We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shelby Kirchner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shelby below.

Shelby, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

At Plan On It Events & Design, we don’t just plan your typical one night wedding. We specialize in full weekend, guest-centric celebrations that embody the couples’ relationship and feels like a vacation!

At a traditional wedding, you only get 4-6 hours with your guests total. Most of that time is taken up with the ceremony, family photos, toasts, first dances, cake cuttings, and all of the other little micro-events that make up a standard wedding day. After all of the little things are said and done – you don’t have much time left to sit back, relax, and actually enjoy the wedding day with all of your favorite people. Imagine paying tens of thousands of dollars for one night and not even getting to have a meaningful conversation with each of your guests?

By stretching out the wedding across a full weekend and adding 2-3 additional events, you more than double your time spent with your guests. Your guests will have more fun and so will you – what’s not to love?

We make a difference in the experience of our clients and their guests by adding meaningful time to wedding weekends with our intentional planning process.

Shelby, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Shelby Kirchner and I am the founder and lead planner of Plan On It Events & Design. I first fell in love with the events industry through floral design classes in college. I loved the creative side of floral design, plus the logistics element of the events we were a part of exhilarated me.

Upon graduation, I got a job as a venue manager/in house coordinator at a wedding venue in Dripping Springs. That’s where I learned the ropes of the wedding industry and found my passion for working one-on-one with couples to make their wedding days run seamlessly. It was in that position that I realized I wanted to be more involved in the planning process for weddings and had a craving to branch out to other venues. Hence, Plan On It was born!

With experience from venue management and floral design, I was able to bring another level of logistics and design expertise to my clients. At first, the only service I offered was event management. Then, with more time and experience under my belt, we began offering partial service and full service planning packages.

Over the course of the last four years, the company has grown to a team of three employees: myself and two additional associate planners. We also found our niche in the market – planning full weekend celebrations for our clients that feel intentional and unique.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

When I first began Plan On It in 2019, it was just a side hustle! I had a full time job in accounting support but was working on Plan On It on the side. In that first year, I only did a few weddings for friends and acquaintances. Then 2020 hit and the wedding industry turned upside down. At the end of 2020, I began to feel really unsatisfied in my corporate career and thought – “What if I put a little extra work into Plan On It? How do I think it could grow?”

It was in that season that I buckled down on organizing our processes, finding a marketing strategy, and attending bridal shows to get my name out there. In 2021, that work paid off and I served over 25 clients that year! At the end of 2021 I knew the business was stable and I officially went full time with Plan On It in January 2022.

Over the course of the next year I added two more incredible employees to the team and our company continued to grow and thrive. I also had our first child and was able to take paid maternity leave, which is something that entrepreneurs don’t often get to do.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Experience, networking, and publication!

When I was first starting out, my main objective was to get as much experience as I could with different types of clients, at different venues, and with different levels of service. I soon realized that experience alone wouldn’t help me grow as much as I wanted to – I needed to get plugged in to the vendor community here in Austin.

As soon as I started attending networking events with groups across the city, I knew that the time spent there was well worth it. Not only did I start building relationships with the other incredible people in the event industry in Austin, but I started to learn so much from them. I applied and was granted membership to a local wedding planners association, AWPA (Associated Wedding Planners of Austin), and it took my business to the next level. I was learning from other seasoned wedding planners and was able to be recognized alongside some of the best planners in the industry.

The final piece of the puzzle for us was getting featured for the first time in a major wedding publication. Our first publication was on the front page of Style Me Pretty in January of 2023. Since then, we have been featured in Inspired by This, Brides of Austin, and Style Me Pretty (again)!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://planonitatx.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/planoniteventsanddesign/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PlanOnItEventsDesign
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/PlanOnItEvents/

Image Credits
Elle Reaux Photo Bethany Michaela Photography Kaylee James Photography Feather & Twine Photography Caitlyn Pfeiffer Weddings Honey Gem Creative