We were lucky to catch up with Meg Royston recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Meg, thanks for joining us today. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers

From surprise flash mobs & fireworks for the Bride and Groom, to a Groom skydiving into his wedding for a grand entrance, to an unruly passerby getting arrested before the Bride walked down the aisle, to a wedding vendor not showing up to fulfill their duties on Wedding day, as owners of a Wedding Planning Business, we have seen and heard it all! Below we will tell you about one of our craziest experiences as business owners, how we felt at the time, how we dealt with the unexpected, and what we learned from it.

Besides the day your child is born or the day you get your dream job, your wedding day is the best day of your life. We are so honored to have been a part of many couples love stories! We are in the business of happiness, of real life fairytales! However, weddings aren’t all special flowers, fun parties, and pretty Brides. They are long hours spent planning the Wedding and even longer hours on the day of executing it. It’s blood, sweat and tears. You become invested in your couples, it is your job as a wedding planner to make sure their day is everything they dreamed of and runs smoothly, so you can imagine how we felt when the unexpected occurred and threatened to ruin a couple’s special day.

At a beautiful historic home in Savannah, Georgia, a Bride & Groom are finally getting married, after two COVID reschedules. The venue and Spring weather are stunning, the Bride even more so. The Groom is getting ready with his guys in his quarters, the Bride with her ladies in hers. Our team is setting up the Ceremony & Reception spaces and waiting for the other vendors to arrive to assist them. Our Wedding Planning business creates a detailed Wedding timeline that is sent out via email a few weeks before the big day to the other wedding vendors and the couple and their Wedding Party for their review and confirmation. We start reviewing this timeline & noticed one vendor had not shown up yet. We try and try for many hours to reach said vendor, with no luck. We are stressed, we are worried, we are trying to remain calm. An hour or so before the ceremony, we know we must improvise, our client’s happiness and our business depends on it. Thankfully, in Savannah, the Wedding business community focuses on community over competition, and another wedding vendor came to the rescue. Although the day was stressful and unexpected, with the help from other businesses, we were able to still provide that magical day for our sweet couple. We learned from this unexpected, crazy event the importance of supporting other small businesses, to be friends with them, not competitors. We learned that some things are out of our control as a business owner and the best thing to do is support & try our best with our clients, to show them why they chose us in the first place. Finally we learned to always have a back up plan because the unexpected will happen, no matter how air tight the plans are!

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

Our wedding planning business kind of “fell into our laps” per say. My husband and co-owner of Elegant Savannah Weddings started his career in food and beverage. In 2010, he became the manager of a popular restaurant in Downtown Savannah, Georgia. Shortly thereafter, the restaurant opened up an event space, where many weddings were held, and my husband became the events manager. He started noticing that many couples needed and wanted some kind of wedding planner or day of coordinator, so he started a side business that offered both. At the time I was pregnant with our first daughter and working in the healthcare field. After I had our daughter, I decided I wanted to spend more time with her AND the side business was starting to require more full time work, so I joined the Elegant Savannah Weddings team and never looked back!

Elegant Savannah Weddings offers wedding planning services to the Lowcountry area (Savannah, Hilton Head, Beaufort, Jekyll Island, Statesboro, etc). We offer full planning wedding services, partial planning services, and day of coordination services. From logistics and lighting to entertainment and hors d’oeuvres to design and guest experiences, we take care of every detail of your wedding. We plan, we schedule, we attend, we email, we suggest, we design, we create, we execute, we develop, we tour, we are your personal wedding assist. By the spring of 2022, we’d been trusted to plan, coordinate and host in excess of 800 Wedding Ceremonies, Receptions, Rehearsal Dinners and other resplendent events.

We love love. We believe in the fairytale. There is nothing we enjoy more than making a couple’s dream day come together. We believe every couple deserves to have their dream day and know its possible when they book us. It’s crucial to us that each and every person who reaches out to us knows that their plans, ideas and vision are as important to us as to themselves. We tend to become friends with our couples and love staying in touch with them and watching their families grow!

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

We believe your team is your greatest asset. We know we could not plan weddings without our amazing employees. We thank them often, praise their hard work, pay them well, give them time off when needed, listen to their ideas, support them. We are friends with them. We are like one big family. Wedding planning is hard work, not for the faint of heart, so we try very hard to always let our employees know how thankful we are for them.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Networking, utilizing social media as a marketing tool. and investing in tools and websites that showcase our work and reviews has so far been the most effective strategies for growing our business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.elegantsavannahweddings.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elegantsavannahweddings/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elegantsavannahweddings/
• Other: https://www.weddingwire.com/biz/elegant-savannah-weddings-savannah/699b222636bf2e4f.html https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/elegant-savannah-weddings-savannah-ga-2008220

Image Credits
Bud Johnson Photography Bronston Photography Vesic Photography Eve Yarbrough Photography Callie Bealle Photography Rach Loves Troy Photography Lahmann Photo & Video Kadi Tobin Photography