Happy Thanksgiving to our clients, vendors, friends, and community! We are incredibly appreciative and honored for your love, support, partnership, and trust over the years!
We happily embrace the holiday as an opportunity to create space to gather with loved ones, to nourish our bodies with good food and drink, to rest, to set intentions for the coming chapters, and reflect on everything that helped us arrive to this moment.
This year our team took a moment of purposeful pause to reflect on the year behind us and share what we are wholeheartedly grateful for. We hope you join us in celebration this season and we wish you a very happy Thanksgiving from our family at Calluna Events to yours!
Photographer | Alp & Isle
Heather Dwight
“It’s that time of year when we pause and reflect on where we’ve been in our annual Thanksgiving blog post. I am so honored and humbled to be writing about gratitude once again. We are so fortunate to do what we do and create what we create for our clients alongside this wonderful wedding community. We are wrapping up our 19th season in business! I am ever-so inspired by the Calluna Community – our clients who choose Calluna, the creative partners and venues we are fortunate to work so closely with and who continually entrust their clients with us. I continue to be grateful to be able to go to work each day and do something I love and am passionate about. I am particularly grateful for our clients from this year. Witnessing your weddings is a great honor! Once again, this year brought some incredible weddings and visions, where we were able to collaborate and be creative in ways we never have. I am grateful for our clients’ trust in us and our ability to constantly grow and expand our offerings.
I am always in awe of and humbled by our team. They are the heart and soul of Calluna, my right hands, who work tirelessly and who have such positive enthusiasm for our couples. At the end of our second full season post COVID, I reflect back on what we navigated and the persistence and grit of our team. Wedding planning is sometimes a thankless job, a job behind the scenes and the cog that makes the entire wheel of the wedding turn. Our team makes our couples vision come to life and their wedding dreams happen. And their work allows me to expand Calluna in exciting projects. I consider them all friends and love the impact they’ve had on my life and my business.
I’m also so grateful for travel – it’s one of my greatest joys in life – to travel to inspiring places and experience new things – this past year I was fortunate to travel to Greece, Morocco, weddings across Colorado and Wyoming as well as Missouri, and took several road trips with my family in the southwest of Colorado and Utah.
I am forever grateful for the love and support of my family and my friends, especially my husband, Brandon, our daughter Maggie and son Grey. I’m grateful for where we live in Colorado – for fresh air, sunshine, being outside in the mountains. I’m grateful for my health and any time I can ride my bike or do a little yoga.”
Photographer | Ashley Sawtelle
Melanie Robertz
“It’s my very favorite season – a season for pause, reflection, celebration, and (hopefully!) a little bit of rest. As we mark the festive conclusion of this calendar year, delighted to share a sprinkling of what brings me joy, thanks and a full heart in a seemingly unending list of gratitude.
I’m so grateful for the opportunity to do what I love with the people of love; in helping create moments of joyous celebration that will be remembered for generations to come. I’m grateful to spend my days surrounded in the company of strong, creative, interesting people – colleagues, clients, vendors, entrepreneurs, (many of which are female founded and operated!) – who continue to inspire me to be the best version of myself each day. I’m immeasurably grateful for my health and the health and well-being of those around me, something we know not to take lightly in today’s time. I’m grateful for the everyday joys that come with being a new puppy parent (read: a very full camera roll), to watching my dear friends and family embark on big chapters (weddings! homes! jobs! babies!), to small moments of levity and laughter that go along with a life well-lived. We don’t know what’s to come, but we’ve gotten this far and that’s cause for celebration. Clinking my glass in spirit to all of you – Happy Thanksgiving and holiday season!”
Photographer | Alp & Isle
Lindsay Hayden
“Wow – it’s hard to believe that it’s already time to write this post again, the year has just flown by!
2022 has been one of the best years of my life and this year, I am most grateful for my husband (EEK! Still love saying that)! This year Ken and I got married in our favorite places in the world and pledged to spend the rest of our lives together. Planning your own wedding in the midst of planning weddings for all the amazing Calluna Couples was no small feat and I truly could not have pulled off the wedding of our dreams without his support! He might not have been picking out linens or negotiating a catering contract but I couldn’t have made it through this season without him.
To my friends and family – those who showed up and supported us over the last year of planning and celebrating. From engagement parties to bachelorette weekends (and so many matching theme outfits!) and bridal showers – 0ur wedding day wouldn’t have been the same without them! Coming in from all over the country to Aspen, Colorado was no easy feat and it was truly so humbling to look out and see all our loved ones in the same place. I often tell my couples that there are so few times in your life that all your people are in the same place together and to live that experience first hand was truly something that I’ll never forget.
And to our vendor partners – the support and creativity you brought to this season but especially to my wedding weekend is something that I’ll never truly be able to thank you all for. I feel so thankful and blessed to work alongside such creatives in this industry who dedicate everything they have to their couples and to be on the receiving end of that creativity and dedication was so special.
All in all – it was such a special year filled with so much love! It’s hard to imagine that 2023 will be able to top this year but the best is yet to come.”
Photographer | Vanessa Tierney
Jenna Frum
“At the beginning of this year, I set my intention to embody what I call the ’empowered manifester’ – someone who is fearless in following their heart. I had an inkling this would be the year of growth + change and it sure was! I moved from California to Colorado to pursue my dream career and reunite with my boyfriend Troy of five years after two years of long distance, we welcomed home our sweet Marigold who’s our fluffy golden retriever puppy ~ adding to our furry family with our two kitties Leo + Roo, I joined the Calluna Crew when wedding season began and have been loving it ever since, I have found ways to foster deep connection with my family despite the distance between us, and I just became an Auntie a couple weeks ago!
Change inspires growth and I’m incredibly grateful that I fiercely followed my heart when these opportunities arose, acknowledging the fear of the unknown while simultaneously finding centeredness around my aspirations and taking the leap of faith. As I embarked on this new chapter of my life, I’ve been so fortunate to have my loved ones by my side and am sending them so much love and gratitude for their unwavering support + encouragement through it all. I’m so grateful to be part of the Calluna Crew, a team of women who constantly inspire me as they pour their hearts into everything they do. Thank you for showing this California girl what Colorado is all about! I’m grateful for Troy who’s been there for me every step of the way ~ you have always inspired me to speak my truth, embrace my authenticity, and let my free spirit run wild! I’m grateful for our wonderful group of friendors we have here in Colorado and beyond ~ as planners with creative visions it’s entirely special to see it all come to life and we truly wouldn’t be able to do it without you!
My heart is also incredibly grateful for all the in between moments in life, the small things such as laughing so hard my dimples start to hurt, our furry friends Marigold, Leo, + Roo finding and choosing friendship with one another with all the purrs, cuddles, and kisses nose to snout ~ what a beautiful sign from nature of loving + kindness! ~ the golden yellow trees filling the slopes during the fall, butterflies that flutter toward me are like kisses from my angels in heaven, I could go on for days celebrating what fills my heart with joy and gratitude but I’ll save some for next year’s reflection! Sending all my love and gratitude to you on this Thanksgiving! Wishing you a lovely celebration full of joy!”
Photographer | Meredith Diamond
Kristen Kennedy
“This year I’m grateful for:
- The opportunity to travel for weddings and for personal fun. My wedding in Cabo was definitely a professional highlight (love you Rebecca & Brian!) and my trip to Mallora, Spain was a personal favorite.
- My family – always. I’ve spent a lot of time with them over the past few years and even crashed my parents anniversary trip to Jackson Hole.
- Coffee. Specifically the Japanese Iced Coffee from Blue Sparrow and Cappuccinos from Crema.
- My squad of amazing friends. You know who you are!
- All of my amazing clients, many who became friends after planning together for 1+ years!
And of course my Calluna Crew. Love love love learning from this team of amazing ladies.”
Photographer | Rebecca Haley Photography
Gina Yeon
“Suffice it to say, there have been some monumental joys this year: getting engaged (!!!), building a home with my fiance, and celebrating love. Both in the form of our couples and weddings with Calluna, and also the smaller everyday celebrations of love with friends and family. While it’s so easy to focus on the big joys – the ones that come to the mind first when thinking about what I’m most grateful for, the tiny treasures also come to the surface when I think about why I am grateful for that thing.
I’ve been keeping a journal (sporadically), where I write down the top 3 things I am thankful for that day. While the big and consistent ones have been my health, my relationships, and more recently, a house to call our home, the tiny treasures that I also am grateful for no matter how silly also allows me to reflect on how much I have to be thankful for. Some of the entries: coffee, fresh flowers, seeing Enzo get the zoomies, the sun on an incredibly cold day in January, visiting a berry farm and picking all of the fruit, a magical sunset, clean socks, finding $5 dollars in a zipped pocket in an old purse, etc.
This year, I am so grateful for both the big joys and the smaller ones that fill up our day to day lives. Wishing everyone all of the joys – both big and small as they celebrate Thanksgiving this year!”
Kira Reed
“This year I am so thankful for being able to have the wedding of our dreams. We were married this September in Laguna Beach, CA. It was truly the best day of our lives and I am still riding high from it. We were surrounded by our family and friends and the outpouring of love was like nothing I have ever experienced. I felt such immense gratitude for those who traveled both near and far to be with us on our special day. I am thankful for the health of our family which allowed them all to be there and I look forward to celebrating Thanksgiving all together this year as a married couple!”
Photographer | Katrina Jayne
Taylor Sicko
“This year I am most grateful for friendship. After moving to a state where I knew virtually no one, I feel so grateful to have gradually found the people that make Colorado feel like home.”
Photographer | Alp & Isle
A few Thanksgiving reflections over the year!
