We recently connected with Kenzie Carlson and have shared our conversation below.

Kenzie, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with something countless entrepreneurs have had to figure out on the fly – how have you dealt with the rise of remote work?

The great thing about the wedding industry is that most of wedding planning can be done over the phone or via email. There are, of course, some things that have to be done in person, but the behind-the-scenes can be done from anywhere – including from my couch in my pajamas.

Being in east Tennessee, the Smoky Mountains are a huge destination for weddings, so most of our couples don’t even live around here and all our work has to be done remotely anyway. Usually couples from out of town will come to visit for a couple days and we knock out most of our in-person meetings in that window. Sometimes, I don’t even meet my couples until their wedding day!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a full-time wedding planner and owner of I Do… Weddings! I am originally from Nashville but I moved to Knoxville in 2016 for college. I went to the University of Tennessee, graduated with an accounting degree and finished the Master’s of Accountancy program in 2021. All the while, I was working in the wedding industry.

I started in the wedding industry six years ago and after a couple years of working weddings, I solidified I wanted to start my own business. I Do… Weddings began in 2019 as a side gig, but quickly grew, even during the pandemic. After I finished grad school, I decided to turn down my job opportunity in Chicago and stay in Knoxville to go full-time with weddings. With a team of two planners, ten coordinators, and hundreds of couples, we have done over 100 weddings the last two years.

We offer three packages that are customizable. Our Coordinating Package to finalize details and help couples who have planned it all. We wrap it up with a bow and execute the timeline the day-of the wedding. Our Full Planning Package is for those couples that don’t have the time or energy to plan every detail of their wedding. We try to help take the load off by helping these couples find vendors, design everything, and pull it all together. Lastly, our Semi Planning is a little in between for the couples that just want a steady hand to lead them through the whole process.

After six years of working weddings, I have learned so much, but I know there are so many more experiences to be had the more weddings we do. We look forward to learning every couples story and bringing it to life during their wedding celebration. It is an honor to be able to be able to play a part in that.

My favorite part of weddings is creating relationships with my brides and vendors that become friends. I am the type of planner that can be strictly professional and get the job done, but also would love to be able to talk about things other than your wedding. I have many brides that I get to update on my personal life and then get to celebrate, not only their wedding, but their marriage the day after the big event. Watching previous couples who are now having babies, getting dogs, or moving across the country.

The wedding industry in east Tennessee is a huge community that I feel honored to be a part of, and I cannot wait to share with couples that decide to get married here!

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Referrals, referrals, referrals. Remember how I said this industry is a community? It’s seemingly very large, but the deeper you go in the industry, everyone is connected somehow. Vendors work with all these other vendors and remember weddings where things went well and didn’t. Couples will latch onto a vendor they like and will ask for recommendations for other vendors – and if you have a good relationship with them – they will recommend you!

As a planner, we get referred a lot by venues. Usually couples will find a venue first and then reach out to coordinators that the venue recommends. This is where it’s nice to be on the short list so you can do multiple weddings there. And the more weddings you do there, the closer you are to the vendors that work there all the time.

We also have other vendors that recommend us too, including other planners! If all the planners in the area are booked, some of them will refer to I Do… Weddings since we have such a big team!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The number one question I get as a wedding planner: “Do you work with any bridezillas??” My answer is always the same. Not really, everyone I work with is usually very nice, just *particular* sometimes. For us, this is just another day at work. We’re going to do the same thing every day, every weekend, until the world ends. But for them, this is a day they’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars in, spent usually over a year planning, and everyone they know and love is coming to watch them be the center of attention. On top of that – weddings will bring out the worst in people. I have heard countless stories of drama during wedding planning that hurts my heart.

Eventually, wedding planning becomes overwhelming and stress turns to frustration. Then, on their wedding day, brides are micromanaging everything making sure the time and money they put in doesn’t go to waste. Unfortunately things don’t always go according to plan though. And usually, if things go sideways, it falls back on the person in charge of making sure that everything goes smoothly – the coordinator.

I have been lucky enough that anyone who had frustrations with me has still been very kind and it has been more of a discussion, instead of anger and bad reviews left. The disappointment I feel from brides, grooms or parents that are unhappy with how their wedding turned out – even when they seem happy on the big day – is unmatched. It knots my stomach and makes me want to quit everything.

However, any time this happens, it encourages us to be better. We hanker down and fine tune our systems to make sure nothing like that happens again. Feedback can be brutal but it encourages you to be even better in the future. You add clauses to contracts, draw a boundary, overcommunicate things in the future – to make sure the only hitch that happens at the next wedding is between your happy couple.

Contact Info:

• Website: idoweddingsplanner.com
• Instagram: idoweddings.kenzie
• Facebook: idoweddings.kenzie

Image Credits
Stephanie Wilson Creative B Sloan Photography Erin Morrison Photography