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

Nadia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

This is actually a thought that I think comes up for me ~once a year, and it’s ten times out of ten associated with me going through a phase of imposter syndrome and/or burn out. This is something I talk with my fellow wedding industry professional friends about a lot, and I think this industry in particular can be really challenging. Don’t get me wrong: This industry is full of wonderful, beautiful things and it’s an industry that I love so much that I’ve been in it for 13+ years now – but it’s also full of not-so-great things like a huge lack of inclusivity and representation, a huge amount of competition, and very often, a focus on what I consider to be the wrong things, like an implied obligation to follow a certain established “script” for a wedding day that often caters more to the experience of guests or putting on a show than to the experience of the couple themselves – versus connecting back to the whole main point of a wedding or elopement in the first place: Celebrating two humans finding each other, falling in love, and commemorating that love in meaningful-to-them ways.

As a business owner in this sphere, I feel it’s my responsibility to not only help the couples I work with have the best elopement/wedding day they could dream of, but to also help make the wedding industry as a whole more welcoming, inclusive, and representative of the many different types of couples who exist in this world and deserve a beautiful, memorable wedding day. And there are times where I worry I’m not doing enough, or that I’m not good enough to actually achieve the things I hope to in this business, and on those days, yeah, I have doubts.

A good recent example of this: I rebranded in March of 2022. This rebrand was big for me; it was a huge effort (both financially and logistically) to align my business more with my values and niche down into the type of work that I’m most passionate about. It was a long time coming, and it took up a TON of my resources, but I was ecstatic with the end result, and I really feel that my brand now actually reflects *me* and what I offer in a much more true and values-driven way.

But rebrands are hard, and to make it even harder, I changed the name of my business as part of this, so I anticipated a bit of a lull in bookings. However, I didn’t anticipate the economy to crash basically the same week I launched, and I wasn’t ready for a solid 8+ months of no bookings at all. It got really scary. As I write this, it still kind of is, to be honest.

During that period from spring of 2022 to basically the beginning of 2023, I had lots of doubts. I thought multiple times about how easy it would be for me to just go back to the tech world and get a stable, high-paying gig in project management (which was where I spent the last few years of my career before jumping into this business full time at the end of 2019). I thought about how I could just let the stress of working so hard on this business and it’s growth and evolution go…how I could never have to feel that imposter syndrome again (or at least not to this degree) and how things like my schedule could be predictable again and how I could stop living my life seasonally with the ups and downs of the wedding industry.

And then I imagined myself a week into a new tech job. I imagined having closed down my business, sold all my photo gear, and let it all go. And I knew that even just a week into that, I would be miserable. I know this, because I’ve done it before.

I started my photography business fresh out of college, in 2009/2010. I focused on weddings for a few years, and then around 2013, I got tired. I thought that I wanted to give it all up, and I sold all my gear and tried to pursue something different, working for non-profits, and financial institutions, and tech companies – all the while trying to find the thing that stuck. But the only thing that actually stayed consistent? My desire to do photography and have my own business. It only took about 6 months for me to regret selling my gear and giving up, and it only took me another 3 or so months to to start the business back up, re-purchase gear, and start trying to grow the business again. I worked full-time in other jobs for many years after that, trying to get myself to a place where jumping into my business full-time would be sustainable and financially feasible. It took a long time, and I worked way more than I probably should have (just ask my friends and my husband) – but I got there.

And the whole time, it always felt worth it, because this business was, and always has been, the work that I don’t have to try to care about or be passionate about. No matter what other jobs I had, there was never anything I did that felt as fulfilling and empowering as owning and running my own business. And that has become even more the truth since my rebrand last year, despite the financial hardships that followed it.

So, yeah, I think about how much easier it might be to just have a “regular” job, and when things are really hard, I sometimes even actually look at what else is out there. But every time, all I have to do is imagine myself a week, or two weeks, into shuttering this business and working for someone else 100% of the time, and I know I wouldn’t be truly, fully happy. And then, after I’m done having those doubtful thoughts, I try to plan a vacation and some time off for myself, because in reality, it usually just means I need a little rest so that I can get myself out of the weeds of the hard parts of owning my own business, and remind myself why I actually love it so much.

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

How I got to where I’m at today started way back in college. I’ve always loved nature, animals, and art (photography specifically), and when it came time to choose a college to go to, I was deciding between a school in southeastern Washington that had an awesome veterinary program, or a school in northwestern Washington that had an excellent photography program. I chose photography.

The school I went to is located in the middle of a forest, and having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I felt very at home being surrounded by that much nature all the time. It also was the subject of many of my photographic projects in school, and funnily enough, while in school I swore I would never be a wedding photographer because all I wanted to document was nature and animals and abstract compilations that still heavily featured nature.

Flash forward to 2009, and a family member insisted I photograph her wedding, despite my warnings that I had never documented a wedding before. And much to my surprise, I loved it. It was exciting and emotional and I got a sense of meaning out of memorializing such an important day in the lives of these people I cared about. From that day, I realized that I actually LOVED documenting people in love, and I started officially offering wedding photography after I graduated that year, with my business officially starting in 2010.

That was 13+ years ago, and my business looks very different now. Over the years, I’ve not only hugely improved my skills and technical knowledge, I’ve also gotten more and more clear on what I’m best at and what kind of work really connects with who I am, my values, and what makes me feel most fulfilled.

Something that’s never changed for me, in all these years of wedding photography, is that my heart has always skipped a beat any time a couple comes to me and tells me they’ve chosen a nature-focused location to get married. When couples would tell me that they chose their location because they loved the trees, or the mountains, or the rivers and lakes, and that they loved all those things because they felt connected to it in some meaningful way that made it the obvious and only choice for the day they get married – every time that happened, I found myself saying “Yes! Nature is magical and the perfect setting to celebrate a deep connection between people. Yes!”

And then, when I started getting elopement and small wedding bookings where the couples would purposely keep things small and intimate so they could focus on intentional time with each other in a place that was meaningful to them, doing only things that were meaningful to them – things started to click. I could combine my love of nature, photography, and helping people have connection-focused days to celebrate their love, all into one. And that’s when Venture Ever After really took shape.

I now specialize in elopements and intimate weddings throughout the Pacific Northwest, and I not only document peoples’ wedding days, I also help them with the planning and logistics. Elopements nowadays aren’t just a quick trip to the courthouse; they can be just as full and celebratory as a traditional wedding. But there’s not a ton of resources out there yet for folks who want to have an elopement or small wedding that doesn’t fit the script of a traditional wedding. And it can feel overwhelming to couples who know they want to have a full day experience to celebrate their love, but don’t know how to make that happen if they aren’t doing the traditional things like booking a wedding-specific venue.

Venture Ever After helps couples with things like finding an epic location to get married, figuring out marriage license requirements, finding other vendors, timeline planning, and identifying fun and meaningful activities to do on their wedding day (e.g. hiking, kayaking, camping, cooking, playing music together, dancing…basically anything that is fun and meaningful to them!). I want to help couples get married in the way *they* really want to, and I consider it the most important part of my job to help ensure the couple’s experience is amazing – because when their experience is amazing, beautiful images come naturally.

I also wanted to integrate my values more thoroughly into my business, and so I implemented a giving back program when I rebranded in 2022. Now, any time a couple books me for an elopement, intimate wedding, or adventure session, they get to choose from a list of organizations that are devoted to environmental efforts or human rights efforts, and from that selection I make a $200 donation from Venture Ever After’s revenue. These are organizations are working to help keep public lands healthy and accessible, as well as improve the representation of groups of people who are often forgotten in the outdoor industry (LGBTQ+, BIPOC, etc). This is one of the things I was most excited about with my rebrand, and I can’t wait to grow the program further in the future to further give back to organizations that are supporting things I care deeply about.

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

This has always been referrals and word of mouth for me. Even as my budget for advertising grew over time, I have still always gotten a solid 30-40% of my inquiries (who end up booking) from other vendor referrals, or past client referrals. I’ve always wanted to create and nurture relationships with other folks in the industry, because I think it’s incredibly valuable from a mental health and growth perspective to have “coworkers” who understand the kind of work you’re doing and who you can both learn from and share knowledge with. But the other big benefit of maintaining good relationships with fellow industry professionals (at least in the wedding industry) is that it really, truly affects my revenue in a positive way.

Additionally, the referrals I get this way are usually really in alignment with what I offer because the people making the referrals know me and my work so well.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Honestly, lots and lots of project management tools to help support an attentive and thoughtful client experience.

I use Asana, Notion, Google Drive, Dubsado, and at least a couple other tools to drive my customer experiences. It’s really important to me that my clients feel supported and guided through their wedding planning process in a way that not only alleviates stress for them, but also surprises and delights them. One of the pieces of positive feedback I hear most is how folks love that I often answer their questions before they even have the chance to ask them. That they never had to worry or wonder what came next, because I am always on top of communicating clearly and regularly with them.

And I also like engaging with clients in fun ways too! I often connect with them on social media, and will legitimately like and comment on their posts. I like to send surprise client gifts both when they first book and after their wedding is over. I send questionnaires for them to fill out that not only provide me information for their wedding day, but also help me get to know them as individuals, so that I can treat them in the ways they want to be treated and connect with then in more meaningful ways.

I say this all the time, and it never is less true: My clients’ experience is the most important thing to me, even above their photos. Their experience will drive how they feel about every aspect of their wedding day, before, during, and after – and that includes how they’ll feel when they look at their photos. So, this is the biggest and most important part of my job, by far.

Contact Info:

• Website: ventureeverafter.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/ventureeverafter
• Facebook: facebook.com/ventureeverafter
• Other: Email: [email protected]