Hello, hello! Many of you have repeatedly asked for me to talk about my “other job” – Wedding Planning!
Yep, I am a professional trained Wedding and Event Coordinator. After planning my own wedding in 2009, I was inspired to see if I could make this a money-making endeavor since I had enjoyed it so very much. Besides, it capitalized on all the things I already do as an Engineer, which is manage schedule, budget, and performance (= event execution). Easy peasy, no?
In many ways, yes, it is!
October of 2009, I took a week long class given by the Association of Certified Professional Wedding Consultants (ACPW), which has been in place over 20 years and is nationally recognized. Prior to the class I spent well over 60 hours preparing and doing homework, such as designing a wedding from beginning to end, conducting interviews, and finding multiple vendors for about 25 different areas of suppliers. Phew!
I loved the class. Loved!
But being a wedding planner is tough work. You lose all your weekends from about April through October to attend events. And what’s more, you have to market, market, market – yourself! That may come easy for some, but the amount of networking events, social networking exposure, and legwork that is required is endless.
And the pay, well the pay can be big if you put your heart and soul in for years. Wedding planning can be quite lucrative, but to be frank, most wedding planners won’t break $50K/year.
(There is no way I can recap everything, so I’m going to cut out a lot – feel free to let me know in the comments if you want to know more)
Early 2010, I started my own business called Engineered Elegance by S (below is the logo I helped design):
I got my business license and enlisted by bestie as my partner. All was good. I had contracts in place, packages to order (Ballet Flats, Kitten Heel, and Stiletto were the 3 main ones 
)
We quickly made business cards and set out on the networking circuit, which often included meeting with various vendors at wineries, beautiful mountain locations, etc. And of course, there was food to test, cakes to nibble on, centerpieces to ooo and aaahhh over and officiants to chat with. Let me tell ya, this was fun stuff!
But just because you do this, weddings don’t just fall in your lap. You have to continously reach other to others, hand out your business cards, follow up with phone calls, assist for free until you have clout.
And frankly, that takes a LOT of time. Time I didn’t have the luxury of like I thought / hope I would 
So I scaled my expectations and decided to carry out my wedding planning as it fit in my life. And even if that just meant small consulting jobs here and there and assisting weddings when I had a free weekend, that was A-Ok.
In fact, it was perfect.
So when last weekend’s wedding opportunity popped out many months ago, I took it! I loved the couple, their vision, and how this ‘extra job’ would bring me happiness in my life.
Zoo recap wedding will come next week – this post is too long!
Preview:
Definite WIN!
I ended up getting the Chicken Parmesan because I wanted protein and also pasta. Overall quite good, but then I remembered, that I’m not a huge fan of chicken parmesan or chicken for that matter (as of late), so I did my best to shove half in. Dinner was followed by Sweet Treat Fro-yo, which the hubby and I agreed was only ‘meh’.’
)
Deee-lish.
