Love Well Planned Recap

Our team is over the moon to have hosted our Colorado wedding industry friends and colleagues at the first annual Love Well Planned last month. We spent two days among old and new friends, learning from the best in the business and surrounded by a phenomenal speaker panel and sponsor vendor team. For those who couldn’t attend, we’ve recapped below – of course with plenty of photos (compliments of Jill Houser Photography) and fun details. We are so grateful for the community support of our first workshop and hope you’ll join us at the next one!

Love Well Planned took place at Skylight, located in Denver, Colorado. Skylight is in the Sante Fe Art District and is great for events with an urban feel. We knew instantly that it would be the most incredible venue to bring this workshop to life because of their multifunctional space and for their ability to transform the venue to fit any style. Skylight is one of our preferred Denver wedding venues and is great for couples who want a distinctive chic industrial feel.

With natural light flooding in all day and a spacious venue, Skylight provided the best backdrop for our event. Warmed with some beautiful lounges and intentional decor, it was the perfect spot to post up for two days of education

On Day 1, after an amazing breakfast catered by Sugar Mountain Catering, our very own Heather Dwight spoke to the attendees on all things wedding planning. Day 1 was catered towards all planners – whether they were just starting out or if they were already established with a team or company; and it was also geared towards experienced planners who needed a refresh to rekindle their skills and education. Most attendees were interested in how to grow in their business in an organic way that wasn’t forced. Heather dove into the essential elements of a successful wedding planner: Business 101, contracts, accounting, hospitality, and budgets. She also covered how to avoid vendor miscommunication pitfalls, and touched on the fundamentals of styling. Most importantly, she discussed why we as wedding planners do what we do, and how it is crucial that we define our why!

Attendees then moved into a vendor collaboration panel between Heather, Rachel Havel from Rachel Havel Photography, and Cindy Ollig from The Perfect Petal, where they were able to engage and have questions answered by some of the best in the industry.

Guests were then treated to a wedding design talk over the beautifully styled tablescapes by Yonder House, and gained insight on styling tips from Gretchen Josten at Yonder House, and Ashley Sawtelle from Ashley Sawtelle Photography. Gretchen talked about tabletop styling fundamentals and how to make a huge impact at any budget. She shared three different tablescape designs at three different price points that offered unique and distinctive design elements. Ashley gave a photographer’s point of view on how to style a table while keeping editorial submissions in mind. She offered advice on what to focus on when setting up to get a killer shot, and where and what to prioritize when planning to submit a wedding for editorial publishing. Heather closed off the session by giving insight from a wedding planner’s perspective, as well as how to combine both Gretchen’s and Ashley’s point of view to make it cohesive and ready for a happy client!

At the end of the evening, guests were treated to a magical, heart filling, and delicious dinner party hosted by Feast. We were privileged to dine with Feast – a curated dinner experience, built with the intention to cultivate community and connection shared over a family table. Hannah and her Feast team blew us away with their top notch service – from the set up, the rentals, the printed items, the serving, the food, all the way to the espresso and plated dessert at the end! Feast is great for smaller parties, think rehearsal dinners, intimate weddings, birthday parties or celebrations. It is a really intimate and lovely way to celebrate, and is different than anything we’ve seen in Denver.

⁣With old and new friends, we gathered in Skylight’s courtyard under the beautiful string lighting, and commemorated our first day of Love Well Planned with our fantastic guests, sponsors, and speakers. The amazing meal fostered community and was filled with good conversation, full bellies, and full hearts! ⁣

On day 2 of Love Well Planned, we were joined by a variety of industry professionals! From photographers, florists, calligraphers, make-up artists, and more, LWP attendees gathered to get insight and knowledge on the entire wedding industry from our rockstar speaker lineup.

Heather opened the discussion with business branding, and spoke more about ‘defining your why’ before passing it along to the incredible ladies at Rocky Mountain Bride. Chelsea Combe, Hilary Angel, and Laura Osborn talked about what it takes to get published and how to maximize relationships in the industry.

Sugar Mountain Catering put together a gorgeous grazing board for lunch, and afterwards, our dear friends Amy and Erin at The Hello Co. spoke to us about how we could better implement the tips and tricks on branding, marketing, website, and social media engagement! They talked about some of the trends they’ve been seeing in 2019 – like how social networks are going to prefer video. We get so focused on creating the perfect image to share to our websites and profiles, but often times neglect the more personal behind the scenes of how it all comes together. Hearing this and more from Amy and Erin really opened up our eyes on how to better manage our online presence!

Rachel Havel led us through an eye opening exercise on pricing and sales, and how we should be valuing our work and effort. Laura Murray followed suit and gave an inspiring talk on creativity and productivity. She spoke about how to set intentions and follow through on them from a different perspective.

We finished the day with another panel discussion with Heather from Calluna Events, Jill Livingston from Eclectic Hive, Cindy Ollig from The Perfect Petal, Rachel Havel from Rachel Havel Photography, and Laura Murray from Laura Murray Photography where these boss ladies scratched the surface as they covered virtually everything – from contracts, pricing, selling, holding dates, and so much more! We were so honored that this group of women took the time to attend and share their nearly 100 years of combined experience with us!

After our final panel, Blackbelly Catering came through with some delicious happy hour bites for our networking happy hour while the insanely talented Jennie Lou, from Jennie Lou Art did a live painting for us in just a short hour and a half!

The Diamond Reserve so generously joined the Love Well Planned team as our Diamond Sponsor and completely blew it out of the water. We can’t begin to express our excitement and gratitude for gifting a set of diamond earrings, necklace, and bracelet to one lucky attendant – congratulations Shayna from Cherry Bomb Events!

We could go on and on about how unbelievable this workshop was, and we are beyond grateful to our esteemed speakers from both day one and day two who have shared their knowledge and experience, and can wholeheartedly say we walked away with our hearts filled, minds expanded, and ready to tackle our to-do lists! We also can’t thank our sponsors enough; they have poured their resources, time, and energy into this passion project culminated by Heather, and we would not have pulled this event off without them!

All of the beautiful photos were captured by the phenomenal Jill Houser from Jill Houser Photography. Thank you so much for so wonderfully capturing our very first Love Well Planned workshop!

Loved following along but couldn’t make this one? Stay in touch with all things Love Well Planned to be in the loop with upcoming sessions, workshop series, and more! Follow us on Instagram, and sign up for our newsletter! You can learn more about our amazing speakers and sponsors, on our Love Well Planned blog.

A HUGE thank you to our incredible speakers and sponsors!

Speakers:

Amy Groom + Erin Jones | The Hello Co.

Ashley Sawtelle | Ashley Sawtelle Photography

Cindy Ollig | The Perfect Petal

Gretchen Josten | Yonder House

Heather Dwight | Calluna Events

Hillary Angel + Chelsea Combe + Laura Osborn | Rocky Mountain Bride

Jill Livingston | Eclectic Hive

Rachel Havel | Rachel Havel Photography

Sponsors:

Breakfast + Lunch Catering | Sugar Mountain Catering