A Year Beyond Vows and Veils: Celebrating Our First Anniversary

In this heartfelt anniversary episode of Beyond Vows & Veils, Brittany Ellis takes a reflective journey through the past year of the podcast, offering invaluable insights and practical tips for engaged couples in the midst of planning their dream weddings. 

From fostering deeper connections with your partner to staying fully present during your wedding weekend, Brittany shares how to truly savor every moment. She emphasizes the importance of intention behind each decision, creating contingency plans for the unexpected, and trusting your vendors to ensure every detail is perfectly executed. 

Whether you're just starting the planning process or counting down to the big day, this episode is filled with wisdom to help you navigate the beautiful yet complex world of luxury weddings. Don’t miss this chance to enrich your wedding journey with Brittany’s expert advice and heartfelt reflections!

For more Beyond Vows & Veils or Eventrics Indian Weddings, follow along at:

Instagram: @eventricsw
TikTok: @eventricsweddings
YouTube: @EventricsWeddings

ABOUT EVENTRICS INDIAN WEDDINGS

Eventrics Indian Weddings is an award-winning team of experienced wedding planning and management experts, specializing in large-scale Indian Weddings & Fusion Weddings in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach, and destinations worldwide.

The Eventrics Indian Weddings team offers complete and partial planning services with a personal and hands-on approach. We believe each couple deserves a fully invested wedding planner to be engaged throughout the entire process to ensure no detail is missed or overlooked!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Community Appreciation
• 3:01 Reflecting on the Wedding Planning Journey
• 6:12 Final Stages of Wedding Planning
• 9:08 Consolidating Information for a Smooth Event
• 12:02 Creating a Welcoming Atmosphere for Guests
• 15:13 Preparing for the Wedding Day
• 18:09 Contingency Planning and Being Present
• 20:51 Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

Transcript

Brittany (00:01.102)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Beyond Vows and Veils. Thank you again for joining me each week to listen, learn, and discover more ways that you can make more informed decisions on your wedding planning journey. So for those of you that don't know me, I live in Lakeland and I have an office in Lakeland and I work from home sometimes also. And most of the podcast recordings that I've done have been at my home office and that's probably where you recognize my wallpaper. Well today I just needed to switch up the vibe.

It felt like one year and I don't know why but I just wanted to post up in my kitchen today and just kind of have a little bit more of a casual chat. Honestly, I'm just so grateful for the community that we have built so far and I can't believe that literally it's already been a year. So I don't really have a rhyme or reason today's episode. This is really just me kind of sharing a little bit more about my team offering a couple little highlights and just tips in general.

that I feel like are gonna be supportive for you because I chatted with Mercedes the other day who does all of our PR and

We're really excited about the next lineup of guest speakers that we have like honestly all The guest speakers i've already have have been so fantastic But I feel like we're kind of digging deep into what is going to really be an immersive experience for everybody and what's going to be really helpful on your planning journey and Hitting on maybe some topics that we also haven't talked about before as always I always like to really try to keep it very real and open and honest in these conversations so if you have any things that you would love to hear about like

definitely please submit to us. know that I've gotten some DMs from people and some very funny messages from clients in terms of like their appreciation for certain topics being covered and that was supportive for them. So rather you're new to our community or you've been listening since the beginning, welcome and thank you again for participating and I'm so grateful for you all. Please don't forget to subscribe to our channel. It means a lot to podcasters, which I think after a year of doing this, can

Brittany (02:09.584)
myself a podcaster as well. It means a lot to us, right? Because this definitely endeavor when I started this journey. When I started this journey, I definitely had no clue on the amount of actual work that it took to keep a podcast going, be efficient with your schedule, be a little bit more disciplined, making sure you're, you know,

Switching up your content and everything that goes into it anyone that does knows a podcast knows like there's a lot that actually goes into it so I tend to just be the type of person that like dives in and does something and I tend to think about it more later in my personal life not my professional life, okay, like my professional life I obviously think about things a lot and I excel spreadsheet things a lot and I project things a lot but in my personal life I'm just a doer I've always been that way where I just kind of like take something on I do it

it and

I kind of just like make mistakes as I go, but I think that's just life and you're just figuring it out. And that's just kind of what this podcast has been for me. So either way, I really hope that it's been enjoyable for you. So I feel like I, when I started the podcast, I was at this journey where I felt like I needed to lay all this foundational workout, meaning I wanted to start from the top. I wanted to talk to newly engaged couples about you're engaged now what, and for anyone that again is just joining our community, I feel like our episodes

It's literally going chronic chronological order of how you would otherwise plan your event everything from You're engaged now what difficult family conversations to have budgeting figuring out where you're gonna host your actual wedding Destination pros and cons I've had a plethora of incredible guest speakers and like all different vendor categories to talk about like things to think about when you're doing consultations and like things to think about on site for the actual event date so again

Brittany (04:04.88)
And if you're just in the beginning of your planning journey, literally start the podcast from like episode one. I feel like it's just so supportive. mean, I

I definitely wish that that information was available for for me I would say even as like an aspiring wedding pro like 20 years 20 years. my god 12 years ago. That would have been really supportive You know just to even hear from someone who's like been seasoned been in the industry for a while So whatever your journey is, I feel like it's really supportive but

it's a new year, right? So I kind of feel like today I want to mostly just talk about almost like the in phases of planning, right? Like what goes into that? You're now like a couple months or a couple weeks or weekend of your actual wedding. And so now you're trying to navigate that process. And so like what all happens there? So first I just want to say that if you are engaged or you're engaged couple

I'm not sure obviously most of our listeners are engaged couples Make sure that you're taking time to reconnect with your partner and be present with your partner because the wedding weekend What you've spent so many months planning and like late-night phone calls and like all that goes into it the wedding weekend itself Goes by so fast and I know that you probably hear that all the time. I know that when

And when I...

Brittany (05:42.604)
gave birth to my son, people told me all the time, like time goes by so fast and now he's seven, so like I do get it. But wedding weekend wise, it's literally blink of an eye, it's over. And so one thing that I just encourage you to do in these final weeks or however long you have left to plan your wedding is to try and slow down, try to create moments with your partner where you're still the fiance before you're the wife. You have many, many years to be the wife, you only got so many time to

being the fiance. Just take time and just enjoy each other and in addition to that like don't forget to just celebrate the fact that you are getting married. Don't forget what your intention was going into your wedding planning weekend.

One of the favorite episodes that I recorded this year was with a past client of mine actually, Umam and Ahmet, and they spoke about the importance of going into your wedding planning journey with intention and also just going into it with whatever your set of values are and making sure that every decision that you made, both in the pre-planning and on-site, were in alignment with that. And I feel like that really is supportive for anybody in their wedding planning journey. you don't have to have, ideally if you could have that conversation at beginning,

fantastic, but even if you're at the final stages of your planning like definitely checking in with each other and just making sure that all those like Teaser cross, you know eyes are dotted and that you you really do feel like good about going into the experience together Another thing I would say is that if you are in the final stages of your planning There's gonna be a lot of like wrapping up final invoices collecting all the final paperwork to pro tips that I have for you because I feel like this actually happens just totally happened to me

If your designer is subcontracting your chairs, okay So you have like the banquet chairs usually come standard at the property a lot of clients will opt for like a shavari chair or ghost chair or something fun like that for their events and you're still fluctuating on like Plus and minus people come dropping out or adding in for your counts. Make sure Two weeks out even the week out that you cross check your numbers again to make sure that the

Brittany (07:56.672)
designer or subcontracted chair company or whomever it is is aware of what your final count is because I've definitely had to be that person that was like hey so we're totally short like 10 chairs can you please bring some additional chairs

Luckily, I was able to recover from that situation because I have a great relationship, but it's not always that case. And so you want to make sure that you actually, whatever your quantity is, I always recommend that you order a little bit of a surplus just in case for people that show up and that didn't RSVP, but what are you going to do now? Cause they're there. You just want to make sure that you're always prepared. Second pro tip is you're going to be getting from your properties or your venues, what's called a banquet event order. So that's,

oftentimes in our industry called a BEO. And that essentially is there, it's there, the venues version of your timeline, but outlined in a way that like, here's the events, here's the date, here's the time, here's the quantity of guests, and then here's the details related to that event space on that event date.

make sure that you're checking the quantities because when you do your final billing with the venue, you want to make sure that the quantity is broken down into three different sections. One is who is above the age of 21. Second is who is under 21 and then who is three and under or a child because they're all going to be priced differently in accordance to what you've already pre-negotiated with your property. But quite frankly, if they're 21 or under or

sorry, under the age of 21, they're not going to be drinking from your bar. So even if you're doing a bar package, you should still be able to submit an adult count from a different count of people that otherwise are not of legal drinking age. So that's one thing I think is really supportive, and it actually does save quite a bit of money, just depending on where your guest count sort of lands.

Brittany (10:01.782)
And then also I think just in general, like if you're in the final stages of your planning, hopefully your planner has thought of this, but I'm a big, I've always been a big consolidated timeline person. So what I mean by that is you have this like massive schedule, right? Everything from like hair and makeup starts to photo starts to when vendors are arriving to set up to all the nitty gritty. And essentially when your family gets on site, as much as you may want to hope and pray that they are going to read

that timeline, the chances are very slim because they're hosts, right? They're celebrating. They're having fun with their friends and family. Hopefully they're present and they have a planner that's able to take care of all the logistics and they can just like catch up and have like a big family reunion on top of celebrating their kids unions together. Create a consolidated schedule. What I mean by that is mom of the bride only needs to be aware of what time she's up in the morning and needs to be in her makeup and what time she's

She needs to be dressed for photos outside of that. She really just should be escorted to the events. And here's what we're doing now. And here's where we're going over here. And the reason I say that is just because for me, I have built my brand and built my company on having my clients be guests at their occasions, be host of their occasions and not be tied into all the logistics that tied into an actual event. So

Shh.

That's just one thing I really want to emphasize for those that are like kind of wrapping up their overall occasions just check-ins and then I just think it's a nicety like yeah, it might take you a little bit of extra time but Ask your planner to create Consolidated versions of the timeline for all of your vendors Your hair and makeup artist does not need to know like what time the DJ is testing his cold sparks in the ballroom They only need to have the information that is pertinent to them and quite frankly

Brittany (12:02.56)
if you consolidate things down, I feel like the likelihood that people are actually gonna read that information is a lot higher. Same thing with your wedding party. Love a wedding party, okay? So like I'm not hating on bridesmaids and groomsmen, but if you have a large wedding party, they're in celebratory mode.

the time they get off the flight, right? Because they're having fun. They're enjoying their time with you. They know that they have some like tasks and responsibilities.

But anyway, that's like we should do a whole episode about like bloopers or like behind the scenes of like wedding party because it's literally hilarious. for your sake, again, a consolidated timeline to go out to the bridesmaids. Hey, girls, here's what time you're in hair and makeup. Here's the schedule. Make sure you arrive X amount of time early for your service. Please don't come with wet hair unless you're getting a blowout like things like that. I just think that it's really important that they have a very consolidated

of information that they can like check on their phones and be like yeah I'm supposed to be here at this time groomsmen groomsmen

In my experience, don't even send them a schedule. I know that that sounds really strange, but I still send them a schedule, you should literally, like, groomsmen literally just need a text for per task. It's like, hi, we will be in photos at X time, or please meet us in the groom's room at X time. I literally will send it the night before because I know that they're partying and then I'll send it again in the morning of like praying that they'll be on time. But essentially,

Brittany (13:43.958)
Consolidating information as it pertains to the roles in which people are playing for the actual events It just makes sense right because nobody is gonna read that 30 page Excel spreadsheet that is beautifully put together by your planner Unless it's pertaining to them, right? So just throwing that out there is a potential suggestion And then outside of that I think as far as like on-site deliverables, so I would say

The of the clients that I work with will always do like a fun welcome bag or some sort of like a hospitality gift to let their guests know when they're arriving that they're so excited to see them. I feel like the only critical thing that's in that welcome bag is the schedule of events that outlines all the details and start and end times of the functions. Maybe even like a fun little map on the back if the property is super huge, right? You can kind of indicate where different things are located. And then also if you're doing it off

site property you need to have like shuttle schedules listed anyway on that. But for the welcome bags, okay, my company actually it's not that we can't offer that concierge service, but traditionally the welcome bags need to be ready one day prior to the first guest check in. So if your first guest check in is on Thursday, those welcome bags really should be delivered by Wednesday ideally because otherwise what's going to happen is you're going to get a bunch of phone calls about like I got a welcome

welcome bag, but I didn't get a welcome bag and you just don't want to start your wedding weekend off with a headache. And so I would just advise you that if you are doing welcome bags or you're having someone put together some gifts for you to make sure that you've coordinated that with your venue coordinator, your front desk management team. Usually generic bags are the best, right? Because it's the same generic bag per guest room and you can't really mess that up. But I've had a lot of clients also that wanted

name specific or family specific name bags and so that just takes on a different layer of coordination. So you just want to make sure that your venue is prepared for that and aware of how that all needs to take place on the actual wedding weekend.

Brittany (15:54.44)
And then I think just for bridal prep in general if you're arriving to the property like I don't know if it was my wedding weekend I think that I would probably want to schedule like a Spa service before everybody came in or like I don't know like a fun little mini date with my fiance before like guests started to arrive So think about how you can also set yourself up for cultivating like a peaceful vibe before going into What may feel like a hectic weekend? It shouldn't feel hectic

but at the same time it is a little bit of like organized chaos at certain time frames, especially if you're doing a multicultural event. And so you just want to take that time to like get in the right head space. And so whatever that is for you, whether that's like sticking to your routine, like going to the gym in the morning. I one time had a client of mine that was a professional athlete.

and they they would like what was it what did they do i think that they would like did like mountain biking or something but anyway they literally woke up that morning and they stuck to their like workout routine or what have you and so for me or for them excuse me that really cultivated them to be like in a peaceful mindset because they just felt like they were just going into their day but they were able to be a little bit more present so if you find that to be supportive for you just like maybe consider that and in addition to that

Sorry, Jer, I'm going to pause here and just we'll edit this in a minute because I just need to look at like what else I'm talking about.

Brittany (17:26.527)
Mmm.

Brittany (17:41.29)
Another thing to maybe think about with wrapping up is just I know it's not a fun topic, but contingency plans. So make sure that you put somebody in charge of like checking the weather. Please don't check your weather like two weeks out because like unless there's like a hurricane on the horizon, like you're really not going to know what the weather is going to be until you're like week over a couple days out, especially in the state of Florida. So one of the things for consideration is just

If you if you're obviously working with a planner then they should pretty much already have those things slated out a very clear indication of when that plan b would go into effect So whether or not you're putting up a tent or you're moving everybody inside But it's just something that you don't want to think about on your wedding day And so I personally don't recommend couples be the person that makes the call maybe put somebody that you trust

can make the call with your team on your behalf and that you essentially can just wake up that morning and you're like, okay, I'm inside or outside. For my type A brides, I totally hear you. You're probably like, no, I wanna know. I'm gonna be in the process. I wanna know. I'm gonna be part of the conversation. If that's just what's gonna keep you calm is to actually be a part of that decision-making process, then more power to you, right? But having those conversations in advance, okay, how are we gonna manage this contingency plan? Who's making the call so that you're not having to like figure that out

out on the day of the event, think is really supportive. And then outside of that, I just would say like being present at your event, right? I mean, at the end of the day when the event has actually started, like the wheels are in motion, this thing is happening. And so,

You've done everything that you can to plan it to the best of your abilities, to the best of your vendors abilities. So you really have to just take a back seat, let your vendors do what they do. Hopefully at that point, you've been working with them for a significant amount of time that you can trust them to do that, to allow you to actually be present and fully take in all the memories that the next

Brittany (19:49.998)
48 hours 72 hours are going to to give you right because the one thing I think as a planner that I've really that I've really come to appreciate with time is slowing down because It's a high-paced high-energy day and at the same time It's all about your perception

And so if your perception going into it is like, how am I going to cram everything? I have to get up so early and am I going to have enough time for photos? And like, what if this happens? Or you can just go in saying, okay.

I'm probably going to go to bed a little bit early. I'm not going to like close down my singe night and be partying with everyone till 11 o'clock. I'm going to choose to have someone tap me on the shoulder at nine o'clock. I'm going to say my goodbyes everyone. I'm going to get a good night's sleep and I'm going to set myself up for success the next morning. I'm going to hydrate before I go to bed. I'm going to have all my clothes laid out, whatever it is, but essentially

What I'm getting at is you want to just take that time to slow down. I kind of did that same thing for myself where as a company owner, I don't really close my events anymore and that was done with intention. So my intention was that when I'm on during the high logistic or more difficult details, if you will, of an event, like I need to be fully on, I need to be fully rested, I need to be fully present and available to make sure that I execute my job efficiently.

And in order for me to do that, that doesn't necessarily mean that like, maybe I'm not the one overseeing your hair and makeup at two o'clock in the morning. Maybe that's one of my key staff members that's making sure that hair and makeup is running on time. I'm then waking up and overseeing like the rest of the vendor load-ins or production management or the gathering for the broad is taking place on time. Whatever it might be, every timeline's different, but I stopped closing events because what would happen was, let's say like when I, back in the old days where I

Brittany (21:51.37)
was overseeing hair and makeup at two o'clock in the morning and then I was still in the ballroom at midnight. I mean, you count the number of hours of sleep that I've had. It's just, you're not also as a professional able to be as present. And I really do love what I do. I really can't think of in a lifetime that I would be doing anything else other than what I'm doing. And so I enjoy what I'm doing, but I think that I enjoy it less if I don't.

If I'm not intentional about my energy modulation, if I'm not intentional about relying on my amazing team to also do what they need to do. And so that's kind of been a pivot for me. So if I can do it, you can do it for brides out there. Like just know that like even if you have FOMO and you don't want to miss out on everything, just allow yourself to know that like you have a multi-day event, you're going to be able to visit with people, but you also got to take care of yourself first and foremost.

because it can definitely feel like a mini marathon for sure. And outside of that, let me see, hold on. This is another pause moment at 22.

Brittany (23:24.28)
So I hope that this episode has been supportive for you. Honestly, like I didn't really map it out this time. I kind of just wanted to be a little bit more casual and just gear up for this crazy busy season that we have ahead of us and just really express my immense gratitude for those who do tune in and do support our channel. It just means so much to me. I really, again, I love what I do. So I love to talk about it. I love to talk to other pros who are passionate there.

industry about it. And for me, putting other people also on a platform that they can show their talents is a passion of mine. So thank you again, and I'll see you next time.