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

Hi Lindsay, 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?

Paper hats were originally worn for work, not play. It was the most common headwear in a number of trades which involved a high level of manual labor. Easy to make, folded paper hats were then taught to be made at celebrations and parties. I took the concept of this origin to encompass everything we’re about. We’re highly skilled in our craft that, believe it or not, involves a lot of manual labor. Our niche is coordination, meaning we work alongside our clients to walk them through every step of the planning process. Almost like teaching them how to fold their own paper hat. How to flatten the pages, fold the corners, until finally when it’s time, they wear their party hat to celebrate. Paper Hat means a process where you’re working toward your end celebration with a skilled tradesman at your side, helping you create the perfect event, until it’s time to adorn your own crown on the big day.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Before I worked in weddings, I worked in the action sports industry for 10 years. Organizing events, managing athletes and staff, all in a super high energy and chaotic environment. After a few more stints in corporate events, I found that the velocity of a big business was something I would never be able to control. I knew I wanted to start my own company, but with such a wide range of responsibilities in my prior positions, it was tough to narrow down what would that knowledge could bring to what would ultimately be my business model.

It boiled down to managing people. Clients, vendors, venues, you need extreme organization and attention to detail to do it all. I wanted our business to be accessible to everyone, not just those with a very large budget, and our model is the perfect solution between doing it all yourself or having it all done for you (and paying the price for both.)

Paper Hat offers coordination services exclusively. While this is commonly referred to as “Day-of,” a better description is “coordination FOR the day of.” To effectively manage every moving part of a wedding, we get all the details months in advance to be able to successfully organize all the key players and the timeline to make sure the logistics are confirmed and scheduled to run as planned.

The difference between coordination and full service wedding planners: Full-service wedding planners often specialize in longer-term projects, like managing the couple’s budget, selecting the venue and harnessing all the RSVPs. We allow our couples the freedom to have their hand in the creative wedding process, while letting us execute all of the details for a more manageable investment.

For many, their wedding is their first foray into major event planning. How are they supposed to know what to ask for, what needs to be done when, and be expected to run their entire celebration while also being the main attraction? Professional help should not be just for those with an extensive budget. Things go wrong at every event. Family. Weather. Traffic. Peonies being out of season in October. The thing about working with us is they’ll never know it.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Being too professional. Now hear me out: Those in the corporate world know the unspoken and spoken rules. Respond “regards” in an email, texting is frowned upon, your presentation should be without emotion. There’s no crying in the office. I lived by these rules. When owning your own business, and in the wedding industry specifically, you need these people to trust you with one of the biggest milestones of their lives, that actually involve a ton of emotion (lots of crying in the office.) I had to unlearn the cut and dry answer delivery, the informal responses. I had to allow myself to connect to emotions in delivery to be able to connect with these couples. Show them how much their day means to us and that we’re emotionally invested ourselves into getting it right.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

One of the reasons I chose this business model specifically was because it was solely service based. A lot of the initial capital I started with was my time. Time watching videos on how to create a website, time learning how to shoot and find high quality content, time reaching out and interviewing other vendors to learn and promote within the industry. I jumped directly into the deep end, leaving my corporate job and worked for months straight, spending my time just on building the foundation before finally launching Paper Hat.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.paperhatweddings.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paperhatweddings/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paperhatweddings/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/paper-hat-weddings/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/paperhatweddings/_created/

Image Credits
Spencer Penfield, Yana Benjamin, Autumn Nicole, Mallory C. Photography