Behind the scenes blog posts are perennial favorites of mine, and I’m excited to share a peek back at 2019 with you! 2018 and 2019 have been, quite honestly, the very best years yet for Stephanie Shaul Events, and it’s safe to say that I am deeply grateful and so blessed. It was quite the exciting, fulfilling, fun, beautiful, and wonderful year for Stephanie Shaul Events! The weddings I had the privilege and honor of planning, designing, and styling far surpassed my expectations, and I cannot tell you just how much I ADORE each and every couple I was able to work with this year! I don’t take my role as their wedding planner lightly, as I know my brides and grooms place so much trust in me to make their engagement and wedding planning season as fun, meaningful, easy, and stress-free as possible… and to bring to life and flawlessly execute their dream wedding days! These couples have geniunely become friends, and for that, I’m forever grateful.

It was also a fun start to the year, as Stephanie Shaul Events turned 5 in January while simultaneously launching a brand new website (check it out in all its glory!!) — and hosting a full week of epic giveaways to celebrate! 2019, you were incredible.

I gathered some fun behind-the-scenes shots from throughout 2019 that I wanted to share, as they’re a very real-life capture of some fun moments throughout the year on wedding days. I hope you enjoy taking a peek into what my side of wedding days can look like!

A few 2019 highlights:

• Quiet moments alone with my brides before their first look or before their walk down the aisle! This is most definitely one of my personal favorite parts of the wedding day. I love being able to love on, encourage, and celebrate my brides, as they’re usually the most nervous at these points. I’ve had some of the sweetest moments, and I cherish these times so much!
• Apparently I’m always on the ground styling invitation suites! Sometimes natural surfaces/backgrounds like stone or the flooring of a porch (or just fabric/a styling board laid on the ground) provides the best platform for styling all of those gorgeous details, paper goods, and meaningful objects. I love when my interns or the photographer snap shots of me in my element on wedding days. This year more than ever, I worked with incredible photographers who came early on wedding days just so that we would have ample time to style and photograph details together without rushing — such a treat!
• As a wedding planner, I get to do it ALL on a wedding weekend… the glamorous, the not-so-glamorous, the “yes, I’ll gladly do absolutely anything possible to make that happen or get it done with a smile on my face” girl. Someday I should write a book (or at least a blog post!) on all of the fun, dirty, random, wacky, selfless (I hope!), crazy things that I’ve done on a wedding day to ensure it’s the most joyful, flawless day imaginable. There’s a lot (a whole lot!) of hard behind-the-scenes work that goes into the execution of a beautiful wedding. But boy oh boy, there are countless special moments that I get to witness firsthand, and I adore my job!
• Reception reveals! After so many months of planning every single detail of a reception, it’s surreal to see it all come to life even better than imagined… and to share that moment with my brides and grooms! I love building this quiet, exciting moment into the timeline of every wedding day so that each couple gets to see their dream reception before it’s filled with all of their guests. It’s so special and so surreal to see it all come to life — and to savor it for a moment without anyone in the space. Priceless! And so many happy tears and hugs!!
• Black is not my favorite color to wear, especially to such a joyous event as a wedding… but it’s practical, classic, and then I’m not the center of attention! I have a slew of black wedding-appropriate dresses that I rotate among, and you’ll never find me without my Oatmeal Lace vendor apron, which stores all sorts of goodies throughout the wedding day! McKay from Oatmeal Lace interviewed me and I’m spilling the beans about what I keep in this incredibly practical, magical apron.
• I love getting to work alongside my favorite vendors (and meet new ones too, of course), and this year I had the privilege of spending wedding days with the most talented, kind, gracious, and hard-working men and women in the wedding industry! They’re an endless source of inspiration and encouragement, and they constantly pull off stunning work and serve our clients so well.
• I love the variety of weddings that I am honored to plan: in 2019, I had a 60 person brunch wedding, 300 person ballroom weddings, a wedding in Charlotte, my first wedding at Duke Chapel, countless beautiful love stories, and so many fun moments: ordering 300 Bojangles biscuits for a surprise late night snack, mascots who showed up as a dance floor surprise, photogenic trolleys galore, so many stunning flower installations, biscuit bars, bloody mary bars, bourbon bars, and champagne walls, a Persian marriage ceremony and Persian knife dance, lots of sparkler exits and romantic getaway cars, private last dances and exciting wedding party entrances… and so much more! What an incredible year.

Thanks for following along with a fun little peek into what wedding days look like for my team and me! It’s not always glamorous but it’s always SO worth it and incredibly fulfilling. And, as always, follow along on Instagram for a constant look into what’s going on!

And thank you to Kelsey Nelson Photography, Anagram Photo, Megan Kerns Photography for capturing some candid behind-the-scenes shots during the wedding day; these memories (and photos) are priceless!