We were lucky to catch up with Emily DeRitter recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Emily, thanks for joining us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

When I started The Best Day Details it was a one-women show. Like most wedding vendors, I struggled to take the leap and scale through hiring a team. In January of 2020, I was just looking for an assistant, but I stumbled across the PERFECT fit for my first lead coordinator hire. She is still with the team today! We have since expanded to a team of ten with multiple locations across Michigan. For me, the interview process is actually more about trying to “scare” away potential hires who are interested in the wedding industry because they assume it is fun and even glamorous… it is not. Wedding coordination especially is a lot of manual labor and stress. They need to understand the extent of this before we can move forward. Once I get a sense of whether the truth about the industry surprises them, if they are still interested, then we move forward. I have definitely made some poor hiring decisions, and every business owner will! But learning from these mistakes and going on to recruit a stellar team is worth it!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

When I was a Senior in college studying business, I had a moment where I realized I was an entrepreneur. After thinking the LAST thing I would do with my business degree is start my own, I knew that was where my gifting was. Now I just had to come up with the idea. After breezing through a couple product business ideas, I was in the middle of planning my own wedding. I knew what a wedding planner was of course, but I didn’t realize that even if I planned my own wedding, someone else still had to run the wedding day for me. I had never heard of this service before so I looked it up to find that it was called day-of wedding coordination. I realized that even though I didn’t have the skills or the desire to do a lot of the tasks of a wedding planner (design, budget planning, creating ideas from scratch), but I did have all the skills required for a day-of coordinator. It was a perfect fit! I started with a few friend’s weddings and then I had enough weddings booked by the end of my first year to quit my full-time job.

What makes us different than other wedding planning companies is that we offer day-of coordination exclusively. Most wedding planners will offer about 3 packages and their lowest tier package is day-of coordination. By focusing on something that other planners offer as one of many options, it allows us to be the go-to company for coordination. By streamlining our services and including the same tasks for every wedding, it allows us to more easily provide the same exceptional service for each couple.

I knew there was a need for coordination specifically in our region because there are so many couples who choose to plan their own wedding. We love seeing what they come up with and the creativity that comes with having our clients plan their own day. We work with them in the months leading up to the wedding to make sure everything is accounted for. Then on the wedding day we are the first vendors in and the last vendors out, ensuring that every single detail goes to plan. We offer set up, tear down, timeline management, vendor management, day of errands and tasks, unlimited hours on the wedding day, one coordinator and one assistant, an emergency kit and so much more!

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Google has been by far the best lead source for new clients! This has not always been the case. When we started out, a lot of the business was coming from private Facebook groups or paid services like The Knot and Wedding Wire. While we still get a decent amount of leads from those sources, Google has quickly risen to the top and is almost double our next most frequent lead source. We have done this through SEO. After considering the options, I chose to learn SEO myself as it would need to be updated over time. Coming up near the top of the search results when someone looks for “Grand Rapids Wedding Coordinator” is the number one reason clients are so quick to trust us.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

For my team, this job will never be full time. Due to the nature of the work we do and the seasonal availability for business, I am not able to have any full time employees. So pay and benefits are still a priority, but are not as readily available since our team is all part time. To keep team morale up, I try to provide my employees with as much flexibility and autonomy as possible. There is no reason for me to micro-manage my employees if I made a good hire. Once they are trained, I put full trust in my team and offer support when needed. They know that any personal issue or problem they have with a client I am always on their side and will do whatever I can to fix the situation or support them through it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thebestdaydetails.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebestdaydetails/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebestdaydetails
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-best-day-details/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyUKKrNegKbBtSu7UQxKvqQ

Image Credits
Mista Marie Photography