. She began in events in college, in the event department of an advertising agency, and built Sense of Moment in New York.
- Experience
- 14 years in events.
- Approach
- Concept-led. Every wedding begins with the couple’s story and the feeling the day should have, before any creative decision.
- Known for
- Full planning and design, multi-day and destination celebrations, cross-cultural weddings including traditional tea ceremonies, and weddings for two hundred guests or more.
- Venues
- The Yale Club of New York City, The New York Botanical Garden, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Whitby Castle, Lyndhurst Mansion, The Rockleigh, 74 Wythe, The River Café, Liberty House and Tribeca Rooftop.
- Press
- Quoted in Martha Stewart, the Los Angeles Times, Bridal Guide, Wedding Chicks, Destination I Do, Bespoke Bride, Love Inc., Boho Weddings and Authority Magazine; in the trade press, Cater + Event, Wedding IQ and WIPA.
- Recognition
- One of the Top 50 Power Players in Events, The Event Planner Expo 2025, New York.
- Industry
- Education committee, WIPA New York. Speaker at The Event Planner Expo 2025, and again at The Event Planner Expo 2026 in New York, 27 to 29 October.
- Questions
- Questions couples ask, and kind words from couples.
- Contact
- info@senseofmoment.com. Instagram @senseofmoment.ny.
Tell Olha how you want the day to feel.
Tell us about your wedding, and we will take it from there.