Hannah Roze ’11

After attending The Bush School from Kindergarten to Twelfth Grade and graduating as a Lifer in 2011, Hannah (Thornton) Roze went into the business of making dreams come true for thousands of couples. Now, she’s an accomplished businesswoman, a mother, and the owner of Plannerd, the ultimate online wedding-planning platform. 

What sparked this passion to help others achieve their perfect day?

“While attending business school at the University of Washington (UW), I was also planning my wedding with my husband,” Hannah shared. “During our wedding-planning process, we just kept asking ourselves, ‘Why is this so difficult when two and a half million people in the United States get married every year?’”

Hannah witnessed firsthand the difficulties of preparing for such a major event and decided to challenge the normalization of wedding planning as a stressful journey. Instead, she wished to reinvent the wheel in logistics by tackling the problem from a project management perspective. During her time at Bush, she gained an understanding of the importance of effective communication and public speaking, which she found helpful in gathering data from potential clients for her business plan. 

“I think at Bush, there's such an emphasis on leveling up communication, and there are so many different avenues for refining and polishing your ability to communicate with others, especially in person while fostering a community of respect,” Hannah said.

Plannerd, a play on the phrase “planning nerd,” is a platform that helps clients plan weddings of all types, from intimate elopements to massive ceremonies. Couples can customize their budgets and outline important details such as the number of guests, timeline, and vendor management, while infusing expert guidance along the way.

“What I aimed to do is allow people to have a joyful experience leading up to that special day,” Hannah said. “So that’s what Plannerd’s tools aim to do: infuse joy and empowerment and help people feel in control throughout the wedding-planning journey.”

Hannah’s business has since taken off, gaining recognition from Forbes magazine for reshaping the wedding industry as we know it.

“I was very pleasantly surprised to read the Forbes article and have it be truly a feature of Plannerd and of who we are and how our place in the industry is necessary in helping people. So it was definitely a huge personal milestone and something I’m very, very proud of.”

After she graduated from Bush, she attended Mount Holyoke College in western Massachusetts. There, she was a Spanish major and journalism minor, taking on summer internships that brought her from public relations firms in New York City to a news station in Seattle. After graduating from Mount Holyoke, she moved back to Seattle, working as a tutor for kids and then at a boutique marketing firm before being hired by Carta, a technology company specializing in cap table management and valuation software.

"In my career, there have been many different instances where I had to fully rebuild from the ground up or start something completely new," Hannah said. "I had to become really secure in my own skill set and what I bring to the table, and I think shifting into building my own business took betting on myself to do something outside of the norm. And I think it takes courage to risk betting on yourself."

Now that Plannerd is a thriving company, Hannah is excited to introduce more AI tools to turn clients’ inspiration into execution in the coming months. As she continues blazing trails to grow her business, she reflects fondly on her time at Bush and holds dear the lessons she learned from beloved faculty and staff over those transformative years.

“The Bush School just shaped everything about me,” Hannah said. “I was there from Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade, and it’s full of really caring people who want to help mold the next generation, which is so important. Having a young daughter, I think about what it means to trust people enough to guide your child. And I’m just so grateful to everyone at Bush for being such positive role models for me—Laurie Mathews, who was my Sixth Grade English teacher; Grant Dermody, my Fourth Grade teacher; and Gardiner Vinnedge in high school. These are a few people who just enormously shaped me and were such positive role models who taught me about what it meant to be curious and kind at the same time.”