We recently connected with Sydney Goldberg and have shared our conversation below.
Sydney, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
My packages have really evolved over the years to fit the needs of my changing clients. One that I am particularly proud of and excited about, which is very different from the industry norm, is my ‘Hands Off, Party On’ package which allows couples to step completely out of the wedding planning process and just enjoy the period of being engaged. They get to share with me their style, their wants for the day, their priorities, etc. but after that, they take a back seat. Everything from the venue to the place cards is designed and taken care of for them and they just get to show up and enjoy the ride “with little or no knowledge of what they will see and experience. It’s a process that has taken a while to fine tune because it’s so important that I get it right for these couples. It’s certainly not for everyone, but it can be a game changer for a certain type of couple. I love the opportunity to provide tons of little unexpected moments throughout the engagement period and a lot of big surprises on the wedding day
Sydney, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We are a wedding planning company who creates uniquely nontraditional celebrations for our couples. We feel that each love story is unique, each couple is unique and each member of that couple is unique. So why should their wedding be cookie cutter?
My goal is NEVER to have someone walk into a wedding and say “wow, this is beautiful”… Of course we want a wedding to be beautiful. But rather, my goal is for someone to walk into a wedding and say “wow, this feels like them.” From top to bottom, a wedding should reflect the couple and their individuality.
We help couples create this experience with out of the box details, design that is new and exciting and guest experiences that excite.
Popped Event Planning started in 2018 as a proposal planning company and quickly evolved to meet the needs of our clients. We moved on to help proposals become engagement parties and showers, and showers become weddings. Now we focus primarily on weddings but love it when our clients ask us to help with their wedding related events… rehearsal dinners, honeymoons, bachelorette parties and more.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Having worked in the event industry and event adjacent positions throughout my career, I always had an interest and a passion for weddings. I would always keep my eye out for wedding planning positions, but they are few and far between, as most wedding professionals are solo-preneurs and small business. So finally I decided that if I wanted to crack into the wedding industry, I had to create a space for myself. No one was going to do that for me.
While working at another event planning position, I started Popped Event Planning with my spare time and decided to just test it out and see if anything would come from it. After a few years of working non-stop between my two jobs, it finally came to the point of quitting my full time job and taking the leap into self-employment. This period of time was so exhausting… working a 9 to 5 with occasional evening and weekend events paired with servicing my Popped Event Planning clients and working weddings pretty much every “free” weekend. But it was all worth it for me to be able to take that leap.
I soon added to my team and now have 3 event coordinators who work with me. My team of coordinators brings fresh perspectives and ideas to our clients. We work together to provide a panel of experts that our clients have at their disposal.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Building a reputation in the wedding industry is a game of patience. Since we book clients a year or more in advance, it takes a lot of time for vendors and clients to see the outcome of their work. So it’s something that has developed over many years of happy clients and positive vendor partnerships.
All I can do is put my best foot forward every day and trust that it all comes back around. I only work with and recommend to my clients vendors that I trust and respect and as long as I convey that to them and treat them as such, the feeling is generally mutual.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.poppedeventplanning.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/popped.event.planning/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Popped.event.planning/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/86587841/
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/PoppedEventPlanning https://www.tiktok.com/@popped.event.planning
Image Credits
G Chambers Photography Tastic Photography Fem Force Photography