We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Haley Kelly a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Haley, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear a story from back when you were an intern or apprentice. What’s a memorable story you can share with us?

Each year in college I did an internship in some avenue of event planning – I tried government, non-profit and then weddings. During my wedding internship I lived in San Francisco and learned very valuable lessons that I still remember today. The first is the value that all of the small “jobs” when it comes to client relationships are so important. Before we had clients in town I would fill the car with gas, make sure it was clean and have waters in the back seats. At the time, it felt like such a small task but looking back it set the tone that we would be taking care of them now and throughout their wedding weekend.

Haley, 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 Haley Kelly and I am the founder and creative director at Haley Kelly Events. I have been in the event world since 2009 – starting as an event manager at one of the top venues in Charleston, South Carolina. In 2013, I began planning weddings for a firm in Charleston and in 2018 I launched my own business. We plan anything from a baby shower, dinner party for 10 up to full scale design and logistics for luxury weddings. From day one, Haley Kelly Events tailors every decision to your budget, personality and style, offering concierge-level knowledge and resources. Haley Kelly Events develops design concepts, oversees and manages budgets and timelines, vets and handles all vendors, plans guest experiences, creates impactful design concepts and more. Many clients will hire us before deciding on a location or date and we will handle venue scouting as well.

Our typical client is going to be one that is fully trusting of the process, wants a design that isn’t something that is copied – something innovative and someone who wants personal touches throughout their wedding weekend. Not one of our events is like the other and I am so proud of that. To me it shows that we take the couples personalities and style into consideration when designing each event.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

After leaving a job where our social media game was so strong – I was very nervous starting my business and having 0 followers on Instagram. I actually think I put way too much pressure on myself and thinking that would be how I would become successful. I will say that I think one of the best things I did was just to set small goals – post 5 times a week, lets try and get to 1,000 followers and only put out content that makes sense for the brand. I try not to fall into the dark hole of what the trick is to gaining more traction and think slow and steady wins the race. I would say our clients also are not the type to only want vendors with 20K+ followers – which is nice. Although Instagram is one of the main ways clients find us, I find that often they aren’t even following us until after they have booked with us which I think shows that our initial phone calls or meetings are what makes our relationship strong and not just images posted online!

Have you ever had to pivot?

This may be a smaller scale answer but I think it shows detail in how hiring someone who has experience and knowledge in their field. We had a wedding in upstate South Carolina and we were closely tracking a hurricane that was hitting the lowcountry area that weekend. Typically the upstate wouldn’t be effected by a hurricane but the wind bands were supposed to be bad that the Wednesday before the wedding we chose to move a 300 person wedding from Saturday to Friday in order for the tent to come down by Saturday at 6am to miss the storm. This was an issue of safety for all of the guests and vendors. Thankful for amazing clients that heard my insane idea out and then we moved all vendors up 24 hours, moved the rehearsal dinner to Thursday. We ended up with a picture perfect day!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://haleykellyevents.com/
• Instagram: haleykellyevents
• Facebook: haleykellyevents
• Other: Tik Tok – haleykellyevents

Image Credits
Justin Brown Stetten Wilson Lindsay Shorter Gideon Photo Anne Rhett Clay Austin Gately Williams