We were lucky to catch up with Kristi Stuart recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kristi, thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
What Matters Most is more than just a name, its our mission.
When I first started doing weddings for friends and family, I had a clear goal and that was to help the couples that I was serving forget about all of the stress that goes along with planning and executing a wedding. I truly wanted them to focus just on their marriage and not on the details of the day. When it came time to register a name, I looked at my process and the thing that I asked at every step was “What matters most to you?” Does the party matters most to you or the private moments? Does the food matter most or the flowers? It helps us shape the day and allocate their budget. On the day of the wedding, when the stress gets to be too much, it is so important to remember that the ONLY thing that truly matters most is that they end the day married.
From there it was easy – everything we have done over the course of the last four and a half years has centered around one central idea. You focus on What Matters Most, we will focus on the details.
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.
Hi! I’m Kristi the owner and lead coordinator at What Matters Most Weddings & Events. I’d love to tell you that I set out to be a wedding coordinator but the truth is that it found me! I started helping friends and family plan weddings and events and it slowly spiraled into what it is today! I sometimes pinch myself to think that so many people have allowed us into their most important days.
As coordinators, our passion lies in the ability to make an event run smoothly and allow our couples and clients enjoy their family and friends instead of fretting about the details and vendors and caterers and photographers and decorations and all of the other hundreds of things that go into a successful event. Our clients get to pass off the stress of their day to us so they can focus on the things that truly matters most to them.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
The only way to truly build a reputation in the wedding market is to simply be excellent at every event. It is my goal to not only make things smooth for our couples and clients but for the other vendors as well. If they have a timeline, a contact point, and a day of problem solver, it makes their lives easier and allows them to do their jobs without having to pause to solve problems or push the client on timelines. We handle that and they get to sit back and excel at their jobs.
When I look back at our growth, the ONLY way we have been able to do this year over year are the referrals that we get from venues, photographers and other wedding professionals who have seen our work ethic and commitment to quality and want that for their clients AND for the ease of their own day.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One thing that I have definitely had to “unlearn” is that I can do everything all by myself. To my end users it may seem like I know everything that I need to know and have all of the connections and ideas that I need to have, but it really does take a village to make this industry work. When I started bringing assistants with me, and really leaned into the amazing Kansas City wedding community for support, my stress levels went down and I was able to enjoy the process of finding answers instead of being the answer.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.whatmattersweddings.com
- Instagram: @whatmattersweddings
- Facebook: @whatmattersweddings
Image Credits
Susy Photo, Poemas De Barrio