Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kastina Morrison. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Kastina thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you have any key partners or vendors – if so, how’d you find them and start working with them?

Working with vendor partners in the event and wedding planning world is always interesting and I often compare it to building a house. The electricians see the same landscapers, and the tile folks probably see the same plumbers too. It’s a project-by-project basis for events; not every vendor is right for every job. Something I love getting to do as a wedding planner is pairing clients with vendors I know will work for them based not only on style but budget and how they operate their business. For instance, my very Type-A clients don’t always work well with my super creative florist that isn’t good at emails or the business busy work.

Something I learned over the 12+ years of doing this is that having a good vendor team can make or break an event, and that team must work as a true team. I’ve seen other planners treat vendors poorly or act as if they only take direction from the planner, and that’s not going to work out well in the long term that way. We all do our best when we all get to do our best – meaning we need to lean on each other for our specific pieces of the puzzle – and that creates an event that’s fabulous. I stay curious with vendors – ask them how their equipment works or how to best hang an installation or ask how long a certain food might stay hot, etc. No one event partner can know how all the other parts of the event work best so we need to support each other in our own realm of expertise.

Vendors are also a constant source of referrals. I could spend all the marketing dollars, and it wouldn’t match up to what I get with fellow vendor referrals. Whether it’s a caterer, DJ, photographer, or lighting designer – getting an event planning referral is how I get most of my business and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s an honor to be referred by others in the industry.

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’ve been hosting large events since my 3rd-grade holiday party. Encouraged by my parents to be inclusive and to invite people of all backgrounds to their home she’s a master of bringing people together. Never losing the love of hospitality or logistics, I’ve been an event planner ever since. I was lucky to get a venue management position right out of college and spent 9 years managing venues and events in Minneapolis, MN. In 2019 I went out on my own as an independent event planner. In 2020 (while all events had to be paused and rescheduled), I partnered up and developed a venue consulting and management firm called Bigger Picture Solutions. I operate both today.

So whether you want to work together to produce an event or build an event venue – I got you! I live, breathe, sleep, and dream events and the ways in which they operate.

What sets my work apart is the close and long-standing ties with other successful and talented vendors in the event industry here. I’m here to be a team player alongside our clients and look out for vendors and their well-being just the same. It’s not just about happy clients, it’s about happy vendors, too – and that’s where magic happens in our industry. I could design the most beautiful wedding day with an ultimate budget but if I don’t have vendors that are just as excited and eager to be part of the project – it’s just not going to sparkle as much as it could have in the end. We get one shot at events (or building a venue) and we need our vendor partners excited to be there too. Holding the value of collaboration so high is something I’m proud of.

With that, I’m also someone that isn’t only here to make everyone’s Pinterest wedding (or venue) a reality, but I’m here to work through the tough stuff, the boring stuff, the stuff that fundamentally matters otherwise, we can get to the fun parts of events, productions or building venues. I’m here to do the work and have the form and function of that work come together as seamlessly as possible. I love the production of it all and I stay curious about all the parts of the puzzle I may have yet to learn.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Fueling my journey as an event and wedding planner is the desire to raise the bar in our market. We see some amazingly creative styles and designs emerge from the coastal markets, but the Midwest often gets left behind in trends, service levels, and adapting to new ways of doing things. While we have an abundance of creatives in the market, I hope that through some collaboration and mentorship to new event vendors joining the scene, we can see a higher level of service and professionalism. There isn’t a lot of market competition – at least not enough to drive vendors to improve in how their piece of the event puzzle can be better and easier to work with. So to anyone that is reading this and thinking about getting into the event industry in the Midwest – do it. There’s room. It’s one thing to be a great creative; it’s another thing also to have the ability (or have someone) that can keep up the business admin side of it in a way that makes it easy to work with and collaborate with clients and event planners. I love the event industry as a whole – not just what I do but getting to see what a team of people can do for one shared goal. It’s amazing and I want to see us all do better so we can all do better.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As an event planner, I don’t know if I’m necessarily resilient since the foundation of the job is to be a constant and continuing problem solver. I’ve coordinated serving dinner during a tornado, lost a 5-tier cake to the sun melting it, and been yelled at by a mother of the bride a time or two for issues that certainly weren’t my doing – but I was there to fix it all anyway. Resilience is baked into the job of any event planner. You find solutions or bandaids to anything that comes to you – every day. As an industry, the event world was resilient after the pandemic; not everyone came back, but a lot of us held on and kept our businesses either afloat or in limbo. We’re all lucky to still have event professionals open and ready to be back at work!

Resilience as an event professional is getting back to your computer every Monday or Tuesday after working your butt off all weekend to pull off another “once in a lifetime” event that is always someone’s biggest day of their life. Carrying the weight of how important these days are that we help plan is where I see my resilience every week.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kastinaandco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kastinaandco/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kastina-morrison-b04b5020/
• Other: https://www.partyslate.com/event-pros/kastina-co

Image Credits
Mark Fierst Photography Russell Heater Photography Dave Puente Photography