Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Murphy.
Jennifer, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
It started with my sister’s wedding, as I pitched in with my entire family to plan her wedding I realized how much work it was to plan a wedding. I remember thinking people plan weddings all the time, why does it feel like we are “reinventing the wedding wheel?” Afterwards I began planning other types of social events for friends and family out of simple enjoyment. Later, as other people started requesting my help for their celebrations, it seemed like the right time to consider getting paid for the work I was doing.
When I started my business in 2016 I decided to specialize in weddings and went down the path of wedding planning professionally. Since then, I have been planning weddings for clients up to today. Now as we plan traditional weddings for mid-luxury & luxury clients, I decided I wanted to get back to my roots, working with couples who did not have the 100K+ budget or event 10k+ budget for weddings. In NC an average wedding for about 100 guests is going to cost you around $30k, anything below that is considered lower budget. However most people do not have that kind of money to spend on a wedding or do not want to spend that kind of money on a wedding. So working with those clients 1:1 was not profitable, so I created an online course to give them my expertise as they plan their own wedding, while keeping the course super affordable at $79, and making it accessible to anyone around the world. The course is called Simple Wedding Planning and has recently launched this year.
As the world evolves, I am always looking for ways to bridge the gaps for people in order to create unity through marriage. When there are more people who have access to solid wedding resources and are not held back by the various challenges that come along with getting married, then that creates change in our local communities by allowing kids to have both parents in the household, joining incomes together, uniting assets to build generational wealth, and reduces the chances of crime, disparities, and so many other weighty impacts on the community. Although weddings are full of beautiful details, down to the core it is truly allowing individuals to come together and build an amazing future if they know how to truly work together.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
No! There have been more roadblocks than I can count. Just to name one of many – at my first wedding I partnered with another wedding vendor who was also my mentor to pull off my first event. As you can imagine, I was so nervous about my first paying client because you only get one shot at someone’s wedding day, there are no do overs. However, things turned when I started to build my confidence in my services and my mentor and did not see eye to eye on my role and how I should work alongside our client. Long story short, she went out of her way to make up details on the wedding about “what the client said she wanted” after I had already confirmed every single detail with the client. I learned quickly not everyone is there to help you and that I needed to trust my education, experience, and know how in order to have an amazing wedding day for my client. That was my most stressful wedding ever, because it was my first, unnecessary drama with me and the other vendor, figuring things new tasks I had never done before, implementing new systems and processes, and just working through trial and errors. I would also say I learned the most from that wedding that sticks with me today even through all the trials.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Weddings Made To Order?
We are a full service wedding planning company, helping engaged couples plan their wedding and execute a flawless wedding day. The best way to describe what makes us different from other wedding planning companies is referring to what our clients have said about our services. The consistent feedback we get is our team is extremely organized, easy to work with, take care of the wedding guests, esp the elderly guests, and very flexible.
I am most proud of building a business and team from absolutely nothing and now starting to compete the big name wedding planning companies in my market. I am also proud that my team is creating a company culture that makes our team member excited to come to work. I have worked in some brutal company environments and I was a top value of mine to create a space that not only I want to work in everyday but a team of associates as well.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up I was very shy, I excelled in school because it was “easy” – it was a formula of show up, do the work, get the grade. I tried to excel in school since socializing wasn’t my strength. I loved watching “nickelodeon, TGIF, Doug, and Pepper Ann,” going on field trips, wondering off in to my friend’s neighborhoods and we would find random places to play and build random things. I was a pretty typical kid otherwise, just very shy and never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings even if it was to my own detriment.
Contact Info:
- Email: jenmurphy@weddingsmto.com
- Website: www.weddingsmto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weddings_made_to_order/
Image Credits
In His Image Photography
