The Journal
a collective gathering of our work,
including real weddings + events,
tips and ideas for productive planning
including real weddings + events,
tips and ideas for productive planning
 On April 2, 2015, All Things Planned turns five! This completely blows my mind since back in April of 2010 when I birthed this little business, I was 31, newly married with seven-year-old Trey, had been unemployed for one month due to the Great Recession and had no idea where I was going in life. Fast forward {very fast} to April 2015, and here I am reflecting on how All Things Planned has grown in these last five years. It's incredible, really. And here's how it happened... {2009}||Pre-ATP: this is the year the wedding wheels started rolling. I was planning my own wedding and absolutely loving every moment of it. I had started a blog {All Things Wedding} to log my planning progress, to help other brides with ideas, post my own experiences in wedding planning, and it soon became an outlet to learn everything I could from every wedding resource imaginable. I had so much fun blogging, learning, planning, social networking and literally living weddings for about a year as I planned my own. The blog, All Things Wedding, was a place for me to express my love for wedding planning without boring to death my friends + family with DIY projects and nerdy wedding etiquette that I was picking up along the way. Friends + family, you're welcome. :-)  {2010}||ATP is Born: this year will always be special for so many reasons. It marked the ten year anniversary of togetherness with my now husband, the year we got married and the year ATP would come to be. My husband and I were married on March 20, 2010 and immediately thereafter, I was laid off of my {dreadfully boring} job at a small insurance firm where I managed auto insurance accounts. After having had the itch to see what it would be like to be a "wedding/event planner" and help others with the {very little} knowledge I now had after planning my wedding {and helping coordinate a few friends' weddings}, why not use the opportunity of unemployment to get out there and do it?! It's how my crazy little brain works. And so, with a TON of encouragement from my husband, I though I could, so I did! I named the business "All Things Planned" as a spin-off from the blog name, created a real website {the old site: allthingsplanned.net}, created an email address, made some business cards, obtained a DBA from the County Clerk, opened a business checking account, created a few business goals and a business plan, and off I went; I was a wedding planner! Not so fast, actually. I had no idea what I was getting myself in to. I had no idea that no one would ring my phone, touch my website, let alone hire me for another few months. In the meantime, I found another {really great} job as an insurance account manager, plugged away at social media marketing for ATP hoping someone, anyone would notice me... Until that one day my phone did ring, it was a potential client planning a wedding for 900 guests! Y'all, you have no idea how intimidating it is to have your first paid gig not only be really happening but to have it be for 900 guests! Crazytown. I got in there, quoted my price for day-of coordination, was hired and off to work I went! Luckily, this wedding happened to be for the son of a great couple who had their own business, knew a million people {hence the 900 wedding guests invited} and loved the work I did {with the help of my sister, Megan, who was going to A&M at the time and thankfully was here to co-coordinate weddings + events with me in the early stages of ATP}. It seems they told everyone they knew with a child getting married to hire me! Incredibly thankful doesn't even begin to describe my feelings for that one wedding and experience back in 2010. It literally got the ball rolling for ATP and I am forever grateful to that family {Mrs. B, I love you!}. I coordinated one other wedding that year pro bono for another friend just to gain experience, booked a baby shower, graduation party and another wedding for the following year. 2010 brought just enough for me to know that I loved helping people organize their weddings and that I would thirst for so much more from this tiny little thing I had created called "All Things Planned."  {2011}||ATP Grows: this is the year that, like any baby business was a true test of "will this business make it"?; "is this a waste of time"?; "do I have any idea of what I'm doing"? Truth is, I had no idea. But I knew if I kept at it every. single. day. something would eventually happen. So, I kept praying, blogging, praying, reading, praying, learning, praying, eating/breathing/sleeping weddings, praying and kept marketing so that people could find me. Sure enough, the phone started to ring {not much, but a little}. I was meeting with potential clients after my regular 40-hour-a-week-work-day or on Saturdays/Sundays... Hell, I would have met with a potential client at 3:00 in the morning if that meant I could do something for my business. I was hungry and eager to prove to myself and everyone else that I was serious and could totally do this wedding/event planning thing {secretly completely doubting myself}. I booked and coordinated seven weddings, three baby showers and two graduation parties in 2011, fully proving to myself that I could totally do this wedding/event planning thing. Also, in 2011, my husband and I decided to grow our family by one; I became pregnant with my second child in August of 2011 {exactly what I recommend doing while you're building a business, running a family and working a "regular job" 40 hours a week, only if you're crazy}. One of the greatest things I did in 2011 was add my dear friend, Margaret, to the team to help pull things off on wedding days. She is certainly one of the best things that has happened to ATP! I also brought on my very first intern, Katie, who turned out to be a dream and made me realize that many hands really do make light work. The first real logo for ATP was created in 2011 and I built a blogger website {allthingsplannedbcs.com} to accompany the new look.
 {2012}||ATP Grows Even More {and so does my family}: turns out, 2012 would also be a really big year for both the business and me personally. I had baby Rhys in March of 2012, booked a few other weddings + events and booked my very first full-service wedding {cue Hallelujah Chorus}! Before this, I was doing small events and mainly coordination for clients but this was my first opportunity to plan a wedding from beginning to end. If you're doing the math, that's two years after the business started. I can totally see why businesses give up before they even get started. How many times did I tell my husband, "I'm never going to get a full-service client"?; "I'm never going to be able to live off of this business"?, "this is never going to be sustainable"! Gut-wrinching, powerful growing pains happened in these first few years trying to decide if all this time meeting with clients and vendors {after working 8 hours a day}, marketing, praying would ever be worth it. I mean, it's fun to plan weddings and all, but no one loves working just for fun. I now had two children to feed, remember? So, I kept working my "regular job" to keep food on the table and kept plugging along every. single. day. Exhaustively, but with every single smidgen of everything I had to give, every. single. day. The phone started to ring more, and more... We added our second fabulous intern, Christine, in 2012 and continued providing a level of service for clients that began to speak for itself. No advertising, no association memberships, no bridal shows - just the power of referrals. It was incredible to watch this baby business continue to grow.... {2013}||ATP Just Keeps Growing!: it's all kind of a blur how the weddings + events just started rolling in but in 2013, ATP had 18 weddings + events and was beginning to book for the next year and even the next. Somewhere along the way, the word got out that ATP was here and couples were finding us and trusting us with the biggest days of their lives. More full-service bookings started to roll in, more meetings, more evenings {many nights working into the wee hours of the morning}, more weekends, more hours away from my family, all while still maintaining the 40-hour-a-week "regular job." Again, if you're crazy, I completely recommend this way to begin a business. And, if you're smart, this is the way you begin a business to give it time to get off the ground. These first years were THE HARDEST of my life juggling so many balls in the air, but, in the end, so very worth it. Erin was added as yet another incredible intern to the team in 2013, we continued to do great work for those who trusted us enough to help them, and on to 2014 we went!  {2014}||ATP Grows, and Grows, and Grows... with 28 weddings + events in year four plus the planning that was going into the next year's weddings, ATP had become entirely too much for me to handle while working the "regular job" raising a tween + a toddler and still being someone my husband wanted to be married to. So, in the summer of 2014, my focus shifted even more on my family and ATP {and my husband's small business, yeah, there's that, too} and I took a part-time roll with the "regular job." Praise Jesus! I was now able to meet clients, work on timelines, budgets - all the things that wedding planning requires - during the week, not at 7:00 at night or on a Sunday afternoon when I should be with my family {usually after working a 14-hour wedding the day before}. ATP had become sustainable and was able to support itself. How great is that? How great is God?!? With this new year, came a new look for ATP and a new website {atplanned.com}! I had decided to start branding for the type of client I was looking for and to create a look that was more "me" than the wedding industry. I wanted a simple, clean, approachable brand. So that's what we created! 2014 also brought us a great crew of interns for a busy year - Kellen, Sarah, Katherine and Courtney joined the team in 2014 and we would never have been able to pull off such a fantastic year without them!  {2015}||ATP Looks Ahead {and Margaret had a baby!}: only a few months in to 2015, and we've hit the ground running. We've had seven weddings and one baby shower in the first three months and just keep plugging ahead. By the end of 2015, we will have had over 100 weddings + events and, of course, there's always 2016 weddings that we've already started the planning for. Time really flies when you're having fun! Margaret added a new baby to her family in February of this year, baby Luke, {who is the cutest thing you've ever seen} and we're so excited to have another boy in the ATP family! Avery joined the team as our newest intern in January of this year and a new round of interns join us in the next couple of months. I've had such joy getting to work with these up and coming planners and they've truly been an asset to ATP. Margaret and I are forever grateful to all of our incredible interns - past and present! The next step for ATP is to begin looking at commercial space to really get in and get creative each day for our clients! A fun, cozy little place to meet where clients feel at home and comfortable. After all, we're not only wedding + event engineers, we're friends, we're confidants, we're counselors, we're problem solvers, we're doers, we're fixers, we're whatever we need to be for our clients to plan the best wedding or event possible!  So, cheers to the last FIVE fantastic years! Cheers to the years to come! Cheers to the clients, vendors, supporters and my family {especially my darling husband} + friends who have been with me every step of this incredible journey! Thank you all so, very, very much! I am blessed beyond measure each year, each month, each week, each day, each second... God has given me a great little gift in All Things Planned and I'm so glad to have each and every one of you as a part of it. 
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