2023 was absolutely one for the record books – wow!! Behind the scenes blog posts are annual favorites of mine, and I’m excited to share a peek back at Stephanie Shaul Events wedding days in 2023! With weddings in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Atlantic Beach/Beaufort, and Ocean Isle Beach, I was able to produce and bring to life several stunning, special wedding days (and wedding weekends) for the very, very best couples. It was absolutely one of my favorite years of wedding planning, and I truly had such dream weddings & dream couples! This year pushed and stretched Stephanie Shaul Events to new heights in every way, which was unbelievable to be a part of. 2023 was quite the year – and an exceptionally great one for SSE!

As I reflect back on this past year (and the last decade, too), I am incredibly overwhelmed and deeply grateful for the wonderful and kind couples and families I’ve worked with, the growth and development of my business, the joy & celebration & love & beauty that I’ve seen firsthand, the wedding industry’s tenacity & heart, the wildly talented vendors and friends I get to serve alongside, and the hope that I know deep in my heart. It was a very FUN year full of celebration, and celebrate, we did!

I gathered some fun behind-the-scenes shots from throughout 2023 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 and wedding planning can look like!

A few 2023 wedding planning highlights:

• I spend 450+ hours of work for each and every wedding, and wedding days themselves are at least 16 hour work days. I am there first thing in the morning when the first rentals arrive and as setup begins, and I’m the last vendor to leave once everything has been broken down, packed away, and cleaned up. It is a very, very long wedding day where I have to be 100% “on” 100% of the time, but wedding days are simply my favorite. I often feel the weight of the world on my shoulders (or at least the weight of producing a flawless, perfect wedding day for my couples, their families, and their friends!), but I think I thrive the most here. There’s nothing like it! Several of my weddings this year had many days of setup, installations, and build outs the week leading up to the wedding, as we built venues and tents from the ground up. It’s a very long week but also the sweetest thing to see all of the hard work, planning, and designing come to fruition!

• I started off 2023 with several days in Atlantic Beach and Beaufort for a marathon wedding planning getaway, which was honestly the MOST fun few days!! Gracie, Andrew, their parents, a sister, and I all headed down to Atlantic Beach together and stayed at Gracie’s family’s beach house for our trip. These two families are the absolute best, treated me as if I were one of their dearest friends, welcomed me into their home and their hearts, and were just the kindest, most gracious, most loving, most fun, and most generous clients-turned-friends. We packed it all in while we were down at the coast: many venue site visits, their catering tasting, a late night cake tasting, marathon sessions of wedding planning & designing, linen and rental selections, floral dreaming, and all the fun that comes with wedding planning. And of course, we had a blast together! Each evening, we would wrap up wedding planning and site visits in time to race back to the beach house to catch the most glorious sunset over the ocean from the deck while bundled up, eating cheese & charcuterie, and drinking Aperol spritzes together. A dream! These are my people, for sure. Two of my favorite and most treasured memories include watching Father of the Bride together (all of us!) in our pajamas one night in the living room & getting so excited for Gracie and Andrew’s upcoming wedding! And one morning, Gracie, her mom, and Andrew’s mom and I all headed out for a long, foggy beach walk together with our coffees as we chatted about marriage, faith, church, life, vocations, and all of the things. It was such an intimate, special, and very sweet morning together and made me love this entire crew even more!
  

  

  
• This year’s weddings filled my home and my car to the brim – and then some! For Gracie and Andrew’s wedding, in particular, I had dozens and dozens of boxes, packages, and crates filled with ALL the wedding details and design elements. It got to be quite hilarious, because my office, our dining room, and our foyer turned into a box-filled holding ground in the weeks leading up to their wedding at the coast! I also had another wedding exactly one week after theirs, and all of Elizabeth and Nick’s wedding decor and items lived separately in our guest room. I’ve never seen so many boxes in my life, and I think Rob was astonished, too. We took SIX cars and SUVs down to the coast filled to the very top with all of Gracie and Andrew’s wedding decor and items. I had a master packing list for each car heading down to Atlantic Beach, and thankfully, it all fit – and not one item was left behind!

• I love, love, love those precious 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! Several of my couples did a private last dance of the night this year (we did this at our wedding, too!), and I similarly adore witnessing these really intimate, emotional, quiet moments before the excitement of their sparkler exits. And there wasn’t a dry eye on Rebekah’s wedding morning – I’ve never seen so many special, intimate, and moving moments as on her wedding day with her parents, her grandparents, and their families and closest friends!

• As a wedding planner, I get to do it ALL during the wedding week & wedding weekend… the glamorous, the not-so-glamorous, the “yes, I will 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 – it’s coming!) 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. Seeing tents behind built before your eyes is also incredibly rewarding, and I had my fair share of stunning tented weddings this year. It’s quite the feat building a wedding venue from the ground upon – there are truly a million details and logistics – but it’s also a pinch me moment!

• Reception & tent 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 (and several mothers of the bride, too)! 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!

• Can I brag on my utterly phenomenal team of wedding day assistants?! Because they are the very, very best, and I simply could not produce and execute these wedding days without them!!! I do 100% of the planning and design, but I bring 3-6 assistants with me to each and every wedding day, and these incredible ladies are invaluable to me (and to my clients, I know!). They all represent SSE and the mission & values & heart of my business so, so well, and they serve my clients, their families, the guests, and the other vendors with such hard work, such kindness and grace, and with so much dedication. And I had 6 of the world’s best assistants spend several days with me at the coast for our biggest wedding weekend yet – a three day tent install, all the setup & steaming & assembling & prepping, a ceremony rehearsal for 52, a rehearsal dinner for 100 guests (30 minutes away), a welcome party for 300 guests, and then an 18 hour day on the wedding day itself. Grace, Lauren, Megan, Carrie, Ginna, Katelyn, Kayln, and even my sweet Rob (who shlepped & hauled so much!) – thank you, thank you, thank you for being the very best team I could ever ask for or imagine!! I am deeply thankful for each of you, and you are all so appreciated.

• 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. With these large scale tented weddings, the sheer volume of details, logistics, and vendors is staggering, and with a whole lot of team work, dedication, passion, selflessness, and hard work, these grand tented weddings all came to life so seamlessly. I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of these teams who do it all to serve our wonderful couples with heart and hustle.

• One of the biggest compliments I could ever receive is when I get to plan a second (or third!) wedding for a family! This has happened many times over the years, and I have had the utter pleasure of getting to work with the same family on multiple weddings. Truly, what could be a bigger compliment and honor?! I planned Katie and Alex’s wedding two years ago, and it was a complete pleasure and deep honor when Katie’s younger sister, Kristi, asked me to plan her wedding to Zack this past November! I adore the Demski sisters, and Kristi actually joined us quite a bit for tastings and planning/design meetings when Katie and Alex were getting married. And Katie got to join us this time around as her sister got married! We had the best time over the last year bringing Kristi and Zack’s wedding to life, and it was so, so sweet and touching to be a part of both of their weddings and to really get to know their families. I also had two sets of best friends get married this year! Morgan and Nick were married in January & Katy and Dan were married in May – and these four are the best!! They’re all very close friends, and Dan was Nick’s best man… and Nick was Dan’s best man a few months later! Morgan and Katy were program attendants and readers in each others’ weddings, and these four are absolutely amazing in every way. I was incredibly touched that they all brought me on board for their weddings!

• To the wonderful, wonderful couples I had the pleasure of working with this year, thank you for reminding me why I love this work, love serving you, and love seeing your marriages begin. These couples chose to focus on their unending love for one another, their marriages, and the bigger picture. They’ve chosen to celebrate their love stories with great joy and celebration with their beloved families and friends, to choose meaning and intention, and to remember what truly matters most. I am deeply grateful for each and every couple and their families as we planned such extraordinary, joyful celebrations. So much love, appreciation, and heartfelt thanks to y’all!

If, at the end of the day, I have glorified God in all that I do and have served my couples to the very best of my abilities, then I will count this year (my 10th in business!) as a win.

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, especially after the busy-ness of planning these events. And, as always, follow along on Instagram for a constant look into what’s going on!

PS: take a peek back at 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017 years in review for Stephanie Shaul Events!