Hi y’all, Lea here, for my last post! Over the past 7 months as Stephanie’s intern I have learned SO much about weddings, blogging, styling and more. It has been such an incredible experience and I am so thankful for Stephanie for allowing me to learn alongside her. To wrap up my time with Stephanie Shaul Events I want to fill y’all in on 10 things I learned throughout this experience.

1. Wedding planning is not as glamorous as some may think! Yes, there is glamour and glitz to it, of course, but on wedding day it is strictly business. There is so much that needs to get done that you must stay on schedule and on top of things in order for the day to go off without a hitch!
2. There are so many factors and details that must be considered. The wedding planner does WAY more than just help select linens and flowers. A wedding planner is the orchestrator on wedding day leading and managing all of the vendors and piecing together all of the parts of the puzzle. The wedding planner must know what needs to be happening at all times and have the day perfectly mapped out to ensure everything is on track and done correctly.
3.  How vendors work. I hadn’t really thought much about this factor prior to this experience but I learned a lot about the process of choosing vendors, what you want in a vendor and what they do on wedding day.
4. In continuation, your vendors can make or break your big day. After helping Stephanie at many weddings I witnessed great vendors and not so great vendors. It was amazing the difference in how smoothly the day went based on the vendors. I think this shows how important it is to listen to your planner and read reviews to know what kind of service you will be receiving!
5.  Don’t stress! I am so stress prone so the chaos of wedding day was a little overwhelming at first. If things are not on schedule or going as planned I immediately get stressed and worry, Stephanie is not like this at all. Watching her handles the ups and downs on wedding day was such a good lesson for me. She handled every obstacle with grace, which is something I need to work on!
6. Different types of flowers. Before this experience I knew your basic roses, daisies, tulips, peonies, etc. and that was about it on my flower knowledge. After my time with Stephanie I am much more well versed on types of flowers, flower care, and flower usage.
7. Blogging is not as easy as it seems! I am extremely active with following bloggers and reading blogs and I was definitely guilty of thinking “how hard can it be to blog?”. Well let me tell you, it is not easy!! Writing the blogs is not necessarily the tricky part, it is the matter of creating new and exciting content and fitting blogging into your schedule that is tricky! It is a lot more time consuming than one may think so this was a great experience for me to see that.
8. It is okay for everything not to go as planned. I am a huge sucker for a strict plan and sticking to it, and as I said above I tend to get stressed when things are not going as planned or on schedule. It was so good for me to see wedding days have hiccups or be running late and to see how Stephanie handled them and did not even let it phase her.
9. Weddings will never not be magical, no matter how many you go to. I have always been a sucker for weddings and I can now testify that each one is as special as the next. At these weddings I didn’t know the couples like Stephanie or know their story or their families but that didn’t stop me from tearing up at every single one!
10. HIRE A WEDDING PLANNER!!! I have always thought about hiring a wedding planner one day but have thought I am too controlling. However, after this experience I realize everyone should hire a wedding planner or at least a day of coordinator. Wedding day is HECTIC and you should be focused on getting ready and relaxing not on whether your florals are arriving on time or if table 7 has the right amount of chairs. I think it is so important to have someone to do everything for you on your day so you can focus on YOU!

Once again, I am so grateful to Stephanie for providing me with such an amazing learning experience, I can’t say enough good things!

xx

Y’all, Lea is the BEST, and she has been an utter blessing for Stephanie Shaul Events over the last many months!! I am so grateful for her sweet presence, hard word ethic, ability to handle it all with grace and kindness, her heart for serving my clients wholly, and how much she loves wedding cake! Yes, the girl loves that wedding cake!! Seriously though, interning for a wedding planner can be a lot of hard work, and I am incredibly thankful for Lea and her impressive contributions to the team! And I think all that she’s learned and shared with you in so spot on – I loved reading through her list here.