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

Madison, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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?

When I decided I wanted to open up my own wedding planning company, I saw so many companies with the simple “~First Name~ ~Last Name~ Events”. I wanted to be different and memorable. While I did want to incorporate my name, I knew over the next few years I would get married and take my husband’s last name, so that wouldn’t work (in my head). I decided to incorporate my initials “MW”. After playing with some different ideas and logos, I loved the look of the M sitting on top of the W and it looks like a reflection in the mirror, which led to the name “MirrorWood”. I took some time thinking about it, saying it out loud, writing it out, and making family members or friends say it out loud and it became a jumbled up mess with people stuttering or not being able to pronounce it, so I shortened it to “MirWood”. From there I began MirWood Events!

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

During college at the University of Tennessee, I had the amazing opportunity to work for an amazing planner based in Knoxville, TN. Starting as an intern, I worked my way up and began coordinating weddings for her and continued throughout 2020. While continuing to work for her, I moved home back to Nashville to chase my dream of starting my own wedding planning and coordinating business. From there MirWood Events was created and my passion for wedding planning and coordinating grew into my own business! Now a little over four years later, I have a team of coordinators assist with over 100+ weddings every year.

Currently, MirWood Events offers a variety of services. Our smallest package, day of coordination, is best suited for the DIY couple who has everything planned, and booked, and needs someone to come in and ensure everything runs smoothly. Our most popular package is our month of coordination package, which is more of a guide to those DIY couples who don’t have anyone to ask questions to and need assistance with recommended vendors. The semi-planning package is designed specifically for couples who took the reigns at the beginning, but quickly realized they need someone be able to pass off tasks and take things off their plate during the planning process. Our full planning package, and our most favorite package, is where we get to assist the couple in a full hands on planning process, assisting with booking vendors based on specific budget and style needs, seamlessly knocking off items on our monthly planning checklist, assisting with budgeting requirements, and overall taking the couple’s vision and making it a reality.

Leading up to someone’s wedding day can be extremely stressful, especially if it is their first time getting married. I created MirWood Events with the intention of turning a stressful process into something fun and enjoyable so that they want to either become a wedding planner themselves or hire us back for their 10-year anniversary party! With now having over 250+ wedding experiences in the books, I have had the privilege of working at over 100 different wedding venues and with hundreds of different vendors. The vendor community here in Nashville is amazing and I love that we get to be a connection point between them and the couples that book with us!

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Throughout the years, my answer would have changed. At first, it would be the marketing platforms like The Knot and Wedding Wire. That did start my business out and helped give a small recognition to MirWood Events. I quickly came to realize it was word of mouth here in Nashville and the surrounding areas. I knew how important it was to be known by the venues and how important reviews can be for future and potential couples. The tricky part is most venues require you to have worked there before they begin mentioning, let alone referring you to couples. So I went to social media ~ because now that’s what a majority of people go to when they look for something. I quickly found Facebook groups for wedding vendors to join and soon realized there were couples in there looking for vendors! That was my ticket in. I spent hours every day commenting, messaging, and pushing my company’s name out there until it started to get some traction. Once I started receiving bookings and visiting venues, I began networking with the venues directly and have had the privilege of being on list of preferred vendors at several venues in and around Nashville. Four years later, I have mostly word of mouth being my best source!

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

Let me start by saying I am no guru on social media. I still don’t have a set schedule on when to post or what to post. I don’t have a system that reports back to me on how well a certain post is doing vs. others. I simply grew my social media off of tagging people. I try to tag vendors as much as possible. If you see a post that only showcases a dress hanging on a door, I will still post the dress brand, the photographer who took the photo, the venue where the photo was taken, the videographer, the DJ, the baker, the caterer, the rental company, pretty much any vendor that had any event. Why? Because I hope and pray they might like what I put out there and they will re-share it, or even simply like and comment. If I don’t follow a vendor that I end up working with at that event, I make it a point to let them know “Hey I worked with you on *** and *** event yesterday and had a great time. Is this the best tag to use when I share their photos?” and 9/10 they will follow me immediately and typically repost what I post. It took a while, but as I realized how important giving recognition to the people who helped make the event possible was, it was the easiest thing to add to my to-do list. Plus photographers love it because I did all the research for them so they don’t have to go find the social media handles of 10+ vendors~

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mirwoodtn.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/mirwoodtn
• Facebook: www.faceboom.com/mirwoodtn

Image Credits
Photographers for the images: Jane Marie Photography Sam Slay Weddings Glenai Gilbert Photography Bri Enoch Photography Mikaela Rose Photography Seth Farmer Photography Haley Foster Photography