full circle
My event planning career officially started at age 5. Or was it 4? Regardless of the year, my sister and I decided one afternoon in the early nineties that it was our two cats’ (Cotton and Chocolate) birthday, and we rang up our grandparents to tell them. Without ever bringing our parents in on the loop, my Granny and Grandaddy showed up to our rural Tennessee house with a plastic carton of Piggly Wiggly cupcakes (with little clown-faced toppers stuck in each one) and a pack of cat treats.
Through my childhood years, birthdays were celebrated with a teddy bear theme, a disco party, a Hollywood movie star party (complete with catwalk and all), a toga party, and an epic Alice in Wonderland tea party where my best friend and I strung up deconstructed Christmas trees from the rafters of my parents’ basement and lined two 8’ tables with floral fabric, frosted sugar cookies, and collected mismatched teacups (which you know had cheeky tags reading “Eat Me” and “Drink Me”)… to name a few.
My parents were also the ultimate host #goals — both of them can cook and bake up a storm, my mother has collected Fostoria crystal for as long as I can remember (she has amassed QUITE the collection!), and they passed on an unshakeable resourcefulness to me (which comes in extremely handy for entertaining). My cousin’s wedding reception took place on their sweeping back porch/deck. My sister said her “I do’s” in the daffodil field at the front of their land. They volunteered to host prom night dinner for me and my best friends in high school — complete with grilled steak, pats of homemade strawberry butter to accompany yeast rolls, punch in real punch cups served from a real punchbowl (every Southern woman’s go-to party beverage, natch), and handcrafted shimmery sugar boxes filled with candy at each of my girlfriends’ place settings.
I served on my school’s prom and homecoming committees, spent my time hot gluing tissue paper on parade floats, and then graduated to sorority Social Chair, which I was appointed approximately one week after initiation. More tissue paper was involved — giant poms hung from the ceiling of Belmont’s ballrooms and smaller pieces shoved into a 3-D chicken wire masquerade mask for Mardi Tau. My junior year I moved up to Yellow Rose Chair, who was responsible for planning and executing our end-of-year formal. (Ran into a big of a snag with that one, as it happened to coincide with Nashville’s 100 year flood and required a last minute pivot and rescheduling, but it all worked out just fine.)
Adjacent with school and sorority obligations, I started an internship with a wedding planning company and conglomerate of sorts. I got hands-on experience coordinating events in real life, shadowing planning meetings, watching and running ceremony rehearsals, and troubleshooting as little hiccups came up (to the ignorance of our happy clients). The conglomerate side of the planning company allowed me to start working as a rotating personal assistant for a variety of different event vendors — I delivered wedding cakes, logged hours of videography clips, manned photo booths, wrote and edited articles for a wedding publication, set up centerpieces and organized rental inventory for a florist downtown, and conducted sales appointments for a farm venue.
My collegiate sweetheart and I got married in 2012. I penciled in “January 1, 2013” as a “soft launch” for my very own namesake planning company… which quickly turned into a fast and furious HARD launch as I realized my backup options were no longer on the table. I had already coordinated a handful of weddings for friends (and their friends) on my own, so my network and word of mouth really carried me through those first years. I landed a 110sf office in the heart of Hillsboro Village and that literally put me on the map. I had a team of event coordinators, an associate planner, and interns of my own. We traveled to Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and all across Tennessee for events. There were caketastrophes, screaming frazzled mothers of brides, missing escort cards and barn tables, a floral order that was completely wrong, and an encounter with a very rude West Virginian wedding guest wearing a boater hat. I learned beaucoups, mostly all the hard way (and will surely write about it all sometime!).
In 2020 we packed up our house and moved to Charleston, only to be met with a global pandemic. My spring weddings got canceled or postponed. I decided to pivot professionally and got my real estate license and hung up my license at a healthcare commercial brokerage.
I found my creative outlets were a little limited, so I poured all that energy into making my daughters’ birthdays particularly “extra.” Granted, their birthdays had been extra from the start (haha)… but I started to take planning for those a little more seriously. My balloon structures got more and more elaborate. They opened up opportunities to do some one-off projects for non-profits and neighbors hosting parties. I would frequently get asked, “Are you going to do this professionally?” and I’d blow it off as just a passion project.
Friends and acquaintances would come to me to ask for advice on how to make their DIY garlands look good. The overwhelming consensus was it was a long and tedious process and never quite looked right. Ready-made kits with cheap balloons gave big promises but under-delivered. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had where someone recounts a party they tried to decorate for that ended up with an entire family (or group of out-of-town guests, or bridal party, or whatever) getting tasked with blowing up balloons so the decorations get done in time and don’t look pitiful. Moms were frustrated trying to color match “that perfect shade” their daughters picked out, only to realize balloons had to be double stuffed to get it, and no amount of blowing by mouth was ever going to inflate them — let alone the 100s they’d need. Many people love the look of balloon installations but have no time or desire to learn a new skillset “just for one party.”
I watched other companies’ balloon businesses blossom across the country (including some of my dear wedding planning colleagues!). I reached out to friends to talk best practices and put in a lot of research, figuring out how the pros do it better. It gave me a new lens to look through; what would it be like if I did this for real? A couple of projects under my belt from this new approach instilled confidence that I could (and should!) pursue it… so here we are. Back in events! Back in making parties beautiful. Back in the details that delight! Back helping people celebrate without so much stress.
So here is to you, the frazzled mom, sister, friend, HR director appointed to planning the company meeting. The busy endodontist who just opened her first practice and wants to draw patients’ attention to it. The grandmother who wants to make a big deal out of the first day of school because it’s a big deal! The maid of honor who doesn’t want to travel with an electric balloon pump or spend 6 hours in beautiful Charleston slaving away on decorations. The mother of the groom who wants something really special for the rehearsal dinner but has a million other things on her plate. The cheerleading coach who wants to do something different to honor her amazing seniors. The neighbor who wants to cheer up her friend who’s going through chemo. Palmetto Balloon Co. is here for you!
