Images: Maggie Winters Gaudaen Photography
Did you guys have a good weekend?! Mine was chock full of driving & family time (as we spent 6 hours driving to NJ on Saturday for a family reunion). They shut down 95 northbound (not ideal) but at least we had a blast once we finally arrived. We’re headed out AGAIN this weekend – this time to Connecticut to visit my brother and celebrate our friends’ nuptials on a lake. Evie’s second trip on a plane this year – she certainly is racking up the miles for a just over one year old.
For today I thought it might be fun to share a little bit about how I became a wedding coordinator (thus the blog post title). I get emails from time to time from people in the DC area that want to start a wedding business, or are already in event planning but think about entering the wedding space and they often ask me to grab some coffee so I can share any tips or advice. It kind of makes me laugh because I actually have no formal training or certifications whatsoever in event/wedding planning. It’s literally something I just fell into … really without even trying.
Most of you probably know how the blog got started (but in case not: a combination of having too much fun planning my own wedding, seeing a need in the DC wedding scene for more common sense & practical weddings, and a desperately boring day job), but my wedding coordination business was not something I ever intended to get into. I graduated with a degree in Information Science & Technology from Penn State and still hold my IT consulting job by day – neither of which typically bring you into the wedding space.
But about a year after I started the blog, my friend Traci asked me if I would consider coordinating her wedding – she thought I would be good at is and she had planned so much of it … she just needed some help pulling it all together and making sure it all happened like she wanted on the wedding day. I thought it sounded fun (doesn’t everyone?) and after one of the most tiring and sweatiest days of my life, I thought, man, I think I could do this – like as a real side hustle.
 After Trey & JD’s wedding I learned some things (a skirt and flats are NOT appropriate attire when coordinating a wedding, there is such thing as a wedding hangover, and buttercream icing most certainly will melt in 95+ degree DC heat), but I also got totally addicted to the feeling I felt, helping two people, their families & friends, all have a huge party celebrating the love & commitment of two people. The wedding day high is such a real feeling (as are my swollen feet at the end of every wedding night), but what keeps me in the game is most certainly the emotion on my couples & their families’ faces at the end of the night — absolute, pure happiness & joy. When they thank me for helping to make their wedding day exactly as they imagined it, well it’s just such an awesome feeling.
So there you have it – the origin story of Capitol Romance Wedding Coordination – a wedding business I had never planned to start, but one I now couldn’t imagine my life without. It’s been an incredible journey this far and I can’t wait to see where it continues to take me and how many more amazing people I will get to meet because of it.
And for any of you inspiring wedding coordinators out there – though I don’t have much time these days to grab that cup of coffee and share my secrets (not sure I have many anyway ;-p ), feel free to let me know if there are things I could blog about that might help OR check out this new business venture my dear colleague Jasmine has started that I hope to help out with in the future.
