20 years of wedding planning and counting!
I don’t know about you, but when I woke up today (January 1, 2022) I was really excited to sit down and start working on my goals for the year. You see, I am very grateful that I still have a business to work on, given what the past two years have brought us. I have plans, BIG plans for this year, and starting this blog is just one of them. Truth be told, I have resisted blogging for a long time. I started doing this when blogging wasn’t even a thing! But now I realize it’s an important way to let potential clients get to know me. So, here’s my origin story…
How it started…
Flashback to March of 2002. I get a phone call from an old friend that I grew up with. She is living in San Francisco, California and engaged to be married. She wanted her wedding in Halifax and needed help. She heard from my cousin that I was interested in getting into wedding planning. “That’s true,” I said, “and I would love to help you, but there’s only one snag, I’m 5 months pregnant!” Her wedding was going to be in October, on Thanksgiving weekend. Just over 6 months away!
Not one to shy away from a challenge, I thought, well, what better chance do I have to see if I can actually do this than with someone I know? They were willing to sign a contract and pay me, to make it all official. They weren’t looking for free help, and understood the amount of work it was going to take to pull this off, given that I’d likely be unavailable for about a month or so after I gave birth. My daughter was due on June 21, 2002.
So we proceeded to plan their wedding. I helped with every aspect, from venue scouting to budgeting, vendor meetings, itinerary development, and of course on-site coordination of the day itself. I learned A LOT from that first experience and will always give credit to Sandra & Anthony for starting me on this career path. My daughter was just over 3 months old when she attended this wedding, asleep in her car seat for most of it. It was a pretty big personal achievement, and I thought to myself, I think I can make a go of this! So I took advantage of my maternity leave and worked on starting my business. I went into my first bridal show in January of 2003 and registered my business name “Simply Weddings” in February of that year. The rest as they say is history!
Vendor love!
Several of the vendors we worked with then are still in the business now. The reception took place at the Lord Nelson Hotel. Flowers were provided by Props Floral Design and the divine chocolate (yes, it was chocolate inside and out) wedding cake was made by Gingerbread Haus.
The photographer at the time was none other than Emma Rose who was one of Applehead Studio’s Photographers. I remember how she was one of the first photographers shooting in a photo-journalistic style and it looked so different than anything I had seen before! We’ve all seen those stuffy, posed wedding photos from the past, right? This was different. And she was still shooting in film! Digital photography was just getting into mainstream use but not many photographers were using digital cameras yet.
Me with my pixie cut at the Brides 2004 show!
Yes, I’m that old! For perspective, I started wedding planning before Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest were a thing. I had just gotten my first cell phone in 2002! Brides were still buying bridal magazines and ripping out pages of dresses and bouquets they liked and bringing binders to our meetings. In 2022, wedding planning is done online and inspiration is drawn from around the globe through people’s cell phones. Photographers and makeup artists have huge followings and often wedding dates get booked around their availability.
Where it’s going…
Like everyone on this planet, Covid-19 changed everything for me. The wedding and events industry was one of the hardest hit. Everything I did involved people gathering. I managed to work on a handful of weddings in 2020 and by the summer of 2021 couples were racing to get their nuptials done before another lockdown took place (at least in Nova Scotia). In 2020, the most frequent word I heard tossed around was “pivot”. This industry really struggled to do that. Yes, corporate events could go virtual but a wedding is just not the same when it’s 5 people plus your friends and family watching on Facebook. Weddings are social! Weddings are about bringing two families together. It’s very difficult to do that when you are literally told not to gather. So I thought long and hard about my future in this industry. I explored a completely different business idea for a long time. When in the summer of 2020, a few couples went ahead with their plans, that gave me hope. Almost no corporate events took place in 2020 but weddings did. They were the first to come back. All signs point to 2022 being the busiest wedding season in in nearly 40 years! And I’m here for it!
So, I am pivoting in a way. In 2022, I will be a full time wedding planner for the first time in my career. That’s a big change for me but I am so very excited about it! As I mentioned earlier, I have some big plans for this year and a new service on the way. After 20 years, I’ve got a lot of stories and knowledge to share. I hope you’ll join me!
Claudia