Five years ago, I moved back home to North Carolina, but this time, to a new city: Raleigh! I grew up mostly in Charlotte, North Carolina, lived in Chapel Hill for four years during college at UNC Chapel Hill (go Heels!), and then left North Carolina to live in Washington, DC for six years after college. When I took Stephanie Shaul Events full time a little over five years ago, I simultaneously moved back down south to the land of the pines with a new city to make my home and to build and expand my business. And what a wonderful, fulfilling, happy five years it has been!
I’ve now celebrated 6.5 total years in business and 5 years full time with Stephanie Shaul Events. I’ve done countless styled and editorial shoots, had every one of them published in national or regional publications, helped others through many mentoring and coaching sessions, spoke at several conferences and workshops, met countless inspiring, talented vendors and industry friends, built a lot of community, and planned so many beautiful, meaningful, joyful weddings for the most incredible and inspiring couples. I adore my job as a wedding planner and designer, and I love seeing how much my work has evolved and grown since launching my business at the beginning of 2014. I now take on just 10 full planning and design clients each year so that I can focus on them with so much heart and attention, and I work with these couples to create, plan, design, and produce intentional, magical, personalized, and stunning weddings that reflect them as a couple. I am incredibly proud of the work that I have done and how my business has evolved. As long as I can bring more beauty, joy, and love to the world and serve my couples well, I know I’m doing my job right.
In March of 2016, I finally tried online dating and ended up meeting the love of my life, my husband Rob, on my very first day! We fell in love so quickly and knew so instantly that we were meant to be. I’ve shared much about our relationship and our love throughout the years, and it truly has been the greatest gift in the world. Rob and I got engaged six months later on October 1, 2016, one of the happiest days of our lives! I loved blogging about our wedding planning process on Southern Weddings, and I also loved the process of planning and designing every bit of our wedding. We easily decided that Raleigh was the perfect location for our wedding, as it’s home for both of us and where we wanted to welcome our families and friends. The Merrimon Wynne House in downtown Raleigh was the only venue we considered, and the rest is history. Our wedding day was the single happiest day of my life thus far: marrying Rob, beginning our marriage, getting to celebrate with all of our family and friends, the gorgeous weather, the beautiful details, and the abundance of love and joy on that day were spectacular.
As perfect as April 1, 2017 was, marriage is that much sweeter. Being married to Rob is the best of the best, and we’ve celebrated almost 3.5 years of marriage now! As cheesy as it sounds, I fall more and more in love with him every day, and marriage is such a blessing and a gift. We’ve had so many adventures together, shared in so many traditions, traveled near and far, and so much more.
When I moved to Raleigh in 2015, I had my own apartment and even had it published on The Everygirl and in a coffee table book! A year after Rob and I got married, we bought our first house in June 2018 and have spent the last two years making our house a home (home tour coming very, very soon!). We’ve hosted countless dinner parties, many holiday events, lots of Friendsgivings, a whole lot of articles club/book club/game nights/girls nights/guys nights, and even had my sister’s family live with us for a few months during the pandemic. Buying our own house even spurred Rob into taking real estate classes and becoming a full-time real estate broker! He’s so good at what he does and serves his clients so, so well.
In these past five years in Raleigh, a friend and I started a monthly articles club (we’re just about to celebrate five years together!), some friends and I started a book club, Rob started a fantasy football podcast with his best friends, we joined our wonderful church, Vintage Church, as members while we were engaged, we serve (when allowed to meet in person, of course) on the greeting and communion team, we help lead our weekly community group, and I volunteered for several years with pre-schoolers at the Raleigh Rescue Mission downtown. I feel so fortunate and grateful for all of the community that has been built, the friendships that have been made, and the places we call home and where we spend many of our days! We have made many lifelong friends here, for sure. Raleigh has no shortage of wonderful people, places, organizations, things to do, places to eat, and communities to invest in, and it definitely feels like home for us. We have our favorite coffee shops, our favorite breakfast spots, our beloved date night spots, favorite parks, favorite day trip locations, favorite neighborhood to go for a walk, favorite bar to watch NFL football, both of our college campuses within thirty minutes, and so much more. I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton with this quick recap of these past five years, but suffice it to say, Raleigh definitely feels like home!
It’s been a full five years, and I have endless things I’m deeply thankful for. I can’t wait to see what the next five years have in store for us! Raleigh, I sure do love you, and it feels so good to know I’m doing the work the Lord has called me to do in the city that He’s purposefully placed me. Grateful doesn’t even begin to describe it!
If you’d like, you can take a peek at some blast-from-the-past blog posts about taking my business full time, my move to Raleigh, our engagement, and our wedding!
On the road to full-time, part one
On the road to full-time, part two
professional photos of us by the wonderful Kyla Shattuck
Raleigh Wedding Planner 
What a sweet post! Congratulations on all your accomplishments!! Wishing you many more years of happiness 💕
Hooray! Love y’all so much! 🙂