How it started and how it’s going – wedding planner edition

Whenever I share anything wedding related on my instagram I get some folks that are interested in how I got started and what life is like as a wedding planner while also having a full time job. I thought it would be fun to dive into this side hustle that I’ve had for nearly 8 years!

How It Started ||

When I started blogging in 2013, I was just coming off planning my own wedding! I absolutely loved planning – even from a distance since we got married in Florida and I was doing everything remotely from Boston, it was still a dream! Fast forward a few months and I was approached by a wedding blog (sadly no longer around) and they asked if I wanted to be a contributor to their blog once a month sharing trends that I’m seeing in the wedding industry! I thought, why not! I also shared my posts on my own social channels – if you search my blog you’ll see some of my old posts from 2014! My friend from college, Stephanie, was getting married near the Cape that year and had seen a lot of my posts and asked if I would help her coordinate / plan the rest of her wedding. She said she’d pay me of course (I would have done it for free ha!) and thus my wedding planning career was born! Fast forward to the wedding I am sharing in this post and it’s actually Stephanie’s friend from high school – how is that for a full circle thing!?

As Stephanie’s wedding was approaching I realized that I would need some help and then I asked my “new” friend Jackie that I met at the law firm we were both working at if she wanted to help me. We quickly realized that we both loved weddings, planning and wanted to start a business that we could do together and thus Bespoke Boston Weddings was born! One wedding turned into two our first season, which turned into three our second year and so on and so on!

Working Well With Others ||

We have never done any paid marketing and ALL of our couples have been either word of mouth or referrals from past couples, which is the highest compliment anyone can pay us! Our first event introducing our company was at a beautiful bridal dress store – we called it the “Spring Dress Party” and we approached the owner and asked if we could put on a fashion show of the latest dresses and we’d find the girls to model – they were all local Boston bloggers that I asked to join in on the fun! It was small and intimate, but exactly what we needed to get started. That was actually just a few months after starting Bespoke!

Since we didn’t have much a portfolio we needed to showcase what we could do and the best way to get that done was styled shoots. We brought together amazing vendors to showcase all of our talents and then pitched them to wedding blogs and ended up published on Wedding Chicks! Another one we did was featured on Intimate Weddings.

In 2016 we joined forces with other wedding creatives and hosted our very own Pop Up Bridal event! This was such a fun day and one that we all worked really hard on. We invited all engaged couples to check out “not so ordinary” vendors that all had their unique set ups and it was basically a more intimate bridal show and was such a hit – we actually got a few new couples from that event. It was also a great collaborative effort that allowed us to work with a local luxury florist who booked us into her packages as the day of coordinators for couples that booked a certain amount with her and we were included in their purchase. Genius idea on all fronts and we got a lot of weddings that way – we were busy!

How it Works Now ||

As with all wedding vendors, COVID really shook up the industry and all the weddings we had planned for 2020 were rescheduled – some I was able to take on, other’s we had to politely decline / refund. Now that everything is pretty much back to how it was, we take on a few weddings a year. Ideally I would have one wedding a quarter, but somehow it doesn’t end up working out that way and the majority of the weddings are in the summer – the busy wedding season here in New England! We have been so lucky to work in some of the most incredible wedding venues New England has to offer and also many private spaces we would have never dreamed of bringing weddings to!

The biggest change is that we don’t offer day of coordination anymore – what I mean by that is no wedding is just the day of – there is so much coordinating and planning that goes into it at least one month before, so our most basic package starts at month of coordination. Just as the name suggests all our packages are “bespoke” so we can truly customize our planning needs to the couples’ wedding needs – often times this is partial planning. We also offer a la carte offerings like venue selection, vendor selection and even other wedding related events like rehearsal dinners or next day brunches. Truly depends on what the couple is looking for.

The most frequently asked question that I get is – how do you find the time? Well as with anything, if something brings you joy, you will find the time. Everything is digital for the most part so unless I am meeting with a couple face to face, we have a lot of phone calls and text exchanges. Me working full time has actually never proved to be a problem because all of the couples we deal with work as well and they welcome doing “wedding stuff” after hours. So after I get the kids to bed, I make the calls, work on timelines, reach out to vendors, etc. The busy time is the few weeks leading up to the wedding and the actual wedding day – so I have learned to be very organized and efficient.

I don’t take on too many weddings right now because I want to be with the kids on the weekends and doing weddings means giving up my Saturday’s and sometimes Sunday’s – so we’re picky. I have to work around birthday’s, our own travel schedule and a slew of other things. As the kids get older, that might change and I can take on a few more weddings a year, but we will see.

I really enjoyed the look back in this post because sometimes I forget what we’ve managed to build on the side for all these years! Weddings are one of my passions, I love, LOVE and I am honored when a couple chooses us to be part of one of the most special days in their lives!