We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jena Findle & Adrian Holmes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jena Findle & below.

Jena Findle &, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

We originally met while working as special education teachers. After becoming a mother, Jena stepped back from teaching, but continued to work with Adrian at weddings and events on the weekends at a Central Virginia winery. We quickly moved into the role of Venue Coordinators and also managed their in-house catering and bartending program. This is where we learned of our love for weddings.

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

We are both very organized and detail oriented, so we decided to branch out and start our own business planning and coordinating weddings and events with the support of the owners of the winery. We offer Partial Planning services for couples who enjoy and want to take the lead in the planning process or who may have already began the planning process themselves, but need some support along the way. We also offer a Month-Of Coordination package in which we work with couples the month of their wedding to ensure all of their planning efforts come to fruition, working with their vendors and taking a hands on approach to get the job done. We believe in a collaborative process regardless of if we are working with a couple for partial planning or month of coordination. By collaborative, we not only mean our collaboration with the wedding couple, but also with the couple’s vendors ensuring that they have the information they need by creating detail heavy timelines in order to execute the couple’s wedding day seamlessly. Additionally we offer a number of optional enhancements to our wedding packages. We have an in-house Floral Designer and in-house Make-up Artist on our team who offer their services to our couples. We also offer child care and pet care services, food and beverage pick up services, and event staffing for couples who choose not to utilize a full service catering team as well as decor rentals, as we recognized the need for these services after seeing countless weddings over the years.
The main thing that we want potential clients/followers/fans to know is that by hiring A&J you are getting a team of individuals who are knowledgable and experienced in the wedding industry. All of our staff have previous event and/or catering experience. Any new planners on our team go through a rigorous training process to ensure that they are able to execute your day to our standards. We pride ourselves on doing whatever it takes to ensure that the couple has a beautiful, stress-free wedding day.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Within the month of beginning our business, we made it a point to schedule venue site visits to meet venue owners and tell them about our business and background experience, as well as other industry professionals. We ended up meeting several business owners who owned a winery and wedding venue and another who has a design business around this same time. We actually ended up coordinating both of their wedding and, it has since blossomed into a beautiful friendship and partnership in which we are all supporting each other’s businesses within the wedding industry. It has been a really cool experience to have worked with these couples through their weddings and now to continue to work with them professionally.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

At the time when we were thinking of starting our business, Jena was 8 months pregnant with her second child and Adrian was 4 months pregnant. Although we were excited and eager to start our business after being encouraged by the winery owners, we recognized that the timing was not right, so we waited until we had both had our babies and time to adjust to new routines. Since starting our business, we have had to learn to balance family life, our business and other jobs and obligations, which has been no small feat. However we are incredibly proud to be where we are today and what we have been able to accomplish as women business owners. We want all women to know that YOU CAN DO THIS! We truly believe in supporting women in the business world. #girlpower Throughout the past year, we have supported other women-owned businesses through collaboration and referrals to clients, even other wedding planners in the industry that we know and trust. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.aandjeventsva.com
• Instagram: @aandj_eventcoordination

Image Credits
Photos by Rettig Co. Photo and Films-Grant and Brittany Rettig Venue: Lovingston Winery Florals by Renee Everhart-A&J Event Planning and Coordination Lead Floral Designer Make-Up by Branded Muse-Danielle Utz