Hello! Thanks for swinging by my first Blog Post! I hope you like my new brand and website by Ribbon and Ink! I decided to get some headshots by my dear friend from KB Digital Designs to match my new brand and I thought it would be a great start to my Blog with an introduction as to how and why I became a Colorado Wedding Planner. Please grab some coffee, sit on a comfy chair and read. I promise it’s good!

I was a bride once too, excited to start my new life with the love of my life…anxiously waiting for one of the most important days of our lives. I mean, I was literally waiting for this day since I was five years old (yes, I was one of those girls yearning to find true love and marry the love of their life) What can I say? I am a true romantic at heart. Although our engagement was only 8 months, I had planned our wedding day in my head for years. Every detail perfectly lined out. I knew all the ins and outs of our wedding day. Finally our day came, it was a beautiful morning on August 8, 2008. I hardly slept because of the excitement. I got ready, headed to the church and the time came to walk down the aisle. I have to say, going in to the church and seeing him nervously stand at the altar is one of my favorite moments of that day. We set out to take photos at a park right after the ceremony and everything was perfect until a phone call came in mid photo session….

Me: “Hello?”

Venue: “Hi Erika, this is ___ calling from the venue. Just want to ask you NOT TO FREAK OUT but your cake fell on the floor.” {never start a convo to a couple with “don’t freak out”}

Me: {thinking to myself, “ok don’t freak out, don’t freak out”} “Ok….how did it fall? Do you know? Oh man, we didn’t even get to see the cake and it was one of my favorite things! We splurged on our cake and we didn’t even get photos of it”.

Venue: “Don’t know how it fell. It just did. The venue was empty when it happened”.

Me: “Ok, there’s nothing I can do then. Oh well, thank you”. Then hung up….

I knew before hand that sometimes “things” happen at weddings and I was determined that if something happened at our wedding, I wasn’t going to let it ruin our day. We went on to finish our photos and headed to the venue. When we went in, we were directed to go inside the bridal suite until we made our big entrance for dinner time. People were still doing the cocktail hour and I was told that the venue coordinator (which I thought was our wedding planner) would come get us when it was time. We were in the bridal suite for an hour! “Surely dinner has started already and we are still in here! What is going on? MOH, could you please go and check with the venue coordinator?” The venue coordinator came in and told us that the reason people weren’t seated yet (although it was 30 min into what should have been the dinner portion) is because the cake was still on the floor and no one had cleaned it up.

Me: “What do you mean no one has cleaned it up?!”

Venue: “yeah, we can’t do it because it’s a liability and we don’t want to be at fault”

Me: “but you said no one was in the ballroom and the DJ told my mom he saw it falling from a distance. It’s established that it wasn’t your fault. Please have someone clean it so we can have our guests go in.”

Venue: “Well, that’s not part of my job unfortunately”

Me: “Could you please get me cleaning tools at least? MOH, could you please let me out of my dress so I can go clean the mess?”

I was ready to do it myself! It wasn’t until the caterer decided they could clean it up instead. There I was though, on the phone with the bakery to try and get someone to bring in cake for our 350 guests or at least something we could cut. At the end of the day, we got a cake to cut and got to feed cake to only some of the guests, but this feeling of us missing more than an hour from our wedding day brought me to tears after the wedding. Why hadn’t my “planner” helped? Why hadn’t anyone else stepped in to try and help? I know that you are thinking, “what about your family and friends?” You know what? I didn’t want my family or friends to worry about it. I wanted them to have a great time because they deserved it too. Plus, I thought I had a wedding planner, who would surely take care of everything. Now, I am not bashing venue coordinators. I work with great ones who help me during wedding days and help make my job easier but they work for the venue and get paid by the venue. They are there for the venues best interest and in this case, I don’t know what was going on with her because she should have stepped up to help.

Anyway, after our wedding and missing more than an hour (which means everything was behind schedule. We had to pay the photographer to stay extra time and we didn’t get the sunset photos we wanted) I decided to be the “go to” gal for family and friends who were getting married. I didn’t want anyone going through what I went through. I was doing it because I loved wedding planning and I wanted people to have ease and a peace of mind. Fast forward to 2012 when I was helping a co-worker plan her destination wedding when she said to me, “Erika, you are too creative and good to be working here! You need to plan weddings for a living!” “What? You’re crazy”, I thought. But then something clicked inside of me. I realized I had been planning birthdays and parties since I was 13, I was always the person people came to for advice, even before my wedding. She was right, not crazy! I love helping people out. I care about their day as much as they do. So I took a leap of faith, quit my job, went back to school, started my business officially, and in 2016, I got my degree in Hospitality with a concentration in Event Management.

I am a wedding planner because I was a bride once too, filled with hopes and dreams of a day I had been dreaming since I was five. Weddings aren’t all perfect and mine wasn’t but I wish there had been someone to take over and ease my day. I am a wedding planner because I love helping people out, it’s in my nature. I want couples to enjoy their day without a worry or stress. I want couples to enjoy their love, the company of their guests, dance their asses off, and have the greatest day of their lives! I thrive knowing my couples enjoyed making one of the happiest memories of their lives on their wedding day. That’s what it’s all about. We live for these moments in life and I care about them as much as you do. That’s my why.

I’m Erika. A hopeless romantic, Colorado Wedding Planner, helping couples have a kickass time one wedding at a time.