The Bridge Lemont Wedding Podcast
Conversations to provide value to brides and grooms planning their wedding to make sure their wedding day is the best it can be!
The Bridge Lemont Wedding Podcast
E1 - From Dating App to Thriving Wedding Venue: The Journey of Alisa and Kevin
Ever wondered what it's like stepping into the shoes of wedding venue owners? Hop on to the fascinating journey of Alisa and Kevin, two of the four who created the Bridge Lemont, a wedding venue that has hosted over 157 weddings as of recording this episode since its summer opening in 2021 (now over 200 weddings since podcast launch!). From meeting on a dating app to hosting their own wedding in the unfinished venue, and then building a thriving business to help couples create their dream wedding, the couple's story is nothing short of exciting. They share their early days' struggles, including the hectic room flips from ceremony to reception, and how they managed to streamline the process, expand their venue, and eventually erase the need for room flips.
Capture insights into what the future holds for this podcast, as Alisa and Kevin plan on hosting guests from the wedding industry, sharing valuable tips and tricks, and providing a wealth of knowledge on outsourcing aspects of a wedding. The couple's mission is clear: to share their experiences and expertise to help make your big day as memorable and seamless as possible. So, whether you're planning your own wedding or just curious about the ins and outs of running a successful wedding venue, tune in for a heartwarming, enlightening, and valuable conversation.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Bridge Le Mans wedding podcast where we talk about all things wedding related to provide knowledge and valuable information to couples planning their wedding to help make their wedding day the best it can be. My name is Alyssa. I am one of the co-owners and co-founders of the Bridge Le Mans, which is a wedding venue. I'm here with my husband, kevin.
Speaker 2:That's me that is you?
Speaker 1:We're here to start a little podcast on our wedding venue and just wedding tips, Everything about weddings. The Bridge Le Mans itself is obviously, as I said, a wedding venue we have hosted. How many is it?
Speaker 2:157 as of today.
Speaker 1:As of today, 157 weddings.
Speaker 2:We're recording on Halloween itself.
Speaker 1:Yes, as of October 31st of 2023,. We have done what was it? 157. 157. On top of that, we've done lots of other showers, events, fundraisers, that sort of thing. We've got quite a bit so far under our belt. We do feel like we are able to provide some value. We want to provide value to not only people who aren't having their weddings with us well, not only people that are having their weddings with us, but people who aren't having their weddings with us.
Speaker 2:Correct. We opened in summer of 2021. That year, I think, we had 14 weddings and a couple more events. It's been two and a half years at this point since we've been open. We've had 157 weddings over the last two and a half years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this last year, 2023, has been wild. Three many weekends of the year it's been. It has been quite the blast, I guess, to get to know Kevin and I a little bit more on a personal level, our backgrounds I was a nurse originally.
Speaker 2:Where'd you go to school.
Speaker 1:Well, I went to Illinois, Wesleyan, and that is also where Kevin went. But we did not meet at Wesleyan, we did not go at the same time. He's a little older than I am. We met on a dating app and that was like our connection piece was the fact that we went to the same college and then it was a very fast paced relationship because I guess when you know, you know so he was living with me and then really really quickly and then got engaged after like four or like four or five months, married five months and then married just over a year after that. So it has been someone in here.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's Tuesday.
Speaker 1:Oh, they're picking up the linen. Yes, we have linen people.
Speaker 2:So there's alcohol.
Speaker 1:Oh. One or the other something, something's going on here, but yes. So we met on a dating app, got engaged very quickly, got married a year later During COVID, and we were actually the very first wedding here at the bridge. The bridge was not done at that time, we just did our ceremony, bringing in like heaters and stuff, because it was in January.
Speaker 2:We rented chairs.
Speaker 1:We rented some chairs and put them in the cocktail room, which was not Anywhere close to being done, but it was beautiful. And, yeah, we, we have now a little baby. Well, big baby, she's just over a year old now. And we have another one on the way, so we're having a little boy do this April. So we are just figuring it out. Stun a crazy journey of life, yeah, but it's great.
Speaker 2:So what is our mission at the bridge?
Speaker 1:our mission, well, I mean, obviously we want to put on some awesome weddings for our couples, ideally very smooth and weddings that the couples have dropped of you know and Visualize. We want to seamless transition into their married life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's. I mean we started with Just the cocktail room and the ballroom. So we were doing room flips at the beginning, where couples would be getting Married in the ballroom where the reception happened and then Everyone would go into the cocktail room and then we would have well, at the beginning we had like 10 people because we didn't know what we were doing and We'd flip the room from the ceremony to the reception. So that was a lot, of, a lot of effort from us and our caters and it was a little hectic.
Speaker 1:But we eventually got that down and we were able to do it with like four or five people on our own. I don't know, sometimes you did it with three or four people because we were like okay, this is your job, this is your job, this is your job and we got pretty good at it really yeah, smooth, and then, once we got good at it, we ended up opening up the hall, which is our the pergola?
Speaker 2:Well, it was first pergola. We still had indoor weddings with that, because some people still wanted it inside because spring of 2020 To you know. Yes, last year, last year, at the beginning of the year, we finished the pergola.
Speaker 1:Okay, I guess this is the second year We've had that yeah and then we opened the hall, which is an indoor ceremony space. It's already set up for indoor ceremonies generally at all times, so it's also like the backup option to outside if ever needed. But yeah, we've definitely Switched around the intensity of that time of we've evolved the event weddings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So no more room flip switches is great. Takes off a little bit of pressure on us. But yeah, I mean, I guess what people are going to get from this podcast is Hopefully we can add a lot of value, some tips and tricks and weddings. We do believe we've been doing this now for, I Guess, long enough. I mean it doesn't seem that long when you think about it, but we've had quite a bit of wedding experience. We kind of know what works and what doesn't work specifically in our space and maybe spaces that work in a similar or function in a similar sense as we do. So we want to provide lots of knowledge. We Are going to have some guests on as well, so most of them are gonna be preferred vendors or just people who are able to provide a lot of great knowledge and tips and and their realm of the wedding business. So we are the venue. We provide the space, some furniture and the linen.
Speaker 1:The linen, yeah, all those things, and then we do the alcohol. But everything else is basically outsourced. So we do wanna explain and give some value as to how you outsource those things and what to look for, and so we'll have some of those people on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is, like the last six months we've had this idea where we've got our system down to a point where things run more efficiently than they run unofficently and then whenever there is a situation where things don't run efficiently, it usually has to do with either a non-preferred vendor and communicating with them, couple not fully understanding how we're structured, and I think that this will kind of help solidify, as long as people listen.
Speaker 1:So I guess we'll see if people listen to this podcast or not, but I think that this will be a short one, and then other ones.
Speaker 2:We'll get a little bit more in depth with caters and hopefully you get to know our vendors a little bit, because we're very I don't even know how to say it, I don't want to say reliant on our vendors, but a smooth wedding.
Speaker 1:Like we have such great preferred vendors at this point that, when we're all working.
Speaker 1:It's a huge team effort, so it's so and that's so important for your wedding day. To make that seamless, like the day goes. Seamlessly is to have people that work so well together, cause you don't want someone thinking they're above another person, like I know. Coordinators and DJs can butt heads a little bit, or, yeah, just different things like that. So we're going to dive into catering, which is a huge thing. We'll talk about coordinators. What else are we talking about? We'll probably have photography, we'll get into more of our history, and Did the power just blow?
Speaker 1:That is so weird.
Speaker 2:Well, we're sitting in the dark now.
Speaker 1:Is it still like going?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's got back up battery.
Speaker 1:Maybe we blew a fuse, but that's kind of weird, since we've been sitting in here for how long.
Speaker 2:What just happened.
Speaker 1:We might have to rerecord this.
Speaker 2:I don't think we have to rerecord, but we might need to take a break and figure out what just happened.
Speaker 1:We can wrap this one up anyways. We're about the end, so, anyways, our goal is to really provide some value to people, ideally people who are booked with us. But people who are looking to book with us are just people who want more information on the wedding biz. So we do apologize. We are not professionals at this. This is our first time trying to do a podcast, so bear with us as we figure this out. Maybe by episode 10 we'll be professionals.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's how it works. I think it takes a couple more, but we'll try our best 157 episodes, exactly All right, so I guess we'll see y'all. On episode two how do we sign off? Is that it?
Speaker 1:That was it. Yeah, I said I'll see y'all on episode two, so I don't know how well this went.
Speaker 2:I think it went all right. All right, bye.